But he didn’t say anything! God, who am I to judge? I didn’t tell him about Gloria either. I wanted it to be a surprise, to be the stepping-stone towards discussing our future, sharing our feelings.
It’s none of this! I’ve been a fool, and now it’s too late to say anything, for he already made his own plans, he already made commitments. And so did I, and none of these plans matches with Peter’s.
We talk for a few more minutes congratulating each other with empty phrases. We are already two strangers, two college acquaintances each with their own path in life.
I go back to my cramped room, barely holding my tears. I stop in front of the mirror and stare for a long time. I stare at the tall and beautiful stranger with dark blue eyes and golden hair. Peter’s love match, the girl of his dreams.
“I lost him, fairy tale girl. I didn’t dare to talk with him sooner, and I lost him. Swear you’ll never do this, fairy tale girl. Swear you won’t repeat my mistakes.”
I’m here, in the simple college room and I’m on the other side of the mirror too. I’m in both places at once, two sides of a whole, so close and at the same time universes apart. I raise my hand and touch the mirror of my soul. On the other side, the imaginary girl does the same. Our fingers brush against each other, and we become one.
I’m Elizabeth Ashar Sen’Dorien, but I’m also Liz, the girl with the bright soul and tears in her eyes. For the first time I embrace her, and in doing so, I become a different person. Haillar and human, firebrand and queen.
Reality shifts.
“A pity indeed, as I used to like you as a person … Good-night, Ashar, it’s time to let this weak human avatar go to sleep,” whispers the snake.
“My avatar is not weak!”
Far from weak, for the first time in this life, I feel complete. I feel the eka power at my fingertips, accessible, begging to be used. I feel love, hate, passion and sorrow, a tidal wave that shattered the dam and fills my very soul with a maelstrom of emotions of an intensity I never experienced in a thousand lifetimes.
I feed a sliver of Life and remove the lingering effects of the poison.
I straighten myself and rise proud and defiant, ready for anything the Scourge and their minions may throw against me. I only need a fraction of a second to project three controlled blasts of Chaos towards the three remaining Scourge. They are the immediate danger. Without his tap Tairen is just an annoyance I’ll deal with later, after I’ll squeeze him of every detail concerning his plot.
One of my beams completely pulverises the verlan sneaking behind Oriel, catching him in the back. Another misses Garvald entirely and hits the wall, drilling a hole all the way through three feet of stone. Faun won’t appreciate me ruining her palace, but she’ll live with it. After all, she has only herself to blame for all this mess.
My final beam hits Hagan’s shield point-blank and fails to penetrate his defence. For the first time since arriving on Bellona, the foppish lord drops his pretence and fixes me with a predatory glance. Gone is the boredom in his eyes, the indifferent smile.
“Garvald, stop playing with that midget and prepare to move back!”
“As you wish, my lord!”
Hearing the call, Tairen moves next to the Scourge, as if his ally can protect him against my wrath. I send blast after blast of Chaos into the warlord’s shield, which somehow holds despite my onslaught. Whatever defence he has is far superior to anything I’ve ever encountered. Furthermore, Hagan struggles to close the distance separating us, and I’ve no illusions he has one or two surprises in store for me, should he manage to come within striking distance.
I don’t dare to pour more Chaos and make my attacks stronger, or else I’ll completely destroy Faun’s home. Time to change the approach.
I draw Order and suddenly alter the nature of my blasts. The enemy shield deflects my first attacks but flickers and starts to overload. I expect it would collapse in a matter of seconds. Was it a defence specifically tuned to Chaos?
One of my repelled blasts almost hits Garvald, throwing him out of balance and leaving him open for a fraction of a second. Oriel has always been an exquisite swordswoman, and this tiny opening is all she needs. Her blade flows behind the warlord guard and buries itself in his side.
Alone against two enraged queens, Hagan waves his hand in another impossible show of speed, opening a gate to the landing pad where his kreussa crewed ship waits. He steps through before his shield collapses entirely and is followed one moment later by Tairen, who’s almost cut in half by the receding portal.
The rift shuts down. But another gate to the same location opens instantly next to it.
“Go, go, go!” cries Oriel. “Finish the bastards, while I’ll take care of my sister.”
With no time to waste, I cross the gate and find myself at the receiving end of Hagan’s trident weapon. I manage to shift, by luck more than skill, and the blade carves out a chunk of my shoulder, rather than splitting my throat open.
The Scourge moves back and deftly avoids a lance of Chaos. The bastard is fast, much too fast for my human reflexes. But his shield is fried, and he can’t run forever.
I see the moment Hagan realises that all is lost, that he stands no chance to take me out with an unexpected strike. But rather than terror, he smiles a broad smile, the Scourge trademark smile that often precedes their worst atrocities.
Kaboom!
Above us, the entire top side of the Spirit palace jerks as if hit by an axe. Huge chunks of rock split and tumble in slow motion, falling into the city below.
Both halves of myself have the same instant reaction: protect the innocents. Protect Christine and Peter. My reflexes take charge, and I throw clouds of Chaos in the path of the falling debris. Multi-tonne boulders are swallowed by eka and turned into subatomic particles. Cascades of energy are generated in the process and need to be ported safely away.
Further up, at the top of the tower, new explosions are methodically dismantling Faun’s fortress. Nothing could have survived above the battlements, not even the queens. Both Faun and Oriel were most likely taken out in the initial blast, or else I would have sensed their eka next to mine, trying to protect the city. They will be reborn back on Diessa, though meanwhile their House would be left in disarray. But hundreds of adepts are dead, and none of them will resurrect to live again.
I couldn’t keep my promise to Almerean. I told him he’d be safe, that both my house and Diessa would stand by him. We did, but to no avail, as we didn’t see this coming and he paid for our mistake with his life.
“Incene!” sounds a desperate cry.
I can barely spare a moment to look backwards. The kreussa ship is gone, having taken advantage of the chaos to take off and disappear into the sky. A single silhouette is left behind, huddled on his knees, watching the disaster with empty eyes.
“Incene,” whispers Tairen.
Above us, the last remains of the Spirit Palace dissipate against my shield. Down below thousands are watching the skies in fear and awe. My last eka strands are channelling the excess energies in space. I lost focus for a moment, and a few of them are drifting out of control.
I take charge of my eka, pushing the remaining energy away while at the same time diverting one of the wayward strands towards the rogue Spirit adept. Tairen is too far gone to even see it coming.
***
By the time I have everything under control on Merdun, the kreussa ship is already out of our system. I ask the fleet to track her signature in hyperspace and be ready if they emerge in the Dominion space, but I much doubt that would be the case.
Later on, Tao Bellona Defence contacts me to let me know that I had a message. It was sent as a tight beam from an empty location at the edge of the system and received hours later by the platforms orbiting our core world.
It was from Hagan.
“Impressive, Chaos Wielder. No less than I expected from the Enemy of my people. Your kind was blessed by luck today but beware, luck never lasts forever. I m
ust concede this round to you and ask for a rematch at a time of my choosing. I choose to meet you under the eyes of Shemesh in one hundred days. Beware, for I’ll bring forth the entire Xandor’s might. I’ve no doubt you have all incentives to be there, too.”
CHAPTER 28 (ELIZABETH)
“We are at your disposal, Lady of Chaos!”
The squad leader watches me warily, but he’s aware none of the Sen’Diessa queens has survived and by default authority passed to any other queen that happened to be on site. That would be me, and the fact that a few hours ago his standing orders were to escort me to the nearest gate in case I’ve shown my face on Merdun must confuse him to no end.
I don’t think many people understood what actually happened this evening, other than the fact that the top third of the Spirit Palace is gone, and most of the Spirit upper echelons with it. And that I was involved somehow, since the Chaos shields eating the falling debris were hard to miss.
“Gather as many guards you can find and follow me to the Palace. There must be people alive trapped in the wreckage.”
We dig through the ruins for half of the night, not just the Spirit guard and I, but hundreds if not thousands of Sen’Haillar from the city below, who came by themselves to help the Palace survivors. Hundreds of mangled corpses are carried away for the last rites, hundreds more are treated in the makeshift healing tents. I don’t recognise any of them since most of my acquaintances were high ranking adepts, no doubt vaporised with the upper levels of the spire. Most of the people we are digging were servants and clerks, gardeners and tailors, elders and children, as well as occasional household guards caught in the blast.
I send my awareness forward, searching the ruins before vaporising chunks of the debris with eka . My Chaos is not a precision tool, but rather what Liz would call a demolition charge, so I need to be careful. Liz, her presence, her memories. I’m still trying to figure out what happened, how we came to be one. Incene, the rogue Seer, was wrong because there is so much more of the human than merely a ghost. Thank the Flame she was wrong, or else I wouldn’t have survived today except maybe as a puppet, the way the original Maurien Sen’Diessa has been around for cycles. I just realise I’ve never known the man, for he was gone before I came to meet Maurien, and my close Diessa friend was always a fraud, a mask.
“Did we figure out what happened? Where did these blasts come from?” I ask.
“From what we can tell, small but very powerful charges spread all over the palace. Most must have been stored in the Scourge’s quarters, but we found the sites of occasional explosions in the servants’ wing, mainly next to the kitchens. For Flame sake, we even had a couple of blasts in the cellars.”
The wondering verlan, running all over the place to indulge their masters. I didn’t pay much attention to them as they were always under escort, but either the Spirit guards were insanely complacent, or Tairen corruption went deeper than I believed, and his circle of rogue adepts included some of the household troops. That was a sobering thought, meaning that even after all this death and destruction some traitors may still be around, though now disorganised and leaderless.
A few hours before dawn, I track Christine’s comm crystal and port into the warehouse downtown, the place everything started. Tired and filthy I must be quite a look, my hair dishevelled, my eyes crazy with eka fatigue.
The humans are asleep, and a casual glance tells me Peter is fine, though heavily dosed with drugs. Likely Charles doing, as no Life adept would resort to artificial substances to soothe someone in pain.
My eyes fall on a still form on his knees, next to a figure laying down. Randig, holding his daughter’s hand and staring emptily into the distance. I don’t dare to interrupt his wake. I wouldn’t know what to say in any event, for what can I say to a father losing his child? That she, together with a bunch of alien civilians, are the reason two hundred million people are still alive in the Bellona system. That without her sacrifice, the Dominion might have died today. Would a father care our confederation survived if his daughter is no more? Does the praise of an almost immortal queen have any meaning, when your child didn’t live to be twenty?
I swallow a knot in my throat and my eyes are flooded with tears. This is a human thing, for Haillar don’t cry. My very first tears, my farewell for Lazurien, the girl who died saving a world.
I can’t sleep, so I make my way through the dilapidated warehouse and open the entrance door into the night. A figure moves to meet me. Etora Sen’Dorien, Randig’s number two and my vassal.
“I didn’t expect to see you, my queen. I knew you’re alive, for I checked as soon as we learned of the palace disaster. We returned at midnight and I could feel your work from the other side of the Spirit Quarters.”
“How did you know to come here?”
“The humans contacted us as soon as the jamming stopped, moments after the palace blast. We came as soon as we could, but it was of course too late. Poor Lazurien, she was so proud of being one of us, so proud of her training. From the very night of her consecration, her goal was to meet the Queen of Dreams someday and impress the suzerain with her prowess. I guess she realised it in spades, I mean the impressing part, but sadly she’s no longer around to see it.”
“What now?” I ask to make her continue. I need to talk with somebody to clear my thoughts.
“Now, each of us will probably take a different path. Oh, there will be a ceremony, and we’ll all be commended for our service to the queen. Lazurien’s acts will be praised. And after that, all of us will go back into the shadows under different identities, anyplace but Merdun.”
“Is this the life you envisaged when joining Verdid’s crew?”
Etora throws me a long glance as if to measure my mettle. She probably likes what she sees, for she’s happy to talk, for the time being no longer queen and vassal, but to fellow soldiers passing the time to the next fight.
“No, not at all. But, forgive me for saying, you didn’t get the life you expected either when joining Verdid’s crew, all these cycles ago.”
How very true. When reporting on the bridge of Verdid’s swarm carrier, Ashar Deluan had no idea what an odd turn her life was about to take.
***
“Ashar, you are the talk of Tao Bellona! First news of the Spirit Palace being destroyed, then close to midnight the sight of your cannonade in space that no one could miss.”
Events went a bit the other way around, but the disaster of Merdun was, of course, reported immediately via com portal. By contrast, my solitary stand in space went unnoticed until hours later when the light of the explosions reached Tao Bellona.
We are back in the Dorien portal hall, Christine, Charles and I, while Peter was already taken to his chambers by several Life adepts charged with his recovery. When we arrived, Reith was already there, waiting for us.
“Each of us has an account of the events of Merdun, but none has the entire story, not even Verdid. And in the absence of clear news, the gossip in the streets is crazy, all sort of fantastic rumours flying around. In one story, you are the saviour of the Dominion, in the next, you finally went mad and blasted the top half of the Spirit Tower together with the Diessa queens.”
“As you probably imagine, none of this is true. The Scourge plot was indeed foiled, but I’m not the main hero, but a child who died saving the Dominion. And I didn’t blast Faun’s home, that was the Scourge’s work. I mostly fended off the debris and helped the rescue teams looking for survivors.”
“What about the fireworks in the sky?”
“That was a neutronic disruptor ray heading to Bellona.”
My sister goes blench white.
“Are you serious? That would have taken out the entire system and likely killed us all for good.”
“The thought crossed my mind. Although who knows, we might have survived. After all, we never tried to watch first-hand the collapse of a star.”
I’m tired, and my blabbering attempts to make light of the situation are not
at all appropriate. People died last night, millions more could have been incinerated together with our star and the Dominion itself could have been ended with a single devastating blow.
For the first time, the audacity of the Scourge’s plot fully hits me. While his murderous cohorts were content with a planet kill here and there, Hagan Far Seer was in a league of his own, probably the most dangerous adversary we ever faced since the death of the last samun emperor.
“Can you do it?” asked Charles. For the moment, I don’t quite follow the question.
“Excuse me?”
“Can you really survive the collapse of a star?”
“We’ll never know until we try,” I respond in a rather immature attempt to unsettle the biologist, probably instigated by Liz’s personality. My basic persona feels the need to make amends, since after all the human male had proved to be a reliable member of our team on Merdun. “To be fair, we probably won’t. There is a limit to the amount of eka we can access, and I fear it’s nowhere near as much as needed to survive a nova.”
Charles looks satisfied with my answer and gives me a dignified nod. Despite their overnight sleep, both humans look exhausted and more than happy to excuse themselves to their quarters. I’m about to follow when Reith stops me with a gesture.
“You came back changed, sister, and I’m not referring to your fight with the Scourge. Your spirit is different than before, subtly altered in an alien way.”
“Is it so visible?” I ask.
“Only too me. I’m your anchor, your balance, the one who knows you as only a bond sister can, one who’s been at your side for millennia.”
She’s right. If anybody has the right to know it’s Reith, as whatever happens with me affects her sanity as well. We are bound together for eternity, and there can be no other eka pairing for either of us, for no one else would be able to match our power.
“Up there, when fighting the Scourge, when fighting a so-called friend who betrayed my trust, I was powerless, Reith. My will was chained by a construct linked to my very soul. So, I had to adapt to break the block. I had to become someone else, at least in part.”
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