by Sam Ryder
Vrill angled her head toward Eve. “In some ways, I should thank you,” she said. “Not for abducting me and forcing me to fight monsters. But for changing my paradigm. If not for what happened to me, I never would’ve stood on my own two feet. And I never would’ve met Sam.” Her gaze drifted back to me now, and I could’ve gotten lost in those shadow-dark eyes. “You told me to do that which would bring me happiness, right?” I nodded. “Well, you bring me happiness, Sam. You searched for me when I was lost. You came back for me. No one else has ever done that. So I don’t choose Tor or the Three or a life fighting monsters. I choose you, Sam Ryder. I always choose you.”
Her words were like sunshine on my soul, and I didn’t want to shade myself from any of them, but I also couldn’t lie to her. There were others who I cared about, including Eve. “What if I’m not enough for you? Others have a piece of my heart too.”
I didn’t specifically mention Eve, but of course she knew exactly who I meant. Like Vrill always did, she faced the obstacle head on. “Eve and I…we have a rocky past, but that doesn’t mean we need to have a rocky future. I sense a mutual respect growing, unless I’m mistaken?” She said the last part to Eve, raising her eyebrows pointedly.
“You are not mistaken,” Eve said. “I have long misjudged you.”
“And I you,” Vrill said. “At least partly.” Her eyes roamed back to me. “Beat has a part of your heart too, right? But not romantically?”
“Correct. She’s not interested in men in that way.”
Vrill nodded. “And Lace?”
I coughed. “I can’t deny I find her attractive. And I have been with her in the past. But no, those days are long past. Lace and I are friends…sort of.”
“Silk?”
I’d almost forgotten about the other cat-woman, who had all of Lace’s feistiness when necessary but also had a softer side that attracted me. “I don’t know. It’s too new still. Maybe. I feel a connection to her.”
Vrill nodded again. “Fine. All I request is honesty. My people are not accustomed to being exclusive, so this is not an unusual thing for me.”
It was unusual for me, but I wasn’t about to say that. “I’m glad you’re coming,” I said to Vrill. “Both of you.”
“On that note,” Eve said, bringing us back on track. “We should go. We cannot linger here any longer. Our mission has failed, but that doesn’t mean the next one will too.” I appreciated her optimism.
But there was something we needed to do first. “Vrill, you should say goodbye to your mother.” I knew they didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but they were still family. If I had a chance to say goodbye to my parents, I would, despite everything.
“I—I don’t know what to say to her.”
“Speak from your heart.”
Right on cue, Delaqua walked in. She looked positively vibrant, a beautiful woman in her own right. “Mother?” Vrill said. “I’m going. Don’t try to talk me out of it, because my mind cannot be swayed.”
Delaqua continued walking until she reached Vrill and then she hugged her. “I will not,” she said. “Because I am coming too.”
For the third time, Vrill and I said, “What?” except this time we were joined by Eve. Like a chorus of question marks.
Vrill was the only one who kept talking. “Mother, no! We didn’t come here to recruit you. We came to find others, warriors perhaps, those who wanted a change and were willing to fight for it.”
“And why can’t that be me?” her mother said, sounding affronted that her daughter wouldn’t put her in such a category of person.
“Because you’re…you’re my mother.” It was a pretty lame reason, but I didn’t say that, waiting to see how this all played out.
“Exactly,” Delaqua said. “And I won’t sit by and watch my only daughter slip through my fingers again. Plus, it would be awfully lonely in Dahl Mar all by myself.”
It’s funny in hindsight: Eve was the only one who understood what she meant right away. I’m not sure what I was thinking—maybe that she’d misspoken. Vrill thought she meant they were abandoning their underground city, because she said, “Where will the Lri Ay go?”
Eve, on the other hand, just started laughing, throwing her hands up to the stone ceiling and laughing. That was the moment it clicked for me, because Eve wasn’t a laugher. Occasionally she might chuckle at something, but this was a full-on belly laugh. It was her form of expressing relief and excitement and releasing all of the pent-up frustration from her previous failed Finding mission.
Because we both knew exactly what Delaqua meant.
She meant we’d just managed to recruit a veritable fucking army.
Hell yeah.
~~~
We brought Delaqua back with us, along with one of the Deciders, the middle Decider whose name I now knew to be Alycia. She was the one who’d taken out Decider Quin and, perhaps, changed the course of fate while we were under attack by the Viss. It would take many more trips to Lri Ayem to bring all the Lri Ay back, but with Airiel growing stronger each day and two Finders to help out, we’d get them all to Tor eventually.
I introduced Delaqua and Alycia to the other Warriors. Beat’s eyes flicked back and forth between Vrill and Delaqua, widening as she noticed the family resemblance. Her only comment was, “Trippy.”
I laughed and punched her on the arm.
Lace, in her usual way, demanded that we tell the whole story.
I said, “Later. We need news first. What’d we miss?”
Beat took a deep breath, a troubled look breezing across her features.
Shit. This wasn’t good. “How many did we lose?” I asked.
“Just one.”
“Who?”
“It’s not what you think. Sorry if I made you think someone died.”
Wait…what? “No one died?”
“Not while you were gone,” Beat said. “But we lost Silk. Her Galut showed up.”
“Shadowflash?” Vrill and I said at the same time.
Beat shrugged. “I didn’t exactly have a chance to get introduced. The beast was sniffing around the ward shields. I thought it was a day monster trying to breach our defenses, so I went out there to take care of it, but then Silk went nuts. She attacked me from behind and then leapt on the beast—er, I mean, Shadowflash—and then took off. I’ve never seen a monster move so fast in my life.”
Dammit, I thought, remembering the conversation Vrill and I had had about the women in my life. I had felt a connection with Silk, but maybe I’d misread the whole thing. At the end of the day, she was gone the second she recovered her faithful steed, which must’ve traveled miles to find her. Still, there was no point on dwelling on what I couldn’t change. Plus, we had news of our own. “We have an army,” I said, trying to change the mood.
“We’re doing okay,” Beat said, waving her hand at the group of Warriors gathered around her. “But I wouldn’t call this ragtag group an army just yet.”
“No,” I said, staring into Beat’s eyes. “We have a fucking army.”
Beat and I had always had an uncanny way of communicating with each other without needing to spell out every detail, and this time was no exception. Her eyes widened in shock. “You mean, the Lri Ay? How many?”
“I didn’t exactly take off my shoes to count,” I said. “But, well, all of them, give or take.”
“Holy shit. We have a fucking army. How?”
It was Delaqua who answered this particular question. After all, apparently it was she who had persuaded the rest of her people that the life they were living, the one in constant fear of attack by the Viss, was no kind of life. And while fighting monsters on an alien planet wouldn’t be much better, at least there was hope of a better life in the end. If we could win. But she didn’t say all that. Instead she said only, “We needed a change.”
“It’ll take at least a hundred trips between Vrill and I to transport them all to Tor,” Eve said. “But we’ll get them here eventually.”
A hu
ndred trips meant at least double that many days, even with Airiel’s growing strength. Unless…
A wild idea popped into my head as I remembered something Vrill had said to me back on Lri Ayem. Unless we changed the paradigm.
“Lace,” I said. “I have a Seeker mission for you.”
The cat-woman bared her fangs. “It’s about damn time,” she said. “Tell me.”
“You’re going into the literal heart of the mountains,” I said. “And I’m coming with you.”
TWELVE
A RAGTAG POSSE
“I’m…fine,” Minertha said, her voice faltering, shaky and uneven. She was anything but fine. I could see it on her life meter, which stood at 5. She was dying before my very eyes. Seeing her like this only strengthened my resolve to carry out my plan. Not only to save her, but because having two fully functioning goddesses would increase the speed with which we could transport our army from Lri Ayem to Tor.
“You don’t have a say in this,” I said.
“I do. I’m not…scared…of death.” I respected the goddess of the earth more in this moment than ever before. Though she sometimes had gone along with Persepheus’s tyranny too easily, she wasn’t a bad person.
“That doesn’t mean you should die,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for Tor. We need you at full strength. Airiel cannot do everything herself.”
Persepheus hadn’t said anything thus far, content to lounge nearby. She looked weak herself, but I could tell her silence was a choice not due to her weakened state. On that subject, her life meter was down to 8.
Airiel, on the other hand, was showing 846—the highest I’d ever seen. Which was good, because she would need a lot of that energy to start getting the Lri Ay to Tor, starting with their strongest warriors, those who’d fought and survived alongside me in the battle at the portal.
Minertha, still trying to be selfless, opened her mouth to argue again, but I cut her off. “I didn’t come here to ask for permission, only to inform you of our plans. Understood?”
Minertha snapped her mouth shut. Her jaw was tight. There was still some fight in her, which was good. But then she slumped back down and sighed. “Understood…Sam Ryder,” she said, sounding exhausted. Persepheus said nothing, just watching. It was the quietest she’d ever been. Airiel smiled at me, and I could see she agreed with my decision. I nodded at her and then exited through the back door.
I made my around the flanks of the cliff. To my surprise, a figure was walking toward me, looking hella strong under the glow of the Bronze time. It was Beat. “Hey, Ryder!” she called when we were fifty feet away. “I’m coming with you.”
I wasn’t surprised she would try this again. Even when I snuck off to try to take on the Morgoss on my own, she showed up and forced herself into the mission. In the end, I was glad she did because I might not have survived the experience without her by my side. But this was different now. We were different, and we each had our responsibilities. “Absolutely not,” I said. We were thirty feet away now.
“I guess I’ll have to arm wrestle you for it then,” she said. Twenty feet.
“You think you can beat a Demigod?” Ten feet.
“If I cheat. And I will cheat.”
We stood a few feet away from each other, staring each other down. “You are a Protector, you need to lead your—”
“Millania has already agreed to handle my Warriors. And Asfandiar said he would help out. After all, he may not have the title, but back in his time on Earth he was a fucking war commander.”
“Beatrice.”
“Low blow, Ryder. Low blow. Try saying that again and I’ll give you a low blow back.”
“I can take it. My gonads are like rock melons these days.”
“And my fists are the size of ham hocks. We’ll see who wins.”
“You’re going to follow me if I try to leave without you, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much. I know I don’t look that fast, but when I’m motivated…”
“I won’t fight you. But let the record state I don’t think you should come with us on this mission.”
“Noted and rejected. Should be fun. Like old times. Even Vrill said she’s coming.”
“What? She’s supposed to be going back for her people. She can’t leave it all to Eve.”
“She’s not. Eve’s coming with us too.”
For a second I thought I was having a very bad dream, one in which everyone decides to just ignore everything I say. Or worse yet, interpret everything I say the opposite of the way I intended it. But then I remembered I was surrounded by strong-willed women. “We need that army as soon as possible. They need to rest and then go back to Lri Ayem.”
“They believe we need Minertha’s heart more. I tend to agree with them. With her on the mend it will make the transporting process far more efficient.”
I agreed, which was why I’d decided to go on this mission in the first place. “And if our two Finders get killed in the process…”
“They won’t, Sam. If anyone will get killed, it will be me. I’m only a Level 3, remember. The rest of you are 4 or above.”
“Then you should stay home.” It was a last-ditch effort to persuade her against this course of action. A last-ditch effort that I knew was doomed to fail.
“No bueno,” she said. “I’m coming whether I die or not. Conversation over. Let’s talk about something else. Know any dirty jokes?”
While we walked back to camp and I mulled over the fact that Lace and I would have three more along for the mission, Beat told me her three dirtiest jokes. They were pretty effing funny, I had to admit.
By the time we reached camp, I had come to terms with the changed dynamic of the mission. Vrill and Eve, believe it or not, were talking to each other when we walked up. “Don’t try to change our minds,” Vrill said. Eve stared daggers in my direction.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “Though I’m starting to wish you too still hated each other.”
This broke the tension and both Vrill and Eve managed to crack a smile. “When do we leave?” Beat asked, clapping her hands together.
“Yesterday,” I said.
Vrill raised an eyebrow. “Sam, if you are proposing using our Finding abilities to travel back in time to the Silver time just so we can leave a day earlier, I think it is a waste of our precious energy.”
Beat snorted. “It’s just an expression. It means we need to leave as soon as possible.”
“Oh,” Vrill said, looking excited by the prospect of learning yet another Earth-ism. “In that case, yes, we should leave yesterday. I’ll get my things and prepare Mrizandr for travel.”
As she walked away, Beat whispered, “We’re not actually going to let her flying creature of fire and death take us to the mountains, are we?”
It was my turn to give her a hard time. “Of course we are—it’ll save us hours of walking. You said you wanted to come, or have you changed your mind?”
Beat looked slightly green, but she managed to firm up her chin. “Nope. Just clarifying things.”
~~~
When I looked back at her, Beat looked ready to toss her cookies, her face as pale as a full moon. Unfortunately, sitting right in front of her, I was the one in the blast zone. “Turn your head if you need to throw up,” I said.
“I’m good,” Beat said. She didn’t sound good.
Her arms were wrapped around me and she was squeezing far harder than necessary given the smoothness of the dragon’s flight. And yet it was better than during takeoff, when she’d clutched me so hard my ribs were now bruised.
Beat brought up the rear, while in front of me were Eve, Vrill and Lace—in that order. My hands were currently on Eve’s hips, a comfortable position for both of us by this point. Eve’s hands were on Vrill’s hips. Yeah, I’m not joking. Because of all that had transpired on Lri Ayem, and Vrill’s defense of Eve while she was on trial, something had changed between them. Like a light going on, or a key t
urning in a lock. Whatever was broken between them was slowly being repaired.
The thought made me smile. Until Beat wretched over the side of the dragon.
Mrizandr released a disgruntled screech and cut sharply to the left to avoid being splattered with undigested leafrat. Despite his efforts, the wind blasted a few chunks so hard they flew into the side of my face. Had I turned my head and opened my mouth I would’ve eaten them.
“Really, Beat?”
“Really,” she said miserably.
I felt bad for her. A little. But not a lot given I was now covered in her vomit.
“Humans,” Lace said from the front of the dragon. She managed to sum up our entire race with such an impressive level of contempt. And yet she couldn’t seem to resist us when it came to getting us in the sack. Oh, life’s little ironies could be interesting sometimes.
“Almost there,” I said, mostly for Beat’s benefit—to give her hope that this little joyride would be over soon.
“Pity,” she mumbled. And then threw up.
Again.
There was less back-splashing this time, the wind carrying the squalor well behind our path.
We’d only been flying for about fifteen minutes, but Mrizandr’s speed had already brought us into the shadow of the mountains. The Black was still a ways off, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t get inside the mountains as soon as possible. Getting caught in the open during the night wasn’t a risk you wanted to mess around with. Trust me, I’d been there.
Then again, I knew, the interior of the mountains held their own share of risks.
I started searching the terrain for landmarks. The last time I’d been here I was seeking a way through the mountains, whether via an outside pass or a tunnel. In the end, I’d found a cave that led to a tunnel network that was home to some nasty creatures. What I hadn’t counted on was locating Minertha’s stolen heart in the process. Well, ‘locate’ probably wasn’t the right word. I hadn’t actually seen it—only sensed it, a precious artifact that was hanging around my neck pulling toward the goddesses’ heart like metal to a powerful magnet.
