Kingdomturn

by Matthew Williams

  While everyone else had been focused on Inna, Keltin had busied himself by unlocking every door he came to and checking what waited behind it. As Wyand watched, several girls now stepped tentatively out into the light beyond their rooms. More joined in seconds, curious to see why their doors had been opened and who these people were standing in the space between the living quarters. Soon, there were more than thirty girls—the youngest no more than a turning old, the oldest somewhere past her second turning—all eyeing the strangers warily as whispers of Kingdomturn began to spread. Even in the absence of the cofa, Wyand had no memory of this place from his earliest days, but he was certain now that these were the Children’s Quarters.

  In that moment, Wyand understood Hirst’s vision. The cries the Stormbrother had heard weren’t those of the surviving workers from Aldhagen and Locboran, they were the cries of these children, abandoned by the Cultivators and left to starve. Wyand was elated that at least one tragedy had been avoided during the assault on Aldhagen, but he felt his hatred of the Cultivators swell to new levels.

  “Eyrie!” Keltin shouted suddenly. Wyand’s focus snapped to his friend, who stood at the top of a staircase that disappeared into the ceiling above the Children’s Quarters. “Up here. Hurry!” Worried what Keltin might have found, Wyand joined Eyrie and Cailla as they raced from one floor of living quarters to the next. When Wyand reached the last step, he understood why Keltin was so frantic.

  A wide chamber appeared, its walls lined with a mixture of beds and strange machines. The light windows here were dimmer than usual, and many of them either flickered or were completely extinguished; even with such little light, it was easy to see that something was terribly wrong. Most of the beds bore dark, ominous stains, and the air within the room felt thick and stale. Cailla gasped as she entered by Eyrie’s side. “I know this place,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide and her head shook faintly as she spoke. “Some of the other Sacred Vessels described it perfectly. This is where the children are born.”

  As Cailla spoke, Wyand looked to the beds again and realized that something in the midst of the dark stains was moving. Cailla turned away and wept, but Eyrie ran to the nearest bed without hesitation and lifted a writhing mass of rags and filth. It gave a feeble, exhausted sigh as she pulled away the layers of cloth, revealing a tiny set of glowing eyes that suddenly pierced the darkness. Shadows flickered across Eyrie’s face as she cradled the child in her arms, but the unmistakable light of the Guided returned each time the infant had enough strength to open its eyes.

  Wyand was stunned and horrified as he imagined a child entering the world, only to be torn away from its mother and abandoned in a place like this. It’s fitting, actually, he realized. The Cultivators didn’t care about the needs of the child, they were focused solely on their own desires. They want us functional, not comfortable.

  Eyrie turned the child’s head towards her chest and adjusted her Sreathan plate. “Cailla,” she said gently, “I need you to go to the Cynmeren fighters and bring back as many Daughters of Mercy as you can find. If you know of any Sacred Vessels who recently made a journey to the Hall, they can help here as well.” Cailla was more than eager to leave a such a terrible place; she was already shouting for the Daughters of Mercy as she descended the first set of stairs.

  Eyrie smiled to herself and the child in her arms, but her brow was furrowed with worry as she surveyed the number of beds in the room. “What do you need us to do?” Wyand asked, with Keltin and Ryna quickly echoing his question.

  Frustrated tears hovered in the corners of Eyrie’s eyes, but fierce and quiet anger lurked within her voice. “Make sure we never have to come back here again.” Wyand knew that the warrior in Eyrie’s spirit begged her to fight the Cultivators to the last, but her calling as a savior of the innocent would always remain her top priority. There was nothing more to be said—Wyand would have to go on without her.

  Before his mind could be consumed by thoughts of Eyrie and the desire to stay close to her, Wyand hurriedly made his way down into the Children’s Quarters with Keltin and Ryna. Something was different about the crowd below—where before the focus had been on the newfound children, now everyone faced the entryway that led to the main corridor. Shouts rippled through the fighters as a green blast of energy tore into the living quarters, striking down the unfortunate and scattering the rest.

  “No!” Wyand shouted as he leapt down the stairs. The Cultivators had emerged from wherever they were hiding, and they had chosen to attack the instant he was away from the main force. The Stormheart seethed with light and heat in his hand, and Wyand suddenly understood that its power came with an unforeseen risk. The Cultivators can feel this stone, wherever it goes, he thought. They’ve been tracking me the entire time. Paranoia stirred his thoughts and made him fear for everyone he had left in the lower parts of the Hall. Wyand knew that neither he nor the Stormheart could be everywhere at once, and clearly the Cultivators were aware of the same fact. He prayed this was the first and only assault felt during his brief absence.

  Before more people could fall to the Cultivators’ fire, Wyand sprinted into the fray with the Stormheart extended in front of him. Relieved warriors cleared a pathway for him until the Stormheart’s light spilled into the corridor beyond the Children’s Quarters. He peered cautiously out into the spiraling hallway, but found no fallen Cultivators in either direction. Then, from just beyond the curvature of the upper end of the hallway, a Cultivator staff appeared and fired a single burst in Wyand’s direction. It missed, striking the outer wall amid a searing, crackling spray of sparks.

  Heart pounding, Wyand risked a step forward and the staff immediately vanished. He paused, and it appeared once more from a point slightly higher in the passageway. This is their last push, he realized. If we give any ground, they will attack again with whatever they have left. Walking forward once more, he called back to the Children’s Quarters. “With me, all who are ready to fight! This is it!”

  So it was that a line of determined warriors formed in a single file to follow Wyand into the final battle with the Cultivators. Their steps were slow, as they were forced to constantly shift towards the inner wall to avoid sporadic bursts from the glowing staves in front of them. Their course did not waver, though, and stride by stride the last levels of the Hall were reclaimed.

  Though the climb was grueling and the threat of attack loomed at all times, Wyand soon fell into a rhythm just as he would with any other task—take three steps forward, see a glowing staff, retreat one step and take cover against the wall. A handful of openings passed by, but none of them concealed anything more than the same sort of small rooms Wyand had encountered lower in the Hall. That was why he took no notice of yet another darkened doorway until it had already begun to slide past his vision. In the span of a single terrifying heartbeat, however, the shadows within that room evaporated amid the sudden glow of a Cultivator’s staff.

  Wyand spun mid-stride so that the Stormheart faced the new threat, but there wasn’t enough time to defeat the Cultivator before the staff fired. Instead, the Cultivator recoiled from the presence of the destructive stone at the last possible instant, causing the burst of dark green energy to angle upwards just slightly. Wyand leapt for the floor as his vision was washed away by the blazing brilliance of the green orb. The pulse of energy did not strike him directly, but the force of its explosion lifted Wyand into the air and flung him across the corridor.

  People shouted as flashes of beautiful light flickered above Wyand’s head; to his dazed mind, it felt like some sort of celebration. Quickly, though, his thoughts returned, and he knew these weren’t shouts of joy. People screamed from both panic and pain as a force of ten Cultivators swept into the upper end of the corridor. Unable to convince most of his muscles to move, Wyand’s right hand searched frantically for the Stormheart but found nothing.

  More and more bursts from Cultivator staff weapons illuminated the hallway, until Wyand suddenly felt himself being dragged ac
ross the floor toward the small opening. He looked up, amazed to find Ryna holding the back of his Sreathan plate while Keltin charged into the tiny room, glowing Stormheart in hand. The Cultivator within was dispatched in seconds; if the proximity of the stone didn’t kill it, Keltin’s blade plunging into its silvery robes certainly did.

  Ryna’s face appeared close to Wyand’s own and she frowned as she assessed his injuries. “There are a lot of burns, and I don’t think your hair will be growing back any time soon,” she announced. “Other than that, you seem remarkably intact for someone who just survived an explosion from less than a stride away.” Wyand’s hand darted immediately to his scalp, where he found a sickening mixture of smooth, tender skin and short, bristly hair in small clumps. He felt the back of his head and found the same result there—his sima was gone.

  “Can you stand?” Keltin asked as he offered a hand. Wyand had no idea if he could or not, but he took Keltin’s hand all the same. “They’re going to overrun this room if we don’t press against them now. Here—see if you can make this thing work again.” Keltin passed the now-dark Stormheart to Wyand, who gratefully accepted it. The swirling shades of blue had completely receded, leaving only the grey and brown exterior of what appeared to be a normal stone.

  Come on, Wyand thought, squeezing the Stormheart and focusing his thoughts on the power it contained. Nothing changed. “Come on,” he whispered with eyes closed, but again nothing changed. “Come on!” he shouted desperately as deadly streaks of green flew past the opening to strike the exposed fighters. Jaw set with grim determination, Wyand marched towards the main corridor without thought. The burnt skin on his head coursed with pain from the heat of each orb as it passed by, which only served to further his anger. Then Wyand stepped out into the hallway.

  Glowing staves issued another volley of searing death, but none of their fury found its way to Wyand. The Cultivators had advanced too close to the small room—now they and Wyand stood only two strides apart. He stared at them as he took one tired step after another, and they now stared back at him with growing alarm. Weapons shifted and began to glow once more, but to Wyand’s relief so did the Stormheart. “Mine’s faster,” he said with an exhausted but victorious grin, and a brilliant surge of blue light soon proved him correct.

  As the Cultivators crumpled to the floor, Wyand stepped over them with total disinterest, focused instead on what lay beyond them. The passage curved for another five strides before ending abruptly at a wall with a door tucked against its right corner. It was a place Wyand had never been before, yet he knew it all the same after having seen it through the eyes of a man long dead. This was the top of the Hall, the room where the Thoughtcaster was first discovered, the room where Grigg and his family watched Aldhagen die.

  Wyand approached the door slowly and peered into the circular chamber. Just as it was in Grigg’s memories, windows lined the walls, revealing a breathtaking view of the stormy sky and the lands beyond. Viewing windows glowed on the portion of the walls just below the actual windows, but the things they displayed were anything but magnificent. Scenes of destruction, charred earth, and broken bodies marked locations where the Cultivators’ great weapon had recently struck. Then Wyand realized there was a similar situation just a few strides in front of him.

  Propped against the central column that extended from floor to ceiling, a Cultivator lay in a heap like those in the corridor. Unlike the others, this one’s leg was still moving. Wyand hurried forward to finish the task of cleansing the Hall, but slowed when he saw how damaged this Cultivator already was. The machine spasmed uncontrollably and tried in vain to reach for a staff weapon that lay only a stride away. As Wyand approached, though, its head spun towards him with alarming speed and control. An inhuman smile crept onto the Cultivator’s face as it stared back at Wyand, then it closed its eyes and stopped reaching for the staff.

  Not wanting to miss his opportunity, Wyand leapt forward and pressed the faintly-glowing Stormheart against the Cultivator’s chest. The false god shook for an instant, then lay motionless with the same unsettling expression frozen on its face. As though they were somehow linked to the Cultivator, the warning chimes—which had echoed throughout the Hall since the assault began—suddenly ended. Wyand backed away in the silence as a new curiosity struck him. Was that the last one? For the sake of everyone in the Hall and elsewhere, he prayed that it was so. The thought was joyous, yet it also carried with it undeniable feelings of remorse and grief. He hated the Cultivators for the things they had done to his people, but to remove the wicked from power, Wyand had been forced to do similar things to them.

  Unable to bear that eerie smile any longer, Wyand looked around the chamber for any other threats; that was when he noticed something that had changed significantly since the time of Grigg. Where before a ceiling had stretched completely across the space, now it was absent, replaced by another level above this observation room. Through a tangle of pipes, gears, and what looked like dark ropes, Wyand spotted a series of interconnected boxes that hummed and whirred louder than any of the others he had encountered elsewhere in the Hall. A yellow-green glow bathed every component in the overhead area, a glow that Wyand hadn’t seen in many months.

  This has to be the weapon, he realized, but before he could think of how to disable it, Wyand spotted Keltin and Ryna climbing through the mass of pipes and boxes with the same task in mind. “Wait! Don’t get too close!” he shouted, and his friends paused to look down at him worriedly. Wyand ran to the ladder they had climbed and joined them in the weapon area.

  “This is the reason we came all the way up here, Wyand,” Keltin said as he offered his hand to help Wyand up. “We destroy this thing and the Hall is finally ours. Why should we wait?”

  Wyand peered through the pieces of the giant machine and at last caught a glimpse of what he knew served as its power source. He pointed to a translucent yellow-green crystal, identical to those that Edan, Losian, and he had found deep within the Cavern of the Winds. “From Grigg’s memories, those crystals were why so many miners fell ill in the early days of Aldhagen,” Wyand explained. “We’ll figure—” he began, but the entire platform lurched suddenly as gears spun and the constant, droning hum escalated to a high-pitched whine.

  A pinpoint of dark green formed at the end of a long rod that swung through open air. It was impossible to know exactly where it pointed, but judging by the landscape in the distance, the weapon was poised to strike some target near the Lake of Skulls. The glow expanded into a swirling mass of energy that flowed around and through itself at the end of the rod. “It’s going to fire again!” Keltin shouted above the noise, and in that instant Ryna took action.

  With a mighty swing of her oar, Ryna struck the glowing crystal and sent its shards clattering to the floor below. The orb of energy faded into wisps of green light at the end of the rod as the sound of gears and other mechanisms dwindled to silence. Ryna stared down at the remnants of the crystal, then she turned to face Wyand and Keltin’s incredulous stares. “Well, you two weren’t doing anything to stop it,” she said indignantly. “Come on. If that crystal is as dangerous as you say, we need to get everyone out of here.”

  Still stunned, Keltin began the climb down, but Wyand stayed behind. “Go ahead without me. I need to do something here first.” Keltin nodded in understanding and left him alone with the now-dormant weapon. Wyand crept as close as he dared to the edge of the opening that overlooked the lands outside the walls, then he held out the Stormheart and prayed that it could muster one final burst of light.

  There was a moment of doubt and anticipation as he waited, then at last the curious little stone flared to life. It enveloped Wyand in its radiance and cast rays out toward the dark sky beyond. I hope everyone down below saw that, Wyand thought as he shuffled away from the edge. The Stormheart’s light faded quickly until it once again looked like nothing but an ordinary stone. He smiled to himself as he tucked the stone into his waist pocket, praying that the Stormheart
would never again need to be used as a weapon.

  After descending the ladder, Wyand found Ryna and Keltin already well into the task of ushering everyone else away from the glowing crystal shards. They were near the entrance when they paused to wait for Wyand. “Before we go, look there,” Keltin said, nodding to one of the viewing windows that showed the walls surrounding Locboran. As Wyand watched, a handful of scrid scuttled over the capstones, all with empty cages ready to receive the wounded. Keltin placed his hand on Wyand’s shoulder. “Looks like your signal reached them,” he smiled as they both stared proudly at the viewing window. “It’s finished.”

  Wyand wanted to sigh in relief and then find a quiet spot to rest for the next few days, but he knew that just because the fight to reach the top of the Hall had ended that didn’t mean the work in Aldhagen and Locboran was complete. Other viewing windows showed scenes of ruined structures, and though the widespread fires had begun to subside, the air was thick with their smoke. Wyand had anticipated that a fight with the Cultivators would be brutal, but he never imagined victory could look so bleak.

  A sudden spike of worry solidified his next plan of action. “We need to get back to Aemetta and Ansund,” he said as he stared at a section of what used to be the living quarters. “If any Cultivators are still hiding in the lower levels, the Stormheart will be needed. If not, there are likely to be more survivors trapped or otherwise hidden in both cities. Either way, with the fires fading and scrid now available for transport, it’s time to make certain everyone reaches safety.”

  Keltin’s shoulders slumped tiredly, but he knew Wyand was right. They left the room at the top of the Hall and were instantly greeted by cheers from the corridor beyond. Cynmeren and Smokedwellers lined the narrow passage, all of them joyous that the current battle was finally done. Wyand shared their joy and smiled with them, but repeated over and over that their task was not yet complete. The fighters either couldn’t hear him or were too excited by victory to care; whichever was the case, Wyand, Keltin, and Ryna pushed forward as quickly as the mass of people would allow.