by Ryan Tang
All hell broke loose.
There was a blinding flash of light as All Range's Paragon spat an enormous gout of flame.
Her big brother smashed his machine right into the shuttle, sending the burning metal spinning through the air.
The Namer was thrown straight through the glass. There was an echoing crash as it shattered.
The Tall Tale dove and caught her body as she ran. Her Paragon's hands glowed with blue fire as her Familiar tormented the masked man's mind.
The Tall Tale snapped the Namer's limbs. The masked man writhed and screeched. The scream from behind the mask was long and flat.
"They did it! They did it!"
Her Intuition let out a long sigh of relief. It didn't want to lean forward.
But then the Namer whirled around with lightning speed. He stared right at The Tall Tale's cockpit.
The voice echoed loudly in Gallant's head.
"Can you believe these people?"
Her heart froze. The Namer was going to kill The Tall Tale. Nobody else could tell. They thought they'd won.
But Gallant knew.
"Me! Now! Me!"
There was no other choice.
Her Intuition leaned forward before anyone else could speak.
Gallant shrieked at the top of her lungs. The Paragons in the room dissolved at once. She caught her friends before they fell, but it was a narrow thing.
Her Intuition hooted with joy.
"More! More! More!"
Now it was the Sinsworn's turn to explode.
Adrienne shouted as loud as she could.
"I'll hold him in place! I'll hold him in place!"
The Namer tried to dodge, but there was nothing he could do, not with Adrienne locking him in place. Instead, his masked face whirled, and he stared right at her. The golden stars flared.
For one horrible moment, Gallant could feel a vicious pressure at the base of her neck. But then his armor exploded to pieces. The naked man crashed to the floor. There was something black writhing uncontrollably in his shoulder.
His voice in her head was just as clear as before.
"Wait. Don't kill me yet. You're going to want to hear this."
Gallant stared at his face and gasped.
He'd been aged by decades, and countless cuts married his face. The eyes were slightly lighter than they should have been, and he wore a beard.
But it was unmistakably Lonely's face staring back at her.
The naked man coughed.
"Well. Maybe I shouldn't be too surprised. I'd always known that you were bold. And I made you to be the perfect goddess, didn't I?"
He leaned forward. Even stranger than his face was hers. The face Gallant saw reflected in the man's exposed eyes wasn't her own.
____
The Namer chuckled. His broken bones regrew instantly. Before long, he could wave his hands around again.
"You've really caused a lot of trouble. Really a lot. But now you've awakened, and it's all worth it. I told them it was worth waiting. I told them the House battles were alright."
His words washed over her as she stared at her transformed appearance.
She looked like a jellyfish. She looked almost like Adrienne, but she could see the difference in the white and pink patterns. They weren't quite the same. She looked like she could have been Adrienne's sister.
The jellyfish Familiar rattled back and forth in the bulbous cage.
"Man. What happened?"
Her Intuition sounded very worried.
"Uh oh. Uh oh. I knew we needed to be our strongest to beat him. I knew it. But I think...I think I leaned forward too much. Uh oh. Uh oh."
The strange pink and white jelly now covered her entire body. Her legs had somehow split to countless tendrils, just like the tassels of her machine. She wasn't even standing on the ground. She was floating high in the air, higher than she'd ever been before. Her hands stretched out, bright pink like before. Her hair had fused into a single piece, and her eyes were black as night.
The older Lonely smiled.
"Aren't you going to say anything? Thank you, maybe? I let you cause all this trouble, just for this. Do you know how mad the other Namers got when I said we should let this House battle nonsense rage on? But like I said, you can never get in trouble."
The real Lonely stumbled to his feet.
"What's going on? What?"
The Namer whirled, all kindness gone from his voice.
"Shut up. Get back down. Move and I kill you! You should be dead by now. You're just a spare part, just the refuse of our experiment."
Gallant stared.
What was he saying?
Adrienne hissed.
"How dare he talk to him like that?"
Gallant and her Intuition nodded.
"Yeah. That's right. It doesn't matter what he's saying. Nobody talks to Lonely like that."
The Namer turned back toward her and laughed. He was just about to speak when All Range stirred in the corner. He shouted again, and this time he didn't even bother turning around.
"You too! In the corner! There's no sneaking up on me! Try and you die!"
All Range froze. Her Familiar had coiled back to strike.
Gallant shouted. The anger made her head pound. Even though she'd turned into a jelly, it felt like she was still a human. She could have sworn the skin on her face was heating, but she didn't have skin anymore.
"Hurt them, and I'll kill you!"
The Namer chuckled indulgently.
"I guess I can leave the spare. And the girl who shouldn't be here. If it weren't for you I would have killed them without a warning. But are you really going to kill your father? The man who spent five years making you? The person who planned everything for you?"
Gallant stared. Icy cold hands gripped her stomach. Her heart pounded oddly in her chest. This had to be some trick. You weren't supposed to meet your father. Your father wasn't supposed to be some jerk.
By then, Lonely had stumbled back to his feet. He grabbed some spare Eternium from the ground as he sprinted forward. He held it awkwardly in his remaining arm. He wasn't used to using his left hand.
"He's lying! He's a mimic!"
That made sense. A mimic. Her brother always knew what to think when something weird happened. He'd told her about that before. There were about five or six Lords who could transform to resemble others. This person had just morphed into their father. Their father wouldn't be a Namer.
The Namer laughed and pulled at his belt.
"If I was lying, would I have this?"
He flicked a picture at Gallant, and she grabbed it with one of her strange leg tendrils. It was an effortless catch.
Even though she'd somehow turned into this strange creature, she could move the tendrils just like they were her own body parts. Her Intuition was there to help her.
It was a picture of a baby Lonely hugging a jellyfish in a flexible tank. The jellyfish was pink and white. It looked a lot like Adrienne, but the patterns were slightly different. They were the same as ones on her body right now.
The Namer laughed.
"Do you get it now? Do you get how far I've gone for this? What I had to do to give you your power? You could have killed me if you wanted to! The first Lord to defeat a Namer! To be honest, for a moment, I was scared that you would just kill me anyway, but I made sure you had compassion. I made sure you had a useless brother to pity."
Lonely tried to speak, but the Namer just told him to shut up again.
"Quiet! You're just the spare part. You're just the boy I needed to take the Familiar from, nothing more."
It made Gallant so mad she almost killed him then and there.
Adrienne burbled.
"Wait. Can he even kill without his mask?"
The Namer turned and stared.
"Hey. Other spare part. You were just there so people would think she was normal. You stop talking too."
Adrienne flared in her tank, her surprise and anger all mixed t
ogether.
"He can hear me?"
The man laughed.
"Yes. I can hear you. And it's not about the mask. It's not even about the Names."
He pushed himself back up using his elbows and pointed at the black lump growing in his arm. When he did, it flared apart. Tendrils spread out all around it. The lump was his Familiar. It was a jellyfish, just like Adrienne. The jet black thing had fused directly with his arm.
"That's just something we say to distract people. The real power of the Namers is that we've joined with our Familiars. It's the power we once had on Old Earth. But the bond is imperfect. And now Gallant, you've joined with them directly - just like the Halfgod. You have a strength nobody can match."
The Namer's smile grew wider and wider.
"You have everything! Everything you need to be a goddess. I gave you your brother's Familiar. It's granted you strength and the ability to command a state of Eternium nobody has ever commanded before. I made sure that you had to protect him, the weak boy who had nothing to his name. That gave you skill in battle and compassion for the weak."
Every word made the three of them angrier and angrier, but it seemed like he couldn't tell.
Adrienne howled with rage.
"Kill him! Kill him!"
Her Intuition seemed shellshocked.
"What is he saying? I was wrong. He's just a fake friend. He's worse than all of them."
"Look outside. It'll only take a second, and then you can remove that Bringer that's been causing us so much trouble. You have the power to do anything you want. Look at those Sinsworn. You can command them all."
The words fell out of her mouth as she desperately tried to make sense of what was happening.
"For the Conquest? Did you do this for the Conquest?"
People were always doing crazy things for the Conquest. The Namer mentioning Bringer reminded her. According to her big brother, Bringer was crazy about the Conquest too.
The Namer laughed.
"No. What good is the Conquest when you can already rule as a god? As the first of the next generation of Namers. As my heir."
By then, he'd fought back to his feet. He took her into his arms.
"Your friend. The woman and her baby. The spare. You can have them all if you want. You can do anything once you're a Namer. Bring them with you. Rule the entire Constellation. This is my master plan. You will become a goddess."
Gallant laughed. This person might have been her father, but he didn't know her at all. Everything he said disgusted her.
"No thanks. The Constellation sucks. And my brother's plans are the best. I don't need yours.
Her Intuition leaned forward, and the Eternium slashed through the air. The Namer let out a cry of surprise. The pitch-black jellyfish in his arm twisted and turned. The pieces halted before they skewered him.
The Namer snarled.
Once again, the pressure built in the back of her head, just like before. He might have said he was her father, but he had no qualms about killing her. Her Intuition screamed.
"I'll hold him off! I'm holding him off!"
Adrienne howled too, but there was little she could do. She'd managed to surprise the Namer before, but this time the Namer barely slowed. Just like the Namer said, it must have given him some deeper power. She fell to her knees, the pressure building and building. The world faded and fuzzed, and soon she couldn't concentrate.
"I guess you were just a spare too."
His voice was clear in her head.
"I'll have to be more involved next time, I guess. I was hoping living with your brother would teach you compassion, but it just made you too attached. I –"
He cut off abruptly and grabbed at his neck. The pressure faded, and Gallant could see straight again. Lonely was standing by his side, stabbing and stabbing at him.
The Namer whirled around and caught her brother's blade. Somehow, the Eternium hadn't even pierced his skin. He laughed.
"What do you think you can do? Nobody cheats the Namers."
But the brief moment was all that Gallant needed.
Her Intuition leaned forward.
"Again? More?"
"Yeah. All."
She raised her strange pink and white arms, the arms the Namer had given her so she could fight alongside her big brother. The Eternium streaked through the room, and this time it found its mark.
The Namer crashed to the ground and died. The shards had cut him into a thousand pieces.
EPILOGUE
"Big Bro. This sucks. This really sucks. Nothing can suck more than this."
He laughed.
"You always push yourself too hard enough."
After she'd killed the Namer, his little sister crashed to the floor. It seemed like all of her bones had been turned into mush. He had to carry her slumped over his remaining arm. He supposed that his Familiar - what Gallant had thought was her Intuition - was keeping her alive. Based on how long her hand had taken to heal, he'd be carrying her around for a while.
He shook his head as he laughed.
"A voice in her head."
He'd really thought his stupid sister was bragging about thinking. He still had a lot to think about what the Namer, the man who'd claimed to be his father, had said. He'd grown up a Freak without a Familiar, and now he knew why.
Then he shook his head and pushed the thought aside. They had friends now who didn't care about whether or not he had a Familiar. He wasn't a Freak anymore.
Soon they'd be far away from the Constellation.
"Hey. Carry me more gently."
"I thought you said you couldn't feel anything."
"Yeah, but I can tell you're not carrying me gently."
"Why is your mouth the only thing that works?"
They climbed into the shuttle together. Their new friends stepped behind them. All Range came first, cooing with her snake. The Tall Tale helped her sister into the shuttle. The sisters beamed from ear to ear as they played with Reader's son. None of them knew what to do. No Lord had ever raised a child since the Namers began ruling the Constellation. But they wouldn't have had it any other way.
The black Namer's shuttle launched into the black night of space, soaring past the mass of Paragons.
Nobody suspected their escape. Nobody approached them. They were flying in a Namer's shuttle, and nobody wanted to approach the Namers.
The Surgeon would find out eventually, but there was nothing she could do, not once they built their new Castlecraft. They were free now, free from the Constellation and free from the Namers.
Just before they left, they heard the Singer once again demanding the Surgeon's surrender.
Gallant laughed.
"How long do you think they're going to stay there?"
"Who cares?"
"Hey Big Bro, what are we going to do?"
"I thought you said we were going to fix Brightwalls. Didn't you say you could do that?"
She rolled her eye, and Lonely laughed. It seemed like her most annoying body parts were recovering first.
"I know, I meant after that. Where are we going? Where do you want to build the new Brightwalls?"
Gallant had said that she could gather the Eternium dust in space. The leftovers that were scraped off after every battle. It was the sort of ridiculous thing only his little sister could do. She said she'd keep gathering the dust as they flew. She'd build a new Brightwalls, far away from the Namers' eyes.
"Anywhere we want. We're the freest and greatest!"
CREDITS
If you enjoyed this book, you are sure to enjoy the first two installments of the Science and Sorcery series. Millions of miles away from Lonely and Gallant's struggles, Alex the librarian strives with her friends and neighbors to overthrow tyrants and build a better world.
STRENGTH OF A THOUSAND - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086DCSYQL/
TO BE AN ACE - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086L7H746
In addition, visit my Twitter page (https://twitter.com/ryantang203) or F
acebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ryantang203/) to sign up for my newsletter and get the prequel novella, THE DOUBLE LAST STAND, for free! Subscribe to receive updates on Lonely and Gallant's upcoming arrival on the space colonies in the fourth book of this series.
Cover Art by Vincent Lefevre (ptitvinc.com)
Part 1 Art by Theotime Galmiche (https://www.artstation.com/theogm)
Part 2 Art by Julio Bencid (@julbenart on Instagram)
For more amazing artwork, please check out the following artists, who are featured in other installments of my work.
Mikaela Keung (mikaelakeung.wixsite.com/website)
Peter Balogh (deviantart.com/peterprime)
Aedel Fakhrie (@KontrolAltDelt on Instagram)
Taira (@taira.san.no.atowaku on Instagram)
Benedick Bana (@banabenedick on Instagram)
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GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Aspect – A personality trait of a Noble that establishes a link between them and their Familiar. The Aspect is defined based on the sinful god who birthed the companion.
Castlecraft –An elegant showpiece that emphasized the Aspect, Familiar, and individual traits of its Nobles. Nobles live in their Castlecraft.
Eternium – Sacred metal that is used to make a Paragon. Raw Eternium is black, but it changes colors depending on the individual controlling it. Eternium can be shaped into anything the individual desires as long as they have the willpower and imagination.
Familiar – A Noble's partner given to them at birth. Familiars are creatures who can enhance an individual's powers and have powers of their own. When fighting together with their Familiar, a Noble can push their Paragons to the Liquid State, a status that grants greatly increased speed and power.
Finisher – A Noble's most powerful attack, consisting of the dual strength of the Noble piloting the Paragon and his or her Familiar.
House – A family unit formed by siblings after they turn thirteen, which is when individuals become of age and graduate from the Nursery.
