by Chris Fox
“I can’t do this long!” she yelled, her voice at panic’s edge.
“Go!” I sprinted toward the opposite door, and the rest followed.
Briff fell instinctively into the rear, and his good wing came up to shield us as the ward went down. He roared in pain as several spells slammed into the leathery section in the middle, and I watched in horror as a wide swath of scales was disintegrated.
Vee cast another ward, which intercepted the final volley as we made it into the tunnel. We’d gotten incredibly lucky in that the vehicle had landed near the corridor. Had we been at the opposite side, our deaths would have been a casual matter for the Inurans.
Her ward dropped, but we were up the corridor and out of their line of fire. Thanks to the armor, sprinting was easy, and everyone else seemed to be managing.
I moved immediately to Briff, who was still limping at the rear. Both wings hung behind him, tattered and broken.
“Hey, Jer.” Briff panted as he trotted, and I fell into step behind him.
“How you holding up, bud?”
“I look that bad?” Briff offered a toothy smile, which reassured me. He hadn’t lost his humor.
“Not that bad,” I lied, then glanced back behind me to avoid eye contact. There was nothing to celebrate, other than survival.
Arcan wouldn’t be so lucky.
Interlude V
Inura’s tail thrashed in agitation as he gazed at the intensely intricate spell dominating the containment chamber where he was testing the latest iteration of his schema. There were inefficiencies that must be eliminated before he could go any further, yet he’d been at this ninety hours without a break.
It was time for clarity.
He strode from the workshop and stretched his wings. The motion relieved tension, and he rolled his shoulders to loosen his arms.
Inura’s body had many advantages. It appeared human, if one overlooked the slitted irises, tail, and wings. Closer examination revealed that the pores of his skin were really scales, a much better defense.
He appeared just mortal enough that mortals didn’t flee in gibbering terror, as they would if he appeared in his full Wyrm body. Well, the Wyrm body he’d used to possess.
Like it or not, and he most certainly did not like it, this was his only body now and the sum of his power. Everything he’d been, all the power and magic he’d amassed in his ancient draconic form, belonged to the void now.
That had been the price of his survival.
He had infused a simulacra, what his sister had called a shade, with half his power and all of his memory. That had proven prudent. He’d scryed the battle, and seen himself die. It was…unsettling, to say the least.
Inura continued up the corridor into his spacious chambers, which were littered with books and knowledge scales. He’d never been very tidy, and becoming a god hadn’t changed that.
He considered picking one of them up to relieve the tension and boredom, but nothing interested him. He’d heard, read, and experienced it all before. A hundred times. A million times.
Something tugged at the edge of his mind. There was a tiny upwelling, a renewal of a link to a consciousness he’d not felt since…since the last epoch of the godswar. Since before he’d gone into hiding. From his days as the divine artificer. The Maker.
“That cannot be.” He closed his eyes and probed the source, shocked to find a vast well of void under a shell of life and air. A shell he had built. “The Word of Xal still exists. How? And why is it activating now?”
Inura suppressed his first instinct, which was to translocate directly to the source of the signal. That would have fit with his old body, his old level of power. But he was fragile now, and would make a tempting target for any god desiring the sudden acquisition of a vast reservoir of life magic.
He sketched a series of sigils artfully in the air, using the old style, the style that Xal had taught him. It didn’t change their power, but it made them more elegant. It made the spell more beautiful and made the universe rejoice, as creation valued perfection wherever it was found.
A rippling mirror of flame bisected the air before him. Its milky surface resolved into an unfamiliar system, one with a tame yellow star and a single notable world.
That world was in the final stages of dissolution, something Inura had witnessed many times over his life. Gods were petty creatures, and knocking over another god’s blocks, so to speak, was a common tantrum.
One Nefarius had brutally demonstrated upon the world Inura had invested the most heavily in. The only world he’d ever allowed to bear his name. But that was in the past.
The relevant question was…who had toppled this planet and why? He shifted the mirror’s perspective, and it focused on a glittering fleet of derelict ships around the world.
The Word of Xal lay among that fleet, and she was not the only Great Ship. Others were there as well, whether dead or alive, and some remnant of what they were must have survived.
Hot, wet tears drifted into space, instantly crystalizing to ice. Inura thought he understood what might have happened here. When the battle had occurred, when Shaya had run with the Spellship, they’d all assumed this part of the Vagrant Fleet had been destroyed.
“How could I have been so blind?” Inura shook his head. He was so angry. Furious, even. At himself.
No longer was he the callous god he’d once been. In transferring his consciousness to his shade, he had absorbed that shade’s memories. He’d seen what it was like to be mortal, and relatively powerless. It had become much more difficult to think of worshippers as currency.
He’d abandoned these people. When he’d thought the ships dead he knew that a few Outriders and a handful of hatchlings had survived, but none of his children. No Wyrms.
And so he’d dismissed them. He’d watched a cloud of escape pods racing for the surface, and abandoned what he thought to be a dead fleet. Only it wasn’t dead. Somehow the vessel’s last captain, mighty Kemet, his great-great-grandson, a mere hatchling, had found a way to fool them all.
That raised a troubling question. If Kemet had saved the Word had he also found a way to save Ardaki? The staff had been thought lost, leaving Ikadra the sole key.
Only then did Inura see the ship clinging to the Word’s hull, a tiny white parasite with elegant curves, and enviable engineering. The result of his wayward children, who’d been co-opted by his enemies long ago, after their great betrayal.
The Inuran Consortium honored his legacy of artificing, and nothing else. They were thugs and bullies, and it didn’t surprise him in the least to find them near such an atrocity. The idea that they might be allowed to seize control of the Word was unthinkable.
The Consortium might be able to wake the other Great Ships as well, which would make them a formidable power in the sector once more. They would use Inura’s legacy to subjugate and exploit.
He could not allow it.
Yet what was the safest course? He was no war god to ride in and assault his enemies. He was a builder. A Maker.
He scanned the system for evidence of whoever’d done this, and it didn’t take long to find the small Inuran fleet hovering over the doomed world like a drakeling waiting for prey to die.
Jolene would be in there somewhere; of that he was certain. He’d never met the woman personally, though he’d spoken with her daughter, Voria.
Did she still possess the Blood of Nefarious? If so, she could be a formidable opponent in his diminished state. He couldn’t risk it. What if Talifax lived, and she served him? No, even coming here was a risk.
Yet he wouldn’t leave without some small atonement. Inura scanned the world, and found a bright magical resonance on the southern continent. The spell emanated from a temple, a magical university in the old style, a beautiful stepped ziggurat that served as both a center of worship and learning.
The mages sheltering there likely had no idea of its significance. They’d forgotten why it was important, forgotten the culture that had given
them birth, yet still they kept their charge. Still they clung to their honor, trying to defend that which they’d been charged with protecting.
Within their hallowed temple he sensed power. There were a number of potent artifacts, though in his estimation the real treasure were the thousands of mages desperately clustered around their temple.
Their collective magic channeled all eight aspects into a ward designed to hold their planet together as long as possible. It slowed the tidal forces, though the spell couldn’t halt them. Their efforts might buy them a few more hours, at best.
Their loyalty must be acknowledged, even if it couldn’t be rewarded. He could feel the Heka Aten connected to the Word. If the ship could be harnessed, then it was possible these people could be saved.
But only if the person taking the ship had time to forge the link. Time he could give them.
Inura raised both hands and began to sketch. His hands moved faster than the mortal eye could follow as he fashioned sigils together. In moments he held a spear twice as long as he was tall.
He flung the spear at the world, and watched as it sped toward the temple. In moments it vanished from sight, but as it impacted with the ziggurat he could feel his potent spell doing its work. The wards were strengthened. The disintegration slowed. It wasn’t much, but it was as much as he dared risk.
Would that he were brave enough to reveal himself to his children.
26
The flight back to the Remora was made largely in silence. We’d had our asses kicked, and Arcan had paid the price. I noticed that Rava was beginning to flag, and moved to take Kurz from her.
The weight on my shoulder was unfamiliar, but the unconscious man had a light frame. My newfound strength might have been enough to handle it, but I channeled an infuse strength anyway and then hurried up the corridor again.
It took maybe fifteen tense minutes to reach the ship, during which the red dots scurried around the bridge like ants. They didn’t leave it or venture anywhere else in the ship, though some of them did disappear into the Inuran vessel. Probably to get more men and material.
Despair weighed on us all, from Briff’s drooping tail, to the tears Rava was angrily trying to hide. Only Vee seemed unaffected, though I suspect that was more a function of her stoic mask than anything else. But then, what did I know?
I breathed a genuine sigh of relief when we collapsed at the ramp leading into the Remora’s cargo bay. I gently set Kurz down, then sat heavily as everyone else did the same.
“I have a little strength left,” Vee said as she finally broke the silence. “I will tend to my brother. I can wake him, at least. He’s not seriously harmed.” She moved to crouch next to us.
Rava and Briff were chatting in low tones while not paying much attention, but I couldn’t have been more interested. It wasn’t often you got to see life magic at work, and I was eager to study it when it wasn’t being used directly on me.
If you took all the trappings away, that was what I loved most…magic. Learning about it. Using it. Understanding it. And I desperately needed some of that wonder right now, in the face of what we were dealing with.
Vee raised her hand to her brother’s brow, and tenderly swept aside his bangs. She pressed her palm flat against his forehead, and closed her eyes as she began to hum a wordless tune.
Blue runes flared on her bracelet, and golden light pulsed from her palm into her brother. Kurz’s eyes immediately fluttered opened, and he looked around him in shock.
“What happened?” He rose to a sitting position, and scrambled back a pace from his sister as he took in the room.
“You suffered a head blow when we crashed,” she explained as she slowly rose to her feet. “I’ve relieved the pressure on your brain, which is why you woke up.”
“Thank you.” He rubbed at his forehead, then licked his lips. His beard still had flecks of blood and soot in it, and a small patch on the right side had been burned away. “What now, Captain? Do we flee?”
“That’s on the table,” I decided aloud, but then I shook my head. “I haven’t given up yet, though. Get up to the mess, grab some food, and catch your breath. I’ll see if I can brainstorm a plan.”
The whirring of my father’s hoverchair heralded his arrival, and he appeared above the ramp, peering down at our ragged position from the Remora’s cargo hold. “Jer?”
“Hey, Dad. It didn’t go well.” I started wearily up the ramp, and clapped him on the shoulder as I reached him. “You were wrong about Arcan. He came through when it mattered.”
“Oh.” My dad’s eyes grew wet, and he cleared his throat gruffly. “It’s nice when people surprise you in a good way. There’s no chance he survived?”
“There’s every chance,” I admitted, though I wished I didn’t have to in front of Rava. In front of my sister. “They may want a prisoner to interrogate, and if they do there’s a chance we might get him back. But let’s be real, guys. It’s unlikely.” I turned around, and faced the others, who were all climbing the ramp. “We’d have to get on the Inuran ship, assuming it even stays put and that he’s alive. We need to focus on taking the bridge.”
I headed for the mess at a brisk walk that allowed a gap to form between me and the rest of my squad. They chatted softly amongst themselves, which left me a few minutes to come up with some sort of plan. If I couldn’t, then we’d need to bug out, and the academy and all those cadets were history.
Once I entered the mess I flopped down in a seat at the table furthest from the door. As expected, when the others filed in they all sat at the opposite end of the mess. All except Vee, who moved to sit with me.
“May I join you?” she asked, nodding at the seat next to me.
I nodded wordlessly to it. She couldn’t read my expression as it was behind my helmet, which I needed up if I was going to both monitor the enemy and talk to the ship.
Vee sat and rested both calloused hands on the table. The elegant bracelet was so at odds with the rough-spun clothing and the simple auburn ponytail. “You realize we’re going to have to flee.”
“Maybe.” I squeezed the edges of the chair I was sitting in. I don’t know why. A sudden anger surged through me, and bile rose in my throat. “Maybe not, though. You can sit here if you’d like, but I need a minute to talk to the ship. If I can’t figure out a way to assault their position, then we’ll pull out.”
She nodded, and leaned back in her chair. Vee always had a patient air about her, and it calmed me. I liked that. I liked the casual murder vibe less so, but hey, we’ve all got flaws.
I cleared my throat, and addressed the ship. “Guardian, you said that I don’t have access to the weapons systems, right?”
“Affirmative.” The hatchling appeared in my field of view once more, complete with that amazing silver staff, tipped with a flying dragon.
“How about life support? Can I turn that off on their level?”
“Negative.” The Guardian watched me expectantly.
How best to proceed? Vee was staring at me, but had remained silent.
I sat up straight as I had a sudden idea. “What systems do I have access to?”
“Propulsion, navigation, internal temperature and gravity, and all relevant subsystems.” The Guardian smiled, which surprised me as I was beginning to think of this thing as a computer. “I am intrigued. It will be interesting to see if you can concoct a plan to dislodge them with the limited resources at your disposal.”
“Them?” I asked.
“The group on the bridge,” the Guardian explained. “Their armor and weapons are strange, but greatly reminiscent of Inura the Maker, and their magic does fit that conclusion. They have attempted to gain control of the ship, but their candidate was…insufficient.”
“Insufficient?” I asked, now intensely curious. “What kind of trial is involved? I assume if you pass, you gain control of the ship?”
“Precisely.” The Guardian nodded sagely. “If you pass the captain’s trials—the trial of strength,
the trial of reason, and the trial of judgement—then you will be declared the captain of this vessel until you declare another. We will be bonded. However, failure is terminal, as the last candidate learned to their detriment.”
“That’s interesting, but doesn’t solve my problem.” I tried not to stare at Vee, though I wasn’t sure why I was smuggling glances when she couldn’t tell if I was staring or not. “Let’s get back to those systems. You said I have control over internal temperature and gravity, right?”
“Indeed.” Guardian nodded, then gestured at the ship with his staff. “With level two control you can tend to the immediate comfort of the crew. Since this vessel wasn’t created with a specific species in mind, you can tailor the atmosphere and gravity however you see fit. However, I cannot allow any action which will directly harm the occupants of the ship, unless ordered to do so by a captain.”
“I see.” A grin spread across my face. “Guardian, do you have a record of every species that has dwelled on this ship?”
“Of course.” He gave a small indignant huff.
I already knew the answer to the next question, but I asked it in a way that would make it clear to Vee what I was getting at. “And you could, say, set the gravity on the bridge to match the requirements of any of these races?”
“Indeed.” Another nod.
“How does the heaviest gravity ever used compare to the current gravity?” I’d guess our current gravity to be about 0.8 of normal.
“The Osmandi used a setting 324% higher than the current setting.” The Guardian cocked his head. “This setting will not be immediately lethal to your species, though it will make it impossible to move under your own power, and prolonged exposure could be fatal.”
“I’m aware of the risks. So I can order you to utilize the same gravity settings as the Osmandi?”
“Indeed.” The Guardian offered another sage nod.
