The Tria

by Matt King

  Contents

  Copyright

  About This Story

  Dedication

  The Tria

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2014, Matt King

  Published by Heroic Age Books

  Raleigh, NC

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  About This Story

  “The Tria” is a short story set in The Circle War universe (http://www.kingwrites.com/the-circle-war-series/). The gods of the Circle are on the brink of civil war. Too powerful to fight for themselves, they must choose champions to battle for their lives. While the series focuses mainly on the heroes, this story follows Mordric, champion of the villainous god Anemolie, as he chooses the warriors who will fight for her side.

  To readers of The Circle War

  and anyone who loves superheroes

  The Tria

  The ward had a stain to it. Mordric could feel it before he ever saw the faint white lights of the birthing tower. A thin ribbon of silt coated the bottom of his robe as he waded past the edge of the swamp and onto the layer of charred leaves that blanketed the forest floor. The burning of the curgeon trees left a thick layer of soot in the air. The matrons of the tower had resorted to wildfires to control the overgrowth of the man-eating plant, a lack of ingenuity that worried him given the importance of his order, but there was little choice. They were the only ones in the known worlds who could provide him with the children he needed for the war ahead.

  Neither of the guards met his stare as he strode past the parted gates of the tower. His braided gray hair, so curious to the hairless indigenous people, usually tempted them from their ordered indifference. These two had been told not to engage him in any way. He could still see the memories in their thoughts like a child’s drawing, reminding them not to disobey the matrons for fear of being cast into the curgeon. Part of him wanted to let them feel the fear of it anyway, despite their obedience. Later, he thought, once I have what I came for.

  “Gairn Mordric,” the leader of the matrons said with a bow at the waist. Heavy rock walls and thick doors sealed off the bottom floor of the birthing tower to prevent the sounds of their machinations from reaching any timid volunteers. Her words stayed imprisoned in the room, dying with a whisper. “I am so pleased to finally meet you.”

  “Have you completed the task we agreed upon?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes and nodded. Her face was a picture of serenity, and it was a lie. Beneath her curtain of calm was a woman who feared she had lived to see her last setting sun. “We have never been late with an order, Gairn, and we would certainly not dishonor such an important request from the goddess Anemolie by forgoing our duties.”

  “Call me Mordric. I want no part of your ceremonial names.”

  “As you wish.”

  He looked around at the black walls of the room, painted with strokes of orange light from the castor flies hovering overhead. The effect was supposed to be decorative, another ploy to subdue the minds of the volunteers. The ribboned bodies of the swamp insects drifted through the air, no bigger than a flower petal.

  “Where are the submatrons I spoke to before?” he asked.

  “Away,” she said, seemingly aware that she answered too quickly. “I will provide the tour of our facility myself, if you have no objections.”

  “My interest in these facilities begins and ends with my order.”

  “Of course, Mordric. I only thought that if I showed you the process, you might understand some of the…difficulties.”

  “What sort of difficulties?”

  “Nothing preventing our success, I assure you, but I only offer the tour as proof that we left no subject untested.”

  “Fine,” he said, folding his hands together. “Get on with it.”

  The matron led him toward the far door, which slid apart as they approached. Mordric joined her in the transport capsule, an oval carriage with clear walls that gave a view of each floor as they spiraled through the building.

  “Is this your first visit to the upper laboratories?” the matron asked.

  “Yes. I hope it will be brief.”

  The capsule sped past floor after floor, giving him only a brief glimpse of each level. He felt the palpable mix of shame and despondency from the tower volunteers, a thick, acrid taste on his tongue. Weakness. They deserved what they wrought.

  Eventually, the capsule slowed to a halt and its doors opened. The matron brought him into a narrow hallway, lit across the top and bottom by rows of yellow lights. Along the walls were rounded bulging windows packed together like cells of an insect hive. The matron stopped by the first in line.

  “These are our birthing chambers,” she said. “As you know, we pride ourselves on our advancements in biotechnology. There are no other facilities that can perform the procedures we do, or produce our results.”

  Mordric looked into the nearest chamber and caught his breath. A hairless woman stared back at him with pale, milky eyes. It took him a second look to realize that she wasn’t staring at him, but straight ahead like she was frozen alive. Arms of ribbed tubing kept her suspended above the floor, connecting at points along the sides of her chest and waist. Between her legs, pressed against her crease, was a black metal machine with a single portal window in front. A yellow liquid churned inside.

  “The birthing pod,” the matron explained, perhaps seeing his eyes linger. “When the gestation is complete, it removes the child from the womb.”

  “She’s still alive.” It wasn’t a question. He could sense her thoughts, see them like a moving picture in his third eye. Her mind was in a state of retreat, warring against her reality by stealing her away to happier times as though they might somehow dull the pain. And she was in pain—great pain. It would be so easy to turn her thoughts against her and drive that pain like a spike through her skull.

  “Mordric?”

  He hesitated, not wanting the matron to know she’d surprised him from his own dream. “Does this one have my seed?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Her biological makeup was not a sufficient host for your unique gifts. The goddess gave you—”

  “Anemolie merely added to a power that was already there,” he said. “Nothing more.” His gaze shifted to the birthing chamber behind her. When he realized what he was looking at, his chest flamed with heat. “What is a man doing in there?”

  The matron looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Giving birth. As I said, our advancements are unparalleled. Given the right augmentations and cellular therapy, we can use either sex for harvest.”

  “You used this abomination for my children?”

  “And with great results. More than half lived through the day.”

  His mind was already at work, reaching out to the unnatural abomination to connect with his memories. He had been a soldier once, surviving some colonial war on a planet Mordric hadn’t heard of before. He walked through his memories, pushing away the few thoughts of joy in search of the darkness, the fuel that would light the man’s fears. At last, he found it. A memory as common as water, and yet deadlier than any poison. There she was, a mother who swore to love him, cracking her hand across his face until he went to sleep in tears. Mordric took the memory and washed away the rest, replacing the man’s thoughts with a scene he would surely recognize. The room in the river home was small a
nd damp from misuse. The man—a boy now in this memory—sat huddled in a corner, looking through teary eyes at the woman lurching toward him. Mordric left enough hints of her so the boy would know who it was. He made her eyes a deep shade of red, looking down at him through tufts of hair on sunbaked skin. She held no weapon, and yet the boy was no less frightened.

  Come to me, child, and tell me what you’ve done. Mother loves you.

  She reached out for him with fingers raw and blistered. Screaming, he thrashed against her grip as she dragged him to the open door. The river sloshed against the side of the home.

  Mother loves you, wicked child.

  She pushed him slowly over the edge, letting the water rise over his head until it coated his eyes so he could only see a blurred vision of his monster. The river dripped into his open mouth, muting his screams.

  She kept pushing.

  Let me hear you now. All you have to do is say it.

  The boy fought, struggling with all his draining strength to gain enough breath to say he was sorry.

  A warning alarm fired and the yellow lights around the man’s cell turned to red. Behind him, two submatrons ran into the room, frantically checking his biometric readings.

  Mordric looked down at the matron, who cast a glance at him after seeing blood leak from the man’s eyes.

  “I would see my children now,” he said.

  “Of course.” Her thin veil of composure was more transparent now. “As you wish.”

  They returned to the capsule in silence. The spiraling transport ended its climb on the top floor, where a single long window gave a view of the endless swamps below. A dedrical flew past, crowing into the muddy clouds.

  “Before we go through,” the matron said, motioning to the doors, “I wanted to warn you of what’s ahead. What you see may seem cruel, but we find it to be the best method for determining the strength of our subjects. In your case, it also gave us a chance to evaluate their abilities, as it were.”

  “So you were able to replicate my power.”

  She pursed her lips. “With varying degrees of success, as you will see.”

  “You would waste my time with a parade of half-breeds? Bring me the finest and be done with it.”

  “You misunderstand,” she said. “What’s beyond these doors may all be considered successes. I merely wanted to give you the option of which set of powers you most desired.”

  He dropped his stare to her. “What do you mean?”

  “They are not all like you. Whatever you have inside manifests differently in your offspring. Sometimes in ways we were not expecting.” She walked to the doors and touched her hand to the console embedded in the wall. The doors moved apart quietly. “This way.”

  Mordric stepped forward, still trying to fathom her words. His promise to Anemolie was that he would find ways to reproduce his power. He never considered that his power might morph into something else entirely. The possibilities sent a spark through his chest.

  Ahead of him was a metal catwalk leading to a circular platform. The viewing stage looked down to a floor some twenty feet below with spiraling lines leading away from its center.

  On the other side of the stage, the catwalk continued to a hallway ending with a single a room fronted by glass. The lights inside flickered. He could sense something in there—someone, more specifically—but couldn’t see the thoughts of the person inside. When the demonstration was over, he meant to find out what was so special about that room.

  The matron followed him out to the middle platform. He put his hands on the rail and sneered at the blank floor below.

  “Where are they?”

  “It’s almost time for them to wake. Our timing is perfect.”

  The overhead lights dimmed to a faint glow. Beneath the catwalk, the floor began to give way, retracting into the walls, revealing a round room segmented into chambers barely large enough to allow someone to stand. The lights beneath the platform gave him a veiled glimpse of the children—his children—moving in the shadows.

  The dividing walls lowered into the floor, leaving behind a room filled with standing children. They stayed in place, looking at one another like they were waiting for something to happen. He could sense an overpowering flare of the same power that moved within him, but in a different way than he expected. Most of it felt foreign to him, like he was reading a language he couldn’t understand.

  He started to ask what he was supposed to be looking for when the matron put a finger to her lips.

  “We should keep our voices down,” she whispered. “Better not to disturb them.”

  “How am I supposed to judge their abilities this way?”

  “The food is about to be served.”

  A line of thin slits opened around the exterior wall of the room and out of the opening came a stream of follusks—small six-legged creatures hunted by swamp-dwellers for their tender meat. The follusks scattered as soon as they hit the floor, running through the maze of children as they looked for shelter. The children stayed still, eyeing the follusks with hunger. Waiting.

  At last, a sharp signal blared from beneath the platform, unleashing his brood.

  The burst of power nearly pushed him back on his feet as the children let loose with their gifts, each trying to best the others to catch one of the racing animals. One of the boys, a skinny child with flat white hair, knocked three of his brothers out of the way with a bolt of orange light and then pulled three of the animals toward him without moving from his spot. Mordric reached out to him, testing the strength of his mind in hopes that it would match his considerable abilities. He was disappointed to see it filled with self-doubt and pity. He would make no champion. Mordric felt like killing him on the spot.

  Another child caught his eye amidst the chaos, a larger male who had the bald head of the planet’s people. Mordric tested him mentally before he saw what the boy could do. Where the first child was timid and weak, this one was strong with a singular focus—to dominate. Mordric stepped down the stage to get a better view. Despite the child’s power and drive, he lacked intelligence. He would be a blunt instrument, a weapon Mordric couldn’t trust to act on his own. Still, he waited to see how the boy reacted to his siblings chasing follusks around his feet. One by one, the children grew still as the boy stood in the middle of them, casting his eye on each. Then, like trees burning to embers, the children started to flake apart. Each had the same frozen, helpless expression on their face as their bodies disintegrated, leaving behind a cloud of fleeting sparks that disappeared in smoke. Once they were gone, the boy grabbed the follusks at his feet and ate happily.

  A possibility, Mordric thought, although he kept his impressions to himself. The matron watched him closely, waiting for the praise she so craved. He moved away from her, crossing the stage to study the other side of the room. Her nervous footsteps followed.

  The second half of his litter was just as disappointing as the first. Too many weak minds with powers they either couldn’t control or couldn’t use effectively. Most were too inept to do something as simple as kill an animal. He cursed their existence. Anemolie would have his head if he came back empty-handed. He wanted to reach out to all of them at once and put the entire stock out of their misery.

  His eyes fell to a dark section of the room. Even though the platform lit the floor below from wall to wall, no light penetrated the area. Still, he could sense someone there, a girl slightly older than the rest. She was powerful, that much he knew, but there was something else to her that he didn’t feel in the others, a will that set her apart. He kept his hands on the railings as he moved closer, hoping to get a better look.

  In front of the shadow, a crowd of children scrambled to catch a group of cornered follusks. The animals were killed quickly by the fledglings. Before the children could begin the fight for the carcasses, two sets of fiery eyes appeared in the darkness. Long tongues licked the air as a pair of hulking four-legged creatures stepped from the girl’s inky cocoon, freezing the children i
n fear as they bared their teeth. Each animal had black skin that was taught against its muscles. Their teeth were smooth and white, with a pair of longer fangs in front that extended past their bottom jaw.

  They walked directly into the middle of the group. Slowly, the children started to back away from their kill. The animals stood over the dead swamp creatures, guarding them with rumbling growls. One of the boys reached down with his mind to steal a follusk away before he made his escape. You made your play too soon, Mordric thought. He watched the shadows to see how the girl would react. The follusk carcass edged toward the boy, slowly at first, then in a quick rush toward his hand. The animals swarmed him as soon as it touched his fingers. One tore apart his leg even as the boy struggled to use his mind to push the animal away. Mordric could feel the boy’s thoughts weaken, his power rendered useless. The second animal made the kill, sinking its fangs into the boy’s chest and crushing his heart between a pile of shattered bones.

  With blood still dripping from their teeth, the two animals turned toward the rest of the children. The group scattered, running to the far ends of the room.

  As soon as the children were gone, the animals vanished in a wisp of black smoke, leaving the boy’s dead body on the floor. The girl emerged from the darkness and calmly walked toward the pile of dead follusks. She grabbed the group of animals by their tails, collecting her reward. She stopped before she walked back to her sanctuary and cast her eyes toward Mordric. He could sense her power, seething yet controlled, harnessed by the strength of her mind.

  What is your name, child? he asked.

  Ellia.

  Do you wish to be freed from your prison?

  This is no prison to me. I stay because you have not come for me yet.

  A smile crept across Mordric’s face.

  “An extraordinary female,” the matron said with no shortage of pride. “One of many, as you can see.”