by F. R. Brooks
James’s grip loosened. With a sigh, he then released Liam’s fist.
Finally, James softly answered, “…without Chrysid or Exaltation, Libelle’s going to be in one hell of a state. I’ll need all the help I can get to set things straight. That’s why you need to stay alive, too. I’m not out here to make enemies, Liam.”
An uncomfortable feeling swirled within Liam.
One he couldn’t put a name to.
“Besides,” James added with a charming smile, “I think we both know that you’re the other half of our brain. We need to get through this together. Don’t let that anxiety of yours get between us, alright? If I can’t think of something, I know that you could… you’re a better diplomat than me.”
“Alright,” Liam conceded. He eased his grip around the orb until James drew it from his hand.
James placed the orb in the statue.
Liam swallowed thickly through the anxiety as the last symbol lit up, high on the wall across the room. The sound of machinery whirred to life and just above the entrance to the centermost corridor, the wall shifted. A heavy panel slid aside to reveal another path—one that would be a pain in the ass to reach if they didn’t have an element that could get them up there.
James summoned a mountain of ice and cleared their path.
Just ahead lay the glassy doors to another lift. Thick windows along the walls looked out upon the cloud sea.
The crimson sunset before had long since melted beneath the horizon. Stars glittered in the darkness above the storm clouds. The Spire of the Chevalier sat at the literal edge of their realm.
Liam’s stomach sank as they stepped inside. A glass floor revealed a long, seemingly bottomless elevator shaft below. He took a breath and tore his gaze away. Within his gloves, his knuckles blanched at how tightly he gripped the railings. The doors closed behind them and soft piano music filtered in, just as in the previous lift.
At the heart of the sky, the cascading lucidium halo rippled and shimmered over the horizon, brightened by the light of a silver full moon.
* * *
The most powerful exalt in Libelle. After defeating all eight Pillars, an exalt is able to challenge the champion who holds the title of Chevalier in an officiated, deathmatch-clause battle. The winner of this battle inherits the title of Chevalier and assumes the responsibilities and roles that come with the position.
“Liam,” Nym said, “I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“What happens if you and James both beat the Chevalier? Would that mean there would be two Chevaliers?”
“I don’t know. There’s never been a situation in Libelle where two combatants survived a battle against a Chevalier. My understanding is that the one who deals the deathblow gets the title.”
Nym hummed. “I’m curious. I’ll have to dig into this a little further.”
“I don’t know if it even really matters. If I got the title, I’d probably just give it to James.”
“What? Don’t you want to be Chevalier?”
“No.”
* * *
14 | Electric Butterflies
The elevator doors opened to a beautiful garden with domed, glass panes overhead. The peak of the spire gave a grand view of the night sky beyond the lucidium halo’s shimmering aurora.
All around them floated pale, cyan embers, all flickering like little sparks. Wisps of manipulated electricity, twisting in ways no normal arc of lightning could ever bend. The wisps floated and tangled like electric threads until they formed ghostly butterflies.
They climbed an illuminated set of stairs onto the rooftop conservatory. A sublevel beneath the glass floor housed a shallow stream beneath the garden. Light refracted through rippling water cast soft, ambient light across dewy petals and emerald leaves.
As another flashing butterfly wisped past his visor, a memory long buried away welled to the surface.
His mother often read poems to him as a child on gray, rainy afternoons. For a fraction of a moment, Liam was a child again, leaning against the rain-dappled windows overlooking Euclid’s bustling business district. A scheduled, spring thunderstorm rolled through the city.
The business district… I went to my mother’s office with her on a day home from school. She read poetry to me on her break…
A certain line of that poem always stuck out to him and returned to his mind in that moment:
“Illuminate the sky, herald dragonfly, as electric butterflies flutter by.”
Liam hadn’t heard that poem nor his mother’s voice in over ten years. For a moment, he was crushed by the weight of that memory. The weight eased as the memory drifted a little further away with every step he climbed. Soon, it was lost at sea again, carried away to some corner of his memory he’d never sail through again.
At the top of the stairs, the garden opened to a wide battleground surrounded by small trees, vines, and flowers with bioluminescent petals. Beyond those plants and across a vast, chessboard-patterned floor stood a female exalt in a white and gold suit.
The most powerful exalt in Libelle—the Chevalier, Serena Lucienne.
She watched them approach with calm on her features. She held her helmet at her side, balanced against one hip. Hair bleached ashen blonde framed her face and delicate features. Her dark eyes carried an air of indifference toward the two of them.
“You’re the first visitors I’ve had in four years,” Serena spoke. Her voice was just as regal as Liam remembered. Low, velvety, powerful. Serena Lucienne may have been a woman of petite build and stature, but her speed, skill, and kill count were testaments to her ferocity.
“I’ve been watching the two of you for a while, now. Caught my attention when I heard about the two prodigy students of Jove Darner. Odonata Team 5 of Euclid… my old home.”
A wistful smile crossed her features as her gaze flit downward.
“…is the old conservatory still there? Over by the museum?”
James looked too dumbfounded to respond. Perhaps her venture into such casual conversation had insulted him on some level.
“It’s still there,” Liam said.
“That’s good to hear. I miss it terribly. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to challenge Jove Darner as well. It would have been an amazing battle. I had always wanted a match with him before I became Chevalier. Our paths simply never crossed.”
I feel like I’ve had this conversation with you before.
Just like last time, I said…
“He’s around.”
Serena smiled softly. “Yes. I think so, too.”
James, however, evidently had enough of the small talk.
“You know why he’s not here?” James spoke with bitterness in his voice.
The Chevalier said nothing as she fixed her cold, dark gaze on James.
“Answer me,” James demanded. “Tell me you know what Chrysid did to him.”
She drew a long breath and leaned her head to one side. For a moment, Liam thought that she might speak and give answers to all the many questions that their last days with Jove had left them with.
What answer would you want to hear from her?
“Kai Odonata wanted this world to be protected only by the most powerful exalts. We owe him everything,” Serena said.
James moved to storm forward before Liam extended one hand to stop him. James huffed.
“Don’t give us that scripted bullshit! You’re the Chevalier, you’re supposed to protect humanity. What Chrysid’s really got going on out there—outside of this pretty little biodome—it’s a crime against humanity and you know it. By doing nothing, you’re complicit with it. How many other realms has Chrysid cannibalized for lucidium? What did they do to deserve that?”
For a moment, Liam thought he glimpsed the subtle knitting of her brow.
“The only thing a predecessor can ask of their successor is to be better.”
“That’s bullshit! You could end Chrysid, but you choose not to. Is it not
worth giving up your pretty little tower? Huh?”
“If you want to know the truth so badly… rise up to it. Look it in the eyes. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like what you see, though.”
“Whatever.” James gave up trying to get through to her. “There’s two of us. We fight together. If you want support exalts to even the odds, call them in now.”
The Chevalier stared at them, her gaze shifting from one twin to the other as her expression dissolved into something calm and stoic.
“I wouldn’t recommend that.”
James’s nose scrunched up, “…why the hell not?”
“Becoming Chevalier… changes things.” Serena pulled her helmet on and tightened the fastenings at the base. “If you have any care for your brother’s safety at all, I recommend that you take this battle as one-on-one only. It will be the last for some of us. The only people on this battleground should be the ones who want Chevalier badly enough to die for it.”
James shook his head and answered, “I already told you… we come a set. Call your support or not.”
Fastening the final clasp, the lights within Serena’s helmet flickered to life. Over the comms in their own helmets, her voice came with a haunting and melodic hum in their ears.
“This is your final warning. Remember that this is for good.”
Liam’s UI lit up with the standard message which signaled the beginning of an officiated match. A challenge request to be accepted, accompanied by a minimal glimpse of the Chevalier’s stats.
Deathmatch clause.
The exalt who deals the killing blow to the last opponent on the battlefield inherits the title of Chevalier.
James accepted the battle clauses and took his first steps into the battleground. He didn’t even return Liam’s wary glance. James clearly wanted nothing more than to fight. As James made his way toward the Chevalier, he conjured a spear of ice.
Liam, meanwhile, felt a chill shoot across his neck.
A voice he could not identify whispered within his helmet.
“Time is passing so much faster than you realize.”
James’s name in the party list didn’t light up with that transmission. It couldn’t have possibly been Serena. Maybe there was a glitch in his comms display.
Had James even heard that?
The tiny map of the battleground in his UI displayed only three marks representing himself, James, and the Chevalier.
However, Liam could not shake the heavy sensation that there was someone else there with them.
15 | Frigid Garden
An avalanche of ice and sleet painted the garden. Snow buried black and white tiles and mixed with the slurry of ice runoff. Three exalts clashed in the dappled shadows of a tranquil garden.
Flashes of electricity followed the swift movements of the lithe Chevalier. She was every bit as difficult to land a hit on as they had heard. Lucienne moved like all electric exalts—fast and graceful, as if dancing to a rhythm heard only to them.
Liam conjured silver pillars throughout the room and each arc of lightning that burst from the Chevalier’s punches and kicks diverted toward them. Liam kept his distance and rebuilt each lightning rod as the Chevalier’s blasts chipped away at their lucidium structure.
Another cascade of sleet and ice rose around them James and Lucienne. The Chevalier’s lightning had little effect against barriers of ice—James had the advantage of both brute strength and elemental resistance. Getting hits in through her agile motions, however, proved Lucienne’s advantage of sheer grace and speed.
The Chevalier dodged James’s heavy fists and kicked off the surface of a pillar to tackle him. Her thighs closed tight around James’s neck and her hands locked beneath his chin. Through the most vulnerable point of an exalt’s helmet, Lucienne sent currents of devastating voltage into his suit.
James’s armor integrity plummeted, and his body seized as if he’d taken a taser to bare skin. When his armor integrity reached zero, nothing would mitigate or dilute the charge. The shock of a taser would become a strike of lightning directly into his body.
“Fuck!” James snarled and thrashed against her to wrestle free.
James’s attempt to re-freeze the runoff was too little too late. Charged water boiled and burst under the voltage. The nearest icy stalagmites burst into glassy shards, one by one. James seized on the flooded floor as the Chevalier made a graceful leap from his shoulders.
Liam attempted to block her path with metal barriers and pillars, all of which she dodged with ease. Her light steps scarcely rippled the puddles beneath her as she bolted toward him. Another pair of silver pillars shot up between them as Liam worked to mitigate an onslaught of bolts.
Sparks and embers rained around them, mingled with splashes of melting frost and shattered ice. The Chevalier sidestepped another pillar with a weightless somersault and followed the motion with a sweeping kick. Electricity tore through Liam’s suit upon contact. Pain surged and burned through his nerves.
Ice crashed across the battlefield and slammed into the side of the Chevalier. In the wake of the ice, James lunged at the Chevalier. A crystalline wall divided the battleground and foiled Liam’s effort to follow his brother into the fray.
Through the glassy, cerulean haze of ice, Liam could only watch their silhouettes kicking and punching through flashes of lightning.
“Damn it!” Liam hissed, attempting to break through the ice.
Another burst of light sent spidering cracks across the ice wall. The cracks deepened and spread when James’s back suddenly crashed into the other side.
“James! I can’t get over there!”
“It’s fine, I-I’m good—” James weakly answered over the comms.
His silhouette slumped and then disappeared again as the Chevalier lunged at him in a storm of flashing light.
As James and the Chevalier clashed, Liam glimpsed a shadow at the edge of the battlefield.
When he turned, however, the figure was gone.
What the hell…?
“Nym, is someone else here?”
When no response came, Liam tried again, “Nym?”
Scrambled audio vaguely resembling the AI’s voice answered. His system didn’t appear glitched in any way—but his own look at the area map showed no signs of a fourth body on the battlefield. Liam could have sworn that he saw someone standing there, observing from the outskirts of the conservatory.
Lightning flashed and across the countless faces of ice around them. James overtook the battleground and appeared to gain a steady upper hand against the Chevalier. He created a small prison of ice around the Chevalier to keep her from dodging his blows—it hardly stopped her, however. She kicked and climbed over each splintering crystal, unfazed by the shifting ice maze.
When the Chevalier burst free of James’s efforts to contain her, she descended upon him. The charged blasts which came with every kick were a deterrent from simply grabbing her ankle and throwing her off balance.
After training with Jove, Liam knew firsthand how deadly physical contact was against an electric exalt in a supercharged state. They would have to rely on striking her down with their elements from a distance if they had any hope of survival.
Each of James’s attempts to impale her with jagged ice spikes missed. The Chevalier dodged three more kicks and blows before she landed a flashing cartwheel kick to his head. A bolt sparked upon impact and left James seizing the ground.
His SAI sat at a critical 17% by the time Liam broke through to their side of the battleground. He summoned several metal spears and launched them at the Chevalier.
The Chevalier turned to the oncoming spears and with one outstretched hand, a white-hot flash bolted between the spears and the lightning rods.
Liam watched in disbelief the spears slowed in mid-air and lit up with the heat of her charge. For a moment, he thought he glimpsed the same surprise in the Chevalier’s eyes. Confusion, perhaps, followed by visible effort to keep pumping electricity into the growing mag
netic space between them.
An electromagnetic field…
The next thing he knew, the Chevalier reversed her pull and the spears thrust back in his direction. The first spear hit him sideways and slammed his body against the charged pillar behind him. Painful bolts ripped through his suit and pain burned at his nerves. His SAI percentage tanked as the Chevalier trapped him between the electrified lightning rod and the stray metal spear.
Lucienne roared as she unleashed another storm through the battlefield.
His defenses fell below 10% and then 5% as the pain doubled with every tick closer to zero. Liam knew only agony as the final spear pierced him through his solar plexus and pinned him to the pillar. The vibration of her surge followed, carried through the spear. His suit had only a split-second of warning chimes and glitched screens before it went dark and silent.
Liam faded in and out of vibrating, buzzing consciousness as pain lulled him back into the world of the living. His numb muscles ached with a kind of fatigue he’d never known. It felt as if every atom in his body had been shredded and melted back together again. A coppery scent stung his nostrils. Smoke, charred meat, burning hair, and the acrid stench of overheated metal.
Each labored breath came with a new wave of agony. Had he the strength to cough, he may have choked on the blood trickling from his nostrils and past his lips.
Soft footsteps crossing a flooded floor were all he could hear over his own bloody wheezing.
A burst of lucidium illuminated the frigid garden. Exhaust from the converter on the Chevalier’s back signaled his fate. She was going to finish him with an aetherbreak.
Radiant wings broke free of the Chevalier’s silhouette as she raised her hands above her head to form a sphere of light.
Liam watched in the dizzy stupor of blood loss. The Chevalier’s aetherbreak was as beautiful as it was blinding.
