“Wow buddy, you got it bad. I hope you manage to ask her this time, because disoriented Shawnrik is not a very fun guy to be around.”
“What? Verrian, I’m not…”
“Right,” Verrian laughed. “Then it’s ok if I just tell the girls that you have decided to take Olivia to the dance, then.”
Shawnrik’s eyes went wide at the thought. “Verrian…”
“I’ll tell you what, my friend, if you don’t manage to ask her by the time we get to the dining hall I’ll do just that.”
“Do what?” Vivianne asked, as she was the first of the girls to come into earshot, although if either of the boys would have thought about it they might have realized that Syranna more than likely could have heard their whole conversation, if she had a mind to.
“Oh, nothing,” Verrian said, accepting the arm that she held out without thought. “Shawnrik was just telling me he had come to a decision.”
“Oh do tell,” Rebecca said, taking his other arm.
“Sorry ladies, not my secret to divulge.” He started walking towards the dining hall before he turned his head and mouthed one word to Shawnrik.
Yet.
Motivated by his friend's ultimatum and his Instructor's wisdom, Shawnrik decided that prolonging the situation wouldn’t be a benefit to anyone. Olivia, Sara, and Syranna were only a few steps behind Vivianne and Rebecca, Shawnrik took a deep breath and held it for a moment as the young women approached.
“Oh, someone is serious today,” Sara said giving her cousin a pat on the shoulder as she passed. “About time,” she whispered.
Syranna looked between him and Olivia quickly before squeezing Olivia’s hand quickly and running to catch up with the rest of the group. Shawnrik swore he saw a slight frown on her face as she passed. He didn’t have long to think about it, however, as Olivia took his arm and turned him around in the direction their friends had gone. She was smiling, but something told him that she was nearly as nervous as he was, which didn’t make sense to him.
“So…” Olivia started to say at the exact same time that Shawnrik began to speak.
The pair laughed, some of the discomfort they were both feeling melting away. Shawnrik continued when it became apparent that she wanted him to go first. “Listen, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing a few years from now, likely it isn’t going to be anything safe…”
“Shawnrik,” Olivia said. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“What?” Shawnrik stopped in his tracks for a moment before he noticed the light of mischief in her eye.
“Well, if you aren’t asking me to marry you then it doesn’t really matter what is going to happen years from now, or even months from now.” She squeezed his arm. “What matters is where we are right now, and what we do with the time we know we have.”
Realizing she was absolutely right, Shawnrik smiled down at this wonderful young woman who managed to confound him entirely from the moment that he first met her in the wilds south of Stalwart. “Alright then, I was wondering if you’d do me the honor of accompanying me to the Winter Dance.”
“Why Shawnrik, I was beginning to wonder if you even liked me.” She squeezed his arm, letting him know she was messing with him.
“Of course I like you; I have just never had to deal with anything like this. The first time I met you was my first real interaction with any girl my age who didn’t look at me like gutter trash.”
“I assure you that the young man I see before me is anything but gutter trash,” Olivia said sliding her hand down into his. “I can tell you where you are going to be years from now.”
“Really? Some sort of premonition?” Shawnrik joked.
“Nothing as serious as that,” Olivia said, her eyes telling him not to joke lightly about such things. “I can tell you because I know the type of person you are.”
“Alright, what will I be doing a few years from now?”
“Protecting,” Olivia said, as if that was all the explanation that was needed.
“Protecting?”
“That’s right. You will be protecting your friends, and protecting people who have no one else to stand up for them.”
“That’s a tall order for a guy who had to have his friend sacrifice his freedom to keep everyone safe,” Shawnrik said, moisture forming in his eyes. The high opinion that Olivia seemed to have of him mingled with the feelings of helplessness that he had felt when he found out what Victor had done were more than he was used to dealing with.
“Hey,” Olivia said, pulling him to a stop. She stood on the tips of her toes and cupped his face with her hand. “No one ever said that you were the only person that gets to protect people. You will never be able to control every situation, but you will do everything in your power to try, and that is what will make you a man to be reckoned with. Wherever Victor is, I’m sure he is fighting with everything he has.”
Abandoned Mine
“Come on little guy, don't you give out on me,” the boy said, cradling the nearly still furry body in his arms. The creature’s condition had grown steadily worse throughout the day, and it had begun to lose control of different parts of its body. He had done everything he could trying to help his furry companion, but he had no idea how to treat something like this.
Each beat of its heart was coming slower than the last. Caring for the animal was starting to take its toll, and exhaustion slowly took hold of the boy. He fell into a deep slumber, his dreams coming at a frantic pace, one after another in high speed. He saw people and creatures he had no name for dying in more ways than he thought possible. There were rooms full of the dead and dying, people sick from every known disease, and more than a few unknown. Hundreds of successful treatments and thousands of failures flew by in a maelstrom of sickness and grief.
How long he laid there stuck in a myriad of painful memories he didn’t know, but after a thousand lifetimes they started to slow down, some part of him having found what it was looking for. Once the memories died out, the pain began. It moved through each and every fiber of his small form. Then the heat came, as if every muscle and vessel in his body were on fire, being purged of the foulness that had taken control. The pain slowly receded but the heat remained, hot, but no longer unbearably so. His limbs twitched, and he looked up and felt a moment of confusion as he saw his own form lying prone next to him. It took him a moment to realize that he was no longer in his own body; his consciousness now inhabited the body of his small furry friend.
Thank you.
It came more as a feeling much more than actual words, but its meaning was clear. With the thought came a gentle push. Go back. He realized that somehow he had taken control of this small form, and that realization made him sick. Instinctually, he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he also knew that his little furry companion would have died without his intervention. The boy understood that he had burned out the toxin that had been spreading through the creature’s body, but how he had accomplished it, and why it worked were still beyond his knowledge.
Finding an open pathway back towards his own body, he began to withdraw his consciousness from his furry companion. Before he was completely withdrawn, however, one more message was sent to him. It was a stream of connected thoughts. A much younger version of the furry form before him stuck his nose into an ant hill only to get bit and then swarmed. Slightly older now, the little guy came upon a mass of writhing snakes and almost got eaten for his curiosity. Lastly, an image of him digging in the snow, and finding a scorpion den. It only took moments for the scorpion to shake off its hibernation and spring to the attack. The fight that ensued was short and vicious, and ended with his furry companion ripping off the scorpion’s tail and running away. It all coalesced into one final thought.
I am Troublefinder.
Opening his own eyes, the boy first noticed that the fire was lit and had burned down to coals. He felt odd for a few moments, as his body worked differently than that of Troublefinder. Looking down he saw a pair of blui
sh gray eyes looking back at him. They seemed slightly different than they had earlier in the day, but he figured that was just the firelight messing with the colors. Troublefinder sat on his haunches, his tail wiggling back and forth in rapid succession.
“Hey little guy, that was some day, huh?”
In response, Troublefinder licked his hand and cuddled up next to him. Throwing a couple more pieces of wood onto the coals, he wrapped his arms around his new companion. For some reason he felt drained, and the steady breathing of Troublemaker lulled him into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
Month: Midwinter
First Secondday
Freeport
Stewart Cantel was cold, tired, and pissed off. He had spent the last three Eightdays running around Freeport, always a step behind the Doppelganger and its royal prisoner. During that time, he had been exposed to the harsh realities of this thriving trade city. Freeport was corrupt to its very core. As High Commander, he had been privy to reports from the city, but those reports had been seriously lacking.
Criminal organizations controlled most of the city, heavily extorting any of the businesses that wanted to stay on the correct side of the law and providing ample opportunity to thrive to those who had a more flexible moral compass. He had uncovered more instances of slavery than he was comfortable thinking about, the majority of which were young women being forced into prostitution. Every time he thought he had uncovered the worst that the city could offer, it managed to surprise him once again with its level of malfeasance.
Something drastic would have to be done to clean up this city, but that would have to wait until the princess was free and safely in Protectorate hands. All he could do was file a report on some of the things he had seen and hope that it would make the city a little safer until he had time to lead a concerted effort. He wondered how many people knew just how bad things had become in this city that was well within Protectorate lands, and who was ultimately responsible for it.
Over the course of the last month, he had been within hours of catching up with the princess on a dozen different occasions, but each and every time the underworld of the city seemed to come together to delay him just enough for the princess to once again slip from his grasp. No matter how many of the thugs he killed, or maimed, it never seemed to dissuade the local toughs from getting in his way. Now he had learned that the Doppelganger and the princess had most likely boarded a ship that had come in during the night. By the time he had reached the docks, the vessel was a dot on the horizon.
You would think it would be an easy thing for the High Commander of the Protectorate to commandeer a vessel in a Protectorate city, but the fact was that most of the ships were run by crews that had grown up in Freeport and like the rest of this city, they seemed to have no love or respect for what the Protectorate stood for. It had taken him the better part of a day to find a captain with a crew willing to assist him in the chase—for a fee.
From what little he had garnered from the unwilling captains, the most likely destination for the mysterious vessel that had taken the princess away was the Dracair controlled port of Drayfjord. The only real port of note in Dracair controlled territories. The Dracair and the Blood Mages had tried for hundreds of years to establish other ports in order to wrest some control of the seas around their side of the continent, but small fleets from countries around the world made them eventually realize that it was an impossible task. Not that they didn’t still try to build a new port every thirty years or so, but each time they did it was blasted into oblivion before they even started building the ships.
Stewart Cantel now sat on the bridge of a small schooner, the city of Freeport slowly disappearing behind him. In some ways, he was glad that the chase had finally left that vile city because it would make the hunt a little easier, but he also knew things were about to get a lot more hectic, and a lot more violent.
Chapter 15
Pershanti
Year: 3045 AGD
Month: Midwinter
First Secondday
Abandoned Mine
Troublefinder was chasing the ball of string around the cell that the boy had been trapped in for as long as he could remember. He had brought them back to the cell in order for Troublefinder to play with the ball without worry of it flying into the fire pit and being incinerated by the now carefully kept flames. Part of him was a little disturbed by the fact that he had not only somehow saved his companion but had also lit the fire without being consciously aware of doing either. He could feel something inside of him growing stronger, and he wasn’t sure who was in control of the thing.
Troublefinder stopped and stared at him. The boy thought that it was because the little guy had caught his mood, but a moment later he heard the jangling of the chains from the front of the cave. They both ran towards the front of the cave, the boy grabbing a pickaxe from the guard’s room on the way. He could hear Troublefinder growling at whatever had disturbed the chains, and a moment before he turned the last corner he heard a familiar voice.
“My word, where did you come from? You are a long way from home, little one.” Pershanti stood in the cave mouth trying to unwind a length of chain from around his leg. “Then again,” Pershanti said seeing the boy, “I suppose that could be said for all of us.”
“Pershanti! I had hoped you would come back, I don’t think Troublefinder and I could have survived out here by ourselves.”
“Troublefinder, eh?” Pershanti said turning towards the little furry guy who was now only half growling at the stranger before him. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said with a bow.
Taken off guard, Troublefinder sat down and turned his head sideways, examining the Grenaldin. After a moment's consideration, he looked back as if asking, “Do you know this guy?”
“Now,” Pershanti said, finally getting his leg free from the chain. “Where on Terrazil did you find a Quaelyne this far north of the forest?”
“He kind of found me. I met him yesterday morning in front of the cave; he had been stung by something. It was a strange night, but I think we came out alright. Quaelyne huh? I’ve never heard that name before.”
“Most haven’t,” Pershanti said. “The general populous might know them better as the Death’s Edge Wolverines, but that name is a misnomer. I have read about these so called Wolverines and they might vaguely resemble the Quaelyne, but evolutionarily and socially they are completely different from that species.”
“Huh,” the boy said, looking at Pershanti as if he were speaking another language. Troublefinder seemed to agree with the sentiment, letting out a small whine and putting his paws over his head.
“No respect for academia these days.” Pershanti sighed and began to make his way carefully across the chains. “Nice idea here, by the way; you never know who or what is lurking in these hills.”
They walked into the guard’s room, and Pershanti looked at the fire and nodded in approval. His foot hit something and he bent over to pick it up. A moment later, he turned towards the two of them.
“Where did this come from?” Pershanti asked, his voice sounding tight as he lightly held the tail of the scorpion that had stung Troublefinder.
“It’s what stung Troublefinder. He ripped the thing's tail off and ran.”
Troublefinder sniffed as if to say he did not run.
“Not to cast doubt on the story, but even though the Quaelyne are especially resistant to such things, the sting of an Apathy Scorpion can mean death for even a full grown Quaelyne.” One of his bushy eyebrows rose. “So, how is it that he seems to be doing fine?”
“He was having some problems yesterday, but by this morning he was okay again.” As he finished talking, he felt a rough tongue lick his finger. He looked down into Troublefinder’s blue-gray eyes.
“Well,” Pershanti said, “lucky him, I suppose.” The way he said it let them all know that he knew there was more to the story. “I suppose getting this little fellow home should be our first priority. We probably shouldn’t stay h
ere one way or the other. I doubt that loud mouth Orc will hold his tongue much longer, and those people were definitely looking for you.”
“Did you find out why?”
“No, but they definitely think that you need to be controlled and kept a tight rein on.” Pershanti paused. “I did learn, however, that you have a friend who is living somewhere amongst the Giants.”
“A friend? I wonder what type of person he is.” Looking down at his hands he said, “Then again, I often wonder what type of person I am.”
“We are whomever we choose to be,” Pershanti said. “You still have a lot of time to figure out what type of man you will become.” Only the sound of the crackling flames invaded the silence that followed that statement. After several minutes, Pershanti looked away from the fire and began to take stock of what they had. “Good idea grabbing those pickaxes, and the way you used those chains was a touch of brilliance. It is too bad we don’t have a way to carry some of this wood out with us.”
At this the boy's head popped up. “Oh, but we have some string! It’s in the cell. Troublefinder was playing with it before you came.”
“Excellent! Go grab it and we can be on our way before it gets too cold to travel.”
Running through the cave, he felt hope blossom in his heart for the first time. He knew the feeling because he had felt it in some of the dreams he had been having, but it had always been a strangely foreign concept to him until that moment. Grabbing the ball of string, he turned around and noticed that Troublefinder had followed him and was wagging his little tail rapidly.
“Sorry Troublefinder, no time to play right now. We need to get going so we can get you home to your family.”
As soon as he said the word home, Troublefinder did a short leap and spun around running a short distance before looking back. Are you coming or what?
Laughing, the boy bounced the ball of string in his hand and followed his excited new friend.
Vitiosi Dei (Heritage of the Blood Book 2) Page 23
