Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  Milo received one of the comic books and examined the cover. On it was a drawing of a long-limbed man wearing a leather jacket, black jeans, and the sort of black boots a soldier or a mercenary might wear. The man wore chains around his neck and had stringy black hair that fell down around his ears and across his forehead. There was a look on his face—especially in those dark, slitted eyes, the tightly drawn mouth—that seemed to say, Don’t come near me ’cause I’m unpredictable, dangerous…

  And there were things attached to the man’s back and shoulders that made him look sort of like a bat. They were the wings of an Acolyte, but instead of feathers they were made from sheets of tough-looking navy-blue fabric held together by metal frames. Artificial wings.

  “This is an incredible drawing,” Milo said. “Who prints this comic? And where does it come from?”

  Barrel sat on the floor across from him, knees drawn to his chest like he was trying to make himself into a tiny ball. Around him, the other orphans chatted about the latest issue of the comic, which was called The Last of the Champions.

  “That’s Paul Heron, one of the Champions of Astros. He’s an Acolyte demigod from D’Aliara who was sent to prison twenty-five years ago by the priest-king of Lustria.”

  Emma leaned forward. “Did you say D’Aliara? I’ve heard that name before.” She gazed into the crackling fire. “In a dream.”

  “Hmm.” Barrel brought up two fingers and stroked his chin. “I’ve heard about your dreams. They say you have the sight.”

  Emma fidgeted and kept her gaze low. She hugged her knees to her chest and shrugged. The other orphans were listening to the conversation.

  “I don’t know,” Emma said. “I just have these vivid dreams sometimes.”

  They all watched Emma for several seconds before Milo, sensing his sister’s discomfort, broke the silence among them.

  “Is D’Aliara a city?” he asked Barrel.

  “Not exactly. It’s a continent, like this one. Right now, we’re on Taradyn, home to most of the Humankin population of Astros. There are four other continents, one for each of the races, though, for obvious reasons, you can find all four races—including Humankin—on each of the continents. This is because couples give birth to offspring of different races all the time. It has to do with the interracial mixing that began several thousand—oomph!”

  Lily had nudged Barrel in the side and was now giving him an annoyed look.

  “Will you just tell the story already?”

  “Yeah,” Owen said. “Enough with the lectures, professor.”

  “Hmph.” Barrel crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Lily. “People say Savants are arrogant, and now I see why. A few of us give the rest a bad name.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, Paul Heron is currently being kept prisoner in Lustria, the capital city of the Kingdom of D’Aliara, for breaking practically all of the anti-technology laws first established by the Acolyte Priest-King Amadeyn, father of the current Priest-King Lucern. Paul had his artificial wings made in Theus, the capital city of Ayrtoros and also the most technologically advanced city on the planet. He lost his real wings during a battle.”

  “So he’s real?” Milo said, on his knees so he could hear every word. “This Paul Heron guy?”

  “That’s right. He’s one of the few demigods left on Astros. Apart from the other Champions—and the two of you, of course.”

  Milo sank back into a cross-legged seated position, suddenly embarrassed. The other orphans watched him and Emma with expressions of admiration—and, in Owen’s case, a hint of jealousy.

  “Aw, come on,” Owen said. “They’re no different from the rest of us. Just ’cause their parents were Champions doesn’t mean…”

  Emma drew in a sharp breath.

  “My mom and dad were Champions? Really?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Owen said. “They were the first ones. They recruited Paul Heron, Pris Walksprite, Quaddis Lodge, and Emmanuel, Savant son of Sargos.”

  “Hey,” Barrel said. “Have some respect. Maximus is no longer with us.”

  Owen’s eyes went wide with embarrassment. His head sank down into his shoulders and he made a gulping sound. “Sorry.”

  “I want to hear more about the Champions,” Emma said.

  “Who doesn’t?” Barrel cleared his throat, then leaned to his left and said, with a flourish of his pale, baby-bird hand, “The other editions, please.”

  Gunner reached back and pulled from the darkness what appeared to be a brown shoebox, plain and worn with use. Duct tape had been used to keep the edges together. He opened it and passed it to Owen, who then passed it to Lily, who smiled down into the box before passing it to Barrel, who grunted at the weight before passing it across to Milo and Emma.

  “These are the other editions we’ve been lucky enough to find. Ascher buys them off smugglers. You probably don’t know this, but a lot of literature is banned in the Leonaryx Empire, especially any that praises the Champions or the High Republic of Theus.”

  “Why?” Milo said, flipping through one of the editions. Brightly colored warriors fought battles across the pages. It was much like the comic books from back home, except that these seemed brighter, more alive. Even in the low light, the colors appeared to be infused with sparkling energy.

  Barrel continued, swatting away a red-and-blue lightbug that flashed like the lights on a police cruiser. “The Leonaryx cousins want to keep another revolution from taking place, so they suppress any and all influences that might inspire the people of this continent to think for themselves.” There was disgust in his voice. “So far, they’ve succeeded, and most people don’t complain.”

  Barrel went on to describe the other Champions Owen had mentioned.

  Pris Walksprite was a female Sargonaut who had once been a member of an elite group of hunters called the Guardians. These sword-wielding warriors were responsible for protecting both Godkin and Humankin from demon-like creatures called Elki. Barrel described them as looking like sleek, hairless dogs—greyhounds, he specified—except that, unlike dogs, they had bone spikes sticking out of their spines, and red eyes that could see in the dark. They had sharp teeth, of course—rows and rows of them, like sharks—and they could open their mouths wide enough to bite through a human torso and sever it completely from its other half. They were descendants of Cebrons, and it was the duty of the Guardians to hunt them out of existence.

  The Guardians were so good at wielding their swords, however, that when the Leonaryx cousins came to power, Kovax came up with the idea of turning them into a secret police force meant to eliminate the rebels. He gave them no choice, of course—it was serve or die.

  So Pris turned her back on the emperor and went after her husband instead, Paul Heron, who by this point had already been arrested by the priest-king of Lustria. According to the legends, Paul and Pris had been on the verge of a very difficult divorce because of the amount of time Pris was spending on the hunt. When Paul was arrested, she decided to make things right and go after him. She almost succeeded in breaking him free but ultimately failed after a run-in with one of the emperor’s men, a Berserker named Basher, one of the strongest and most bloodthirsty of his kind.

  But Pris Walksprite didn’t die. After the battle, which left her with a ghastly, diagonal facial scar, she was seen limping away toward the mountains, using her sword as a cane. Kovax sent soldiers after her, but she was never seen again.

  “Pris Walksprite,” Emma said, studying the brightly colored portraits of the female Sargonaut. Pris was a tall, beautiful woman with the erect posture of a soldier. She wore her yellow-blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her metal breastplate had been shaped to fit the curves of her chest, and around her hips and thighs she wore a skirt made of metal eaves that showed off a pair of long, well-muscled legs. A diagonal red scar had been slashed across her face in all the pictures, making her look even more intimidating.

  “Pretty,” Milo said.

  “
She’s beautiful,” Emma said. “Even with the scar.”

  Quaddis Lodge and Emmanuel were the other two Champions. They often traveled together, though both had been missing for so long that no one knew if this was still true.

  In the comics, Emmanuel was an average-sized man with coin-shaped sunglasses wearing a cloak that was sometimes light gray and sometimes charcoal black. In many of the drawings, he was depicted as walking calmly next to a wolf with sky-blue fur and patterns on his body resembling red flames. There were chunks of flesh missing from one of the wolf’s ears.

  The blue-and-red wolf was Quaddis, a Feral man who had received a fatal wound while in human form but had phased at just the right moment into his wolf form. Barrel explained that all Ferals, when mortally wounded, had the ability to phase into an animal form to cheat death. But they could never phase out of it again and had to live the rest of their lives as animals with human minds. Many of these “trapped Ferals” even developed the ability to speak like humans after a while.

  As for Emmanuel, Savant son of Sargos, he was a powerful magician and a famous inventor who had created something known as a “time dilation engine.”

  This machine—absolutely brilliant, according to Barrel—could contain vast amounts of energy from splitting the luminether atom and then use that energy, along with spell generators containing precious amounts of kronolith mineral, to warp the fabric of space-time. Anyone inside a room affected by such a spell would age while the world outside stood still, relatively speaking.

  Because it needed a constant source of luminether, he explained, the machine could only work deep underground. Some said that’s where Emmanuel was—hidden beneath the earth, working tirelessly on a way to remove Corgos and Kovax from power.

  “I believe he’s closer than we think,” Barrel said.

  Owen piped up. “Do you think he’s the magician stalking the ranch?”

  “It’s possible. But I’m sure Emmanuel has better things to do with his time. Unless, of course, he’s stalking the ranch because there’s something of great value inside.”

  He sat back with a contented smile, joined his hands across his narrow chest, and wagged his eyebrows at Milo.

  “The Champions are pretty neat, eh?”

  Milo nodded, still admiring the various comic book covers. Owen and Gunner were sharing a sack of dried, salted meat strips, their chewing the only sound in the room. Emma and Lily studied one of the books.

  “This cola’s putting me to sleep,” Emma said, dipping her blonde head forward.

  Milo looked up and caught Lily staring at him. She looked away, a tiny smile turning up a corner of her lips. Milo avoided meeting her eyes, still mystified as to how he was supposed to behave around her. He’d never really learned how to talk to girls. Wasn’t that a skill one acquired in high school?

  The subject of girls reminded him of something. He looked at his wrist, but the spot where Calista had slashed him had healed long ago. He still couldn’t believe he’d never noticed it before—that his body healed much faster than normal. Also, now that he thought about it, neither he nor Emma had ever been sick.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where’s Calista?”

  Barrel reached over to Owen and Gunner and motioned for them to give him some jerky. They dropped a few strips into his palm and Barrel, ever the delicate sort, began munching along the very edge of one. When he saw Milo looking at him, he narrowed his eyes at the meat strip and caused it to rise from his fingers and float up to his lips. He bit into it while it was still in the air.

  Milo was stunned.

  “Calista was too tired to come out tonight,” Barrel said, chewing.

  Emma crossed her arms and frowned. “She’s just stuck up. I only ever see her in cat form, which I know she does to avoid talking to people.”

  “That’s not true,” Barrel said, and swallowed. “She’s actually quite talkative. She just doesn’t like her human form very much. Oops, I’ve said too much. Please don’t label me a gossip.”

  “Is she embarrassed to look like us?” Emma said.

  “Not quite. It’s a long story, and a painful one. However, I don’t think she would want us talking about her behind her back.”

  “Fine.” Emma hugged her knees and shivered. “It’s kinda cold up here.”

  Milo had been listening carefully to Barrel’s words. He had known there was something wrong with Calista—some sort of pain buried deep inside. He still could not erase the image of the girl drying herself off in the bathhouse, and at times he felt ashamed at how he had dealt with the situation.

  Calista took her meals in her bedroom and sometimes came out to spend time with Lily and Barrel, who seemed to be her only friends. She avoided everyone else.

  Especially Milo.

  They heard a low tap tap, like someone rapping fingers against a heavy box. A dark form scampered across the attic, beyond the wall of boxes so that all Milo saw was a fleeting shadow in the doorway.

  “She was listening to us,” Emma said, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t like her.”

  “Don’t worry about Calista,” Barrel said. “She’s just—misunderstood.”

  Lily poured herself more cola. “Barrel’s easy to talk to because he blushes too much. Try it. Tell him he’s handsome and he blushes. He really is handsome, too!” She watched him, smiling as his face deepened in color. “See what I mean?”

  “Stop it, Breezy. You’re such a child.”

  “So are you.” She got on her knees and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. He pretended to push her away, but it was obvious he enjoyed the attention. “And don’t you forget it,” she added.

  “You’re all just kids.”

  The voice that had spoken was not deep, but it was slow and arrogant—the voice of a prince upset at not having been invited to a royal meeting.

  A dark, broad-shouldered man stood in the doorway. Then Milo saw that it was not a man at all—he simply looked like one because of the way he was standing, and because everyone else was sitting. It was Sevarin, and he was wearing a black cotton T-shirt and black sweatpants. His outfit, loose and baggy against his already deep brown skin, made him almost blend in with the darkness around him.

  “There are some men with swords downstairs.” He glanced at Milo. “They’re looking for you and your sister.”

  CHAPTER 31

  “ N o.”

  Emma’s voice came out a wavering whisper. Her throat closed as though a hand had tightened around it; a cold, dead person’s hand.

  They’re looking for you…

  “We need to get out of here.” She jumped up and looked at her brother. “Milo!”

  She had expected Milo to be wide-eyed with fear. Instead, he was glaring at Sevarin as though he wanted to strangle him.

  “He’s lying,” Milo said. “It’s just another one of his pranks.”

  Sevarin’s face broke into a grin. “Hey, Barrel,” he said with a cocky jutting of his chin, “gimme some of that Bara-pop.”

  Barrel rolled his eyes and stayed put. “Get it yourself. Oh, and you’re bringing this barrel down when we’re finished.”

  Ignoring him, Sevarin crossed his arms and smiled down at Milo and Emma. Colored lights twinkled brightly against his skin as lightbugs drifted between them. The room was silent. Emma could barely take it anymore. She struggled to keep from yelling at him.

  “Don’t hate,” Sevarin said. “I was just keepin’ you on your toes, that’s all.”

  That was all it took. Emma exploded.

  “GRRRRAAAA!”

  She lunged forward, arms held straight and locked at the elbows. In a distant corner of her mind, a little voice said, You can’t hurt him, he’s a Sargonaut. But she didn’t care. Everything she had been through until now—the death of her father, the kidnapping of her mother, watching her brother turn into an angry loner—had been building up inside, and now this was her chance to let out the pain and frustration and despair and maybe cause some damage to those who dese
rved it.

  She should have listened to the little voice in her head.

  Crashing into Sevarin was like running into a stone pillar. She really did crash, and the force of the impact sent a shiver along the bones of her arms, all the way to her shoulder blades and spine, eventually down to her legs. Sevarin didn’t budge, but Emma crumpled like a ball of tissue paper smashed against a brick wall—and boy, did it hurt!

  Not in a million years would Emma have allowed herself to do what she did next, which was to cry in front of Sevarin. But the sobs just burst out of her. She could sense how stunned her friends were as she sank down to the floor weeping. She cradled her arm to ease the pain of what was certainly a broken bone.

  Milo ran over and held her. He looked up at Sevarin.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted. “She could’ve broken something!”

  “Hey,”—Sevarin jabbed his thumb into Milo’s chest—“she ran into me.”

  Lily sprang to her feet. “Enough. Stop fighting, please!”

  “Everybody calm down,” Barrel said, also getting up. “Let me take a look at her.”

  All of the orphans got up and there was a loud, hollow clatter as their shoes moved over the floorboards.

  “We’re not supposed to be up here this late,” Owen said. “Someone’ll hear us.”

  “Everybody quiet.”

  The voice belonged to Emma. With Milo’s help, she had risen to her feet. Her arm was fine, after all.

  “Everybody just be quiet,” she said, softer this time. “I don’t want us to get caught.” Then she looked up at Sevarin, who was much taller. “And Sevarin’s right. I ran into him—and it won’t happen again,”—she looked him directly in the eyes—“since I plan on staying as far away from him as humanly possible.”

  Pain flashed across Sevarin’s face, but only briefly. Emma caught the look but wasn’t sure anyone else had.

  “Whatever,” he said, crossing his arms again. “Fine by me.”

  Milo put his arm around Emma’s shoulder and pulled her toward the door.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s getting late.”