by Oxford, Rain
“The Tesako radar only detects rosin. We are looking for diamond.”
“That… The diamonds are found in rosin. Most of the ground beneath us is made up of rosin.”
“We know that. What is your point?”
“The Tesako would light the monitors up everywhere… except where the diamond is. The sensors cannot go through diamond, so they would appear as black patches. You just have to dig where there are black patches.”
“Who taught you about geology?”
“I know little about geology, but I know about paleontology. A woman was going to adopt me once. She hunted bones of ancient creatures for mapping evolution… and she took me with her sometimes. We always used scanning equipment before we did any digging.” Then the orphanage denied her application because they received too much money for me and I was good at cleaning.
“That is horrible.” I didn’t realize there were still orphanages that were so bad.
“Abro-do, order three of the Tesako radars. Verda, for your assistance, I will forgive your behavior last night. I expect you to be in my room tonight after your chores.”
“I have many more ideas that will help you with efficiency. However, I cannot think when I am tired and hungry. For every night and day you let me be alone, I will give you an invention or suggest one.”
Abro-do started to say something, but Taron-sep held up his hand. “I have many girls who can clean and warm my bed. As long as you are valuable, I will allow you this. Omeda-do will do your chores and Abro-do will bring you food. Tomorrow morning, I want an idea to cut costs on child care. Right now, I pay my workers enough to support their families, and I also provide free child care, school, and transportation to the school. Still, they complain. I expect a solution in the morning. Abro-do, get Omeda-do in here.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the door burst open and two servant girls ran in, both with blood on their hands. “Omeda-do is dead!” one of them cried.
“She was killed by the monster! There is blood everywhere!”
Taron-sep sighed. “Find someone to replace Omeda-do,” he said to Abro-do.
* * *
For the next three days, everything was quiet. Although there was just as much fear among the servants, there was no mourning, since they all hated Omeda-do. Verda was doing extremely well in finding solutions that made both the workers and Taron-sep very happy. This advanced her from receiving basic food to freedom of the manor and then gifts, such as better clothes and books.
The other servant girls avoided Verda, but they didn’t speak about it. The cook and Abro-do actually bet on who would be the next to die. The cook thought it would be Maida, who was good friends with Omeda-do, while Abro-do betted on Verda being the next to die.
Although the Duran people were suspicious of outsiders because of the gods, they were primarily peaceful. For the most part, sago respected nature and each other. Unfortunately, this was a poor representation of a beautiful race.
Verda visited Maida because nobody else did, but I was irritated by the child’s overly passive behavior, so I didn’t pay any attention. I actually found no evidence to suspect Taron-sep, and since I knew the demon war was advancing, I decided to leave Zendii for now. Sitting still was not something I was good at.
Verda was about to go to bed, still expecting me to be there in the morning, when she suddenly had an idea about using solar energy to decrease the workload for the townsmen in the day. She was out the door before I could tell her to wait until morning. I slipped back into her mind just as a precaution as she sought Taron-sep. As excited as she was, she burst into the man’s room without knocking and got the shock of her very young life.
The shaking squeak that fell from her mouth would have made me laugh if I didn’t want to scrub my eyeballs out. There were men and women that were pleasant to look at, my husband included… and then there were those who were just an unfortunate throwback of genetics. Taron-sep was small, hairy, and sagging in all the wrong places.
It was a good thing I was not there myself, because after the initial second of pondering the odds of such a composition of unsymmetrical and undesirable features, I couldn’t stop laughing. Taron-sep was in bed with one unfortunate servant who buried her horrified face in the blanket when the door opened.
“Stop laughing! You will make me start!” Verda begged me silently. When Taron-sep stood proudly from his bed, the sound she made Verda almost betrayed her mirth. Fortunately, it could also be misconstrued as abject fear.
“What are you doing here, Verda?” he asked.
She kept her eyes on his with great effort as she told him of her plan. Completely unconcerned with his own nudity, he praised her on her idea and sent her back to her room. She returned slowly as she prayed that all men were not so poorly formed as her master. Feeling charitable, I sent her a mental image of my husband, which made her gasp.
“Where do you find men like that?” she asked.
“Men like that do not hang would places like this. When you feel ready to take life in your own hands, the opportunity will come. Decide what you want to do with your life, escape from here, change your name, and do what you have always dreamed. Eventually, you will find someone who wants the same things you do who is looking for someone just like you. Just don’t wait for someone else to build your life around.”
She absorbed this for a moment.
“Verda…”
“What?”
“Something is behind you.”
Before she could turn, a huge shape pounced on her, pushing her to the floor, and landed on top. I saw a flash of black and teeth as she turned her head before it was gone. Only, it hadn’t gone far. I released Verda’s mind and flashed to her side. The creature moved fast to strike again, but I was faster and put an energy shield around us.
The electrical lights in the hallway burst, plunging the entire mansion into darkness. There was a window at the far end of the hallway and only the light of our smaller moon, Odzuki, provided any light.
I felt the creature bat against my shield, when the most unexpected thing happened; my shield collapsed. The creature was gone, women were screaming in their bedrooms, and I stood in the hallway, confused. I drew on my magic to create simple fire… and nothing happened. For the first time in my existence, my magic was not working.
There was only one being that could possibly be powerful enough to do this to me.
“You have to let it happen.” In the light of the moonlight, he appeared before me and vanished again in a tenth of a second.
“Ronez? Where are you?”
“He will die.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Who are you talking to?” Verda asked behind me. Instead of answering her, I led her back to her room. “Why would Taron-sep attack me when I have been helping him?” she asked when she shut and locked her door.
“This is not because you refused him.”
“Was he mad that I saw him?”
“No, that makes no sense either. Perhaps it was who we saw him with. What attacked you was a creature of magic, and nobody here that I have seen has enough magic to control such a beast.”
“I thought monsters stayed on Mijii or Shomodii. Is the creature dead?”
“No. Before I could defeat it, my powers failed.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“It has never happened before. We need to set a trap, which we will implement the moment my powers return.”
“Are you sure they will return?”
“More sure than I am about anything.”
* * *
Our plan was rather rudimentary; we would create a trap in Verda’s room and then she would lure Taron-sep in. The problem was that my magic did not return that night. When we woke in the morning, we discovered that three women, including the woman Taron-sep slept with, was dead. The master of the manor couldn’t care less.
As we waited for my magic to be restored, Verda went on as usual. I, on the other h
and, had a terrible time. I couldn’t flash out to get food or even request something from my brothers, so I had to settle for sharing with Verda. “Maybe I should pretend to be one of the servants so I could get better food,” I mused. She stopped to gape at me, food halfway to her mouth. “What?”
She set the piece of bread down. “For one thing, I think you would slap the first person who gave you an order and kill the second. You seem about as submissive as a naowen.”
The knob on the door started to turn as someone tried to enter without knocking. I reached out with my magic, instinctively, and flipped the lock. Unable to open the door, the person in the hall started knocking.
“Your magic is back?” Verda whispered. I nodded, stood up, pressed myself against the wall, and let my magic make me invisible. Verda answered the door.
It was Maida standing there, crying. “Abro-do is dead. Please let me stay with you. I am afraid to be alone.”
Alarms went off in my head. Before I could reach into the girl’s mind to find out what she saw, she was pushed aside. Two men I had seen before in passing each grabbed one of Verda’s arms. Verda struggled and demanded to know what they were doing.
“You are being arrested for the murder of Abro-do Todeko.”
“What?” Instead of fighting harder, Verda went limp and let herself be dragged away. I followed, easily skirting around the young girl. Instead of taking her down to the dungeon, the men took her to Taron-sep’s room.
Taron-sep was waiting when the men pushed her into the room, stepped out, and shut the door behind them. I almost had trouble making it in without touching the men, which is why I normally hated going around invisible. Verda sat on the floor with her feet under her.
“I have never killed anyone,” Verda said softly, as if no one would believe her.
“I know that,” Taron-sep said.
“Then why have you brought me here?”
“Because if I show favoritism, people will die.” He sat on the bed and patted the spot next to him, indicating that she should sit by him. She remained on the floor.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“If I allow you to go without chores, even though you are working in other ways, especially since we have lost so many servants recently, I worry that you will anger whoever is killing the girls. You will have to return to doing chores.”
She looked up at him. “Why do you care about me being killed? You never seemed to care about the others.”
“I care that they are dying, but until I know who is killing people, I cannot risk making things worse. At least, that was my intention, especially since I believed Abro-do was the killer. Abro-do was just killed, however, so I have no suspects.”
“Does anyone in the mansion have the power to conjure a magical creature?” she asked.
“No. I have too much invested in electrical equipment to allow magic here.”
“I will start on the chores again tomorrow. May I go now?”
He nodded. “I will send someone with you.”
“I can walk myself, thank you,” she said. I could see in his eyes that her words, or maybe her tone, irritated the man, but he nodded again. She stood, went to the door, opened it, and stepped back so that I could pass her. “Sleep well.”
We were halfway back to the room when I felt the presence of the creature lurking out of sight. I stopped Verda with a light hand on her arm. She knew not to say anything or look around, so instead she looked out the window beside her, as if that had been her intention all along. I created a shield, powerful but also invisible, around her and stepped away from her. We only had to wait for a couple of minutes before the creature came into view.
I knew immediately that I had jumped to a very wrong conclusion.
Dylan must never hear about this.
The creature I faced was not a familiar conjured by a powerful wizard. It resembled a very large Earth jaguar, except it was pure black. This was a raduma from Skrev; a mere shifter. With my power, the beast was nothing.
As the beast slid from her shadow, her eyes were trained on me, for she could smell me even if she couldn’t see me. Raduma has some of the most powerful senses of any animal on their world. I reached into her mind, found her frustration, and soothed it. In the process, I could see how she came to kill people on Zendii.
Her mother was sago as far as she knew, but she never met her father. She was normal for most of her life until she fell in love with Taron-sep, who ignored her on account of the fact that she was five years under the legal age of independence. When she went through the emotional turmoil, her cat broke free of her sago genetics and she became a shifter who has been killing every girl her master took notice of. Abro-do had suggested Maida be sent away for her own safety because of her age, which was why she killed him.
The raduma sat there, calmed by my power, while I sent out a summons to Ghidorah. Before the Guardian of Skrev could respond, my energy faded. Instantly, the cat pounced on me… only to be stopped cold by an iron skillet, which Verda smashed into the cat’s face.
The cook had approached, carrying the pan, while I was occupied. Verda had taken it and acted without thought. As tough as the creature may have been, it had to have hurt. The raduma wavered, whimpered, and tried again to attack, only to end up falling on her face. Ghidorah appeared with a flash, courtesy of Araxi.
“Hello, Divina,” the Guardian greeted. “You have never called me before.”
“No, but I figured this was something you should handle. One of your raduma was misplaced. See that this doesn’t happen again. I don’t blame you, but she has killed sago.”
“And you did not simply kill her because Dylan would frown on that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”
He and the raduma vanished, only to be replaced by Xul. “Sup, girly?” he asked me in English. I pressed my hand against his chest and a burst of energy struck him hard enough to slam him against the wall.
Hey, my powers are back.
“Shit,” he groaned as he slid down. “I take it you got all the testosterone in your marriage?”
Dylan saved all his testosterone for the bedroom. When we weren’t alone, he cared too much about solving mysteries and being a Guardian to worry about acting macho. Of course, he did like pushing Mordon around.
“Hail needs you,” he said before climbing slowly to his feet. “Ron and Hail are separated. So are Mordon and Dylan. Something powerful is keeping them apart. I think it’s---”
“Zero. Yeah, I think we got off too easy with him. Is Dylan okay?”
“His energy is boiling over in a bad way without Mordon. It’s not even him against the universe anymore; his own energy is starting to attack itself. Dylan is not doing well. Since my power is tied to his, I can tell.”
“Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing; I’m going to talk to my brothers.”
Without waiting for his response or thanking Verda for her help, I flashed to the Land of the Iadnah and called all of my brothers to me, even Vretial. If I could get them to work together for two seconds without bloodshed, I would have to start believing in miracles. Instantly upon appearance, Regivus slammed his fist into Vretial’s nose. As Vretial had a mortal body, he started bleeding.
“What was that for?” my eldest brother whined
“I don’t remember, but you did something.”
I would have laughed, except I knew what Vretial had done, and it wasn’t my brother’s fault; it was mine.
“Can I hit him, too?” Avoli asked.
Avoli was the youngest of us after me and really never developed the understanding of our power like the rest of us have. It was my belief that he was actually attacked by a more powerful god before we entered this universe, which explained his lesser power and the fact that he was naturally so inclined to surrender control. This wasn’t the reason I coddled him. I didn’t actually know why I stood up for him, or why Dylan seemed to despise him.
“Focus. Something is keeping Ron
and Hail as well as Dylan and Mordon apart.”
“I have tried to help,” Vretial said. His nose was already healed. “I failed.”
“Yes, and any one of us probably would. I do have an idea, though. If we can combine our power and try to---”
“I refuse to work with Vretial,” Azenoth growled.
“Good!” Erono barked. “You are the weakest here anyway.”
“Settle down, both of you,” Mreje said.
Then Zer added his two cents in and I just sighed while my brothers acted like idiots. After several minutes of letting them argue, Vretial flicked his wrist. My brothers were shocked out of their anger by the sudden rain falling from the nothingness above them. As quickly as it started, the rain stopped.
“That is better. Now, let’s get to work,” Vretial said.
Chapter 10
Ron
We returned to Earth with the battle axe and the dagger. Having never seen a griffin before, Stacy shrieked when we appeared in her kitchen. John stood from his chair at the table and pushed his wife behind him.
“It’s okay!” Drake told his parents. “Seimei is nice.”
“Hey, cool!” Kyle yelled, standing in the doorway.
Knowing Seimei would be nice, left the room to clean up. I started with an hour-long shower followed by carefully perfecting my hair. “Hail?” I called for the millionth time since I failed to flash to him.
I sighed with frustration when he didn’t answer. I hated that there was a person, god, or demon who was powerful enough to keep me away from my brother. It was my plan to destroy whoever it was as soon as I got Hail back.
Bright light filled the room, but before I could prepare myself for a possible attack, I felt the familiar presence. My magic and even the balance reacted with joy. I felt like I could finally breathe.
The door burst open and both Sen and Drake ran in just as the light cleared. Hail’s clothes were torn and dirty as if he was in a fight. I couldn’t even open my mouth before he was crushing my bones in a huge. “Hair,” I gasped.
