Infused (Book 2 of The Pioneers Saga)

by William Stadler

  “C’mon, Sarai. Get up!” he shouted in a whisper.

  The guards hollered, looking for Gardiv. Caleb ripped off his bow and loaded it with an arrow, keeping his eye on the entrance to the cave, hoping that Gardiv would surface. He did.

  Gardiv sprinted in front of the guards. They chased him. Caleb released an arrow. The arrowhead shredded through the injured guard’s knee. The man fell to the ground. The other guard still pursued Gardiv.

  Enormous spikes of ice shot out of the ground. Clods of dirt burst into the canopy. The guard stopped running. He stood back, out of breath, a sinister grin invading his countenance. He invited it.

  The enormous spikes surrounded Gardiv. He could’t escape. The ice was too thick. A man emerged from the caves with his fur coat cloaked around him. His freshly shaven beard sat awkwardly on his face, and his fat hands and thick fingers reached out towards Gardiv, sealing him in an iced encasing. Caleb recognized the man right away.

  It was the man who got away with the crimes that he had committed. The man who convinced his people that he was the likely successor to Governor Jon Uliah. The man who worked with Wex. It was Raylen.

  Caleb couldn’t believe it. What was he doing here in Broughtonhaven?

  “Sarai! Cover me! North!” Caleb yelled, wanting Sarai to Balance the Polarists with Materialists shots.

  He ran ahead towards Gardiv, slamming his dagger into the Materialist canister. He thrusted his arm forward. The hilt of the blade slid against each of his fingers as he threw it. The tip of the dagger chipped off a piece of the ice prison then spun off to the ground.

  The crack in the ice lined with an orange glow from the Materialist Anaerobia. The shell shattered as its structure was compromised. Gardiv broke free.

  The watchman shifted his gaze from Caleb to Gardiv, trying to decide who to focus on. Sarai’s Materialist blasts exploded all around them. Gardiv was shivering. Caleb pulled him away, dodging the flames. Raylen absorbed their heat. Caleb felt his temperature plummeting. He was nauseous. He kept himself together, heading back towards Sarai.

  Raylen and the guard ran after them. The temperature decreased even more. The trees split overhead, collapsing in all directions. Spirits moaned and shrieked and screamed through the darkness.

  Not again. Not again. Not again. Caleb refused to fall victim to the hands of the Polarists.

  “Release!” Caleb yelled. “Release!” he yelled again.

  It was time. The Pioneers’ finale. If they were going to be captured, then they needed to get rid of the evidence of their existence, and they needed to destroy the Anaerobia. They stripped off their belts in mid-stride and dumped the blood canister into the Materialist canister, slinging their belts at their pursuers.

  A deep warbling sound bubbled behind them. Caleb didn’t look back. He was faster now, but not faster than Sarai who speeded past both of them.

  “Down! Down!” she screamed.

  The molecules of the trees and the ground pried themselves from one another as the charged Materialist Anaerobia activated. The warbling became more intense. The oscillations increased. Then the sound mellowed out into a silent, deep bass that conquered the land. The ground quaked. The environment was ripped apart. Ice shrapnel cut through the air. A large gully manifested between the Polarists and the Pioneers.

  Arms crossed and chin low, Raylen watched in tacit disapproval.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE BARRICADES

  They didn’t stop running. Gardiv’s body heat returned as he kept up a swift pace through the forested canopy. The night seemed evil, but not because of the region. No. It was because of Raylen. Why was he in Broughtonhaven?

  Caleb’s lungs were stronger now. A year ago he couldn’t have kept up this pace, but he was a Pioneer. He had learned to buffet his body so that it wouldn’t quit — so that it wouldn’t give up.

  They headed west to Caldenholtz, only stopping to rest for short amounts of time. Keeping their pace, they lived off minimal amounts of food, and each step was at least a slow jog. His times of making the day journey around Juten had prepared him for this.

  Upon entering the city, the town was as busy as before. They waited to catch their breath so as not to appear as if they were in a panic.

  “Who was that man?” Gardiv asked. “I didn’t recognize him.”

  “That was Raylen Fevin,” Sarai said. “We ran into him six months ago. He was the one who sat back and allowed the Polarist city of Yugan to be wiped out.”

  “So that’s the guy?” asked Gardiv. His voice was deep and troubled. He didn’t ask wanting an answer. His question was more in disappointment. He assumed that the man who orchestrated the destruction of Yugan was a lot more formidable. But he had experienced Raylen’s formidability for himself, and it wasn’t Raylen’s physique that was powerful, but it was his emblem.

  “Yeah. That’s him,” said Caleb. “The governor of Valenheid.”

  “I know who he is now.” Gardiv waved Caleb off in slight frustration. “Why do you think he was in the Spiritualist Cave?” Gardiv asked.

  “No idea,” said Caleb.

  They continued through the city trying to dodge the people who passed. The massive stone buildings seemed like they should have toppled over by their weight alone, but the Spiritualists had developed deep foundations, and these edifices were sturdier than they appeared.

  The sun was at its brightest, but the temperature was cool. The winter had set in. Small wind gusts brushed against the Pioneers’ faces trying to comfort them, but the fatigue of their journey was evident. They needed to find a place to stay, and they needed to find answers.

  They approached a small house on the outskirts of the town where the bustle of the city faded. Caleb knocked on the door, and sliding footsteps edged over the dirt floor from inside. The door opened cautiously, and a small, tender hand peeled around the corner. Her grayish eyes stared at them suspiciously, but then she smiled.

  “Caleb, have you come to pester me?” asked Shauna with her usual sly grin.

  “Shauna, how are you?” he asked.

  “I’m glad you’re here. Come inside.” She waved them in.

  There was one bed at the entrance with another room connected adjacently. Her place wasn’t extravagant, considering that her grandfather, Arthur Grant, was so wealthy.

  “Shauna, we have a few questions to ask you,” Caleb said.

  “Raylen. Polarists. Caves. I know,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “How?” asked Sarai.

  “I figured it would be a matter of time.” Shauna avoided the question so that she didn’t have to admit that she knew about Raylen because of Caleb’s emotions. She still refused to tell him that because she had connected with his spirit to save his life, she would always know where he was, always hear what his spirit was thinking, and if she wanted to, she could kill him at anytime.

  “So what else do you know?” Caleb asked.

  “Not much more than that. But the Alpha Council doesn’t know that Raylen’s here. Ever since Wex betrayed them, the council has agreed to alert the cities whenever someone from Valenheid needed to enter Broughtonhaven.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Caleb asked.

  “We need to go to Spiritualist Alpha Yael,” said Shauna.

  They walked through the roads of the city looking for Yael’s place. The people treated them with blatant disrespect. An old man, drunk and staggering, hollered at Shauna. “Why are you hosting Wanderers?”. The man steadied himself on Caleb’s shoulder. His emblem was scratched and tattered. The stench of liquor obtruded Caleb’s nostrils as the sour smell of vomit diffused from the man’s lips. Caleb pushed the man away and sniffed his own hand. The odor of stale body sweat lingered on his fingertips.

  More citizens of Caldenholtz stared at Shauna and her entourage. The people hated the Wanderers, and the disdain of the crowd caved in upon them.

  By shouldering through the hoards of people, the four of them arrived safely at Yael’s work
place. They entered the building, and she was sitting at her desk shuffling through different scrolls and signing off on different papers. Her gray hair slid off her shoulders as she turned from side to side looking at the mound of work piled up on her desk. Working as a member of the council and as a governor seemed to be overwhelming her. Caleb wondered how attractive she must have been in her younger years, because her beauty had been maintained.

  “Shauna, why do you bring these...Wanderers into my office?” Yael asked, not looking up from her work. Her encounter with Arthur a few months ago had not softened her heart towards the Wanderers.

  “They have discovered something that you may want to hear,” said Shauna.

  Caleb was disappointed that Shauna didn’t defend their honor, but this was not the time for hubris.

  Yael put her papers to the side. Soft moans of spirits hummed around her. She draped her scarf around her shoulder and examined the Pioneers.

  She beckoned them forward with four fingers. “What information do you have?”

  Caleb cleared his throat, refusing to be intimidated by her authority. It didn’t work. His voice cracked. “We were…”

  Sarai turned away to smile. She kicked his foot to let him know that she heard his slip.

  He started again, blocking Sarai out so that he didn’t laugh at himself. “We were walking near the Elemental Caves, and…”

  “And why were you near our caves?” Yael asked, not concerned with what he had to say. She put her elbow on the table, squinted one eye, and peered at them down her index finger. “Are you the ones who have been bothering my guards?”

  Caleb turned to look at Sarai. He couldn’t think of how to respond.

  “You are, aren’t you?”

  “Are you going to listen or not, lady?” Gardiv asked, no longer holding back his irritation.

  Yael stood and slammed her palms on the desk, her papers pinned underneath. The spirits’ moans got louder. “You, a filthy Wanderer! Dead to me! Sickened to look at! And scum to think about! Dare to talk to someone in my position so carelessly! Guards!”

  Stomping footsteps flocked to the door. Two women appeared, armed only with their emblems. They were twins, and their eyes were blackened, contrasting their stiff, shoulder length golden hair that remained almost still as they moved.

  They spoke simultaneously. “Yes, Madam.”

  “These disgusting insurgents have overstepped their bounds. Get them out of my sight.”

  In one voice they responded. “Should we kill them, Madam?”

  “Do what you must….”

  The women came close. Each step was in unison. Caleb reached for his dagger. It was not on his hip. He had lost it in the fight with the Polarists. The spiritual tension arose. The moans turned to shrieks.

  “Wait!” Caleb belted out. “Raylen was at the caves!”

  Yael held out her hand. Her face dropped, and her eyes widened. The women paused. “What did you say?”

  “Polarist Raylen Fevin was at the caves. We saw him and his men, and we rushed here to tell Shauna,” Caleb said.

  “Shauna, is this true?” Yael asked.

  Shauna nodded and shifted her weight to her left foot. Her white-laced, black sari draped against her calves.

  “I don’t believe these absurdities,” Yael said, but her voice doubted her own words.

  “We can show you, if you’d like,” Gardiv replied. He half-grinned, head titled back with one hand on his bow that he had not thrown into the Materialist Anaerobia.

  The eight of them traveled for a few days to the location of the caves. Yael was still in disbelief. Fearing an ambush, she took her guards with her.

  When they arrived, the afternoon sun shined faintly through the canopy. Trees were strewn about in all directions, and the terrain was a wreck. The gully from the explosion cut through the landscape. The dirt had turned to mud from the melted ice. But the ice was too thick, and the environmental temperature was too low. The frozen liquid was probably melted by Raylen before he left so that he could cover his tracks.

  The mud squished beneath Caleb’s boots. Globs of water smacked against his head from the canopy above. The ground was too dry and thirsty to drink, so the water ran off the surface.

  “What happened here?” Yael asked. She stepped around, carefully investigating the scene. The hem of her clothing picked up smudges of mud.

  Caleb did not want to tell her how the crater came to be. “Raylen and his people did this.”

  “All this?” Yael asked. “What was he doing? Did he attack you three?” Yael still searched the area, not looking at the others.

  Sarai turned to Caleb, knowing that they shouldn’t say anything else.

  Yael made her way into the cave. Caleb and the others followed her. Drops of water and the sound of muffled spirits echoed throughout the tunnel. After traveling several hundred yards, the grounds inside got slipperier. The solid rocks below had been coated with a layer of ice. The chill of winter was colder inside.

  The moans of the spirits quieted down. A cooling mist seeped up to the jagged stone ceiling from a massive ice block that sealed the cave, preventing them from going any further.

  Yael put her fingers against the barrier, face illuminating from the icy blue. “What is Raylen doing?”

  “That’s what we were trying to figure out,” said Sarai.

  Shauna was as confused as Yael. “The Wanderers came and told me, and I said that they should talk to you.”

  “Is this the only cave or are there others?” Yael asked.

  “No idea,” said Gardiv.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Gardiv wrinkled his brow and dusted off his pants. He couldn’t take anymore of this woman.

  “I don’t know, Yael,” Shauna replied, trying to alleviate Yael’s irritation.

  “Go and look around at some of the other caves and report back to me,” said Yael.

  “Okay. I’ll let you know when I…”

  “Now!” said Yael. The spirits surfaced and retreated.

  Shauna rolled her eyes and headed out of the cave. Caleb and the others followed.

  Yael led them. “I’m going back to Caldenholtz. I will send out guards to check the other caves. Let me know what you find, Shauna.”

  Caleb and the others traveled to the different caves, discovering more instances where the caves had been sealed shut with an ice divider. They continued as far south as Orel, near the southern coast and approached another cave. The sun had set and the canopy was dark. Only the resurgences of the spirits could be seen.

  “He said he wants us to seal it as deep as we can reach,” one man called out from inside the tunnel.

  Caleb motioned to the others to stay low. The Polarists were in the cave.

  “This is going to take a while,” said a woman.

  “Raylen knows what he’s doing,” another man replied.

  Their voices reverberated from within the depths of the underground chamber. Caleb stalked the sounds into the cave. The others followed. He kept his hand braced on his quiver to keep the arrows from rattling, not wanting to startle the Polarists, especially since he did not have his Anaerobia. He reached behind him and grabbed Sarai.

  “What is it, Caleb?” she whispered.

  “Just wanted to check to see if you were behind me.”

  They crept closer to the voices, wanting to see who these Polarists were and what they were doing.

  “You think this will work?” asked one man.

  “I wouldn’t put it past Raylen. That’s one guy I would follow to my grave.”

  “How many’s that?” Gardiv whispered.

  “I’ve heard five voices so far. There may be others,” Caleb replied softly. “Shauna you might want to stay back.”

  “I can handle myself,” Shauna replied.

  They eased in a little closer. Torches lit up the cavern from around the bend. Ice crackled as the guards formed the barrier. The spirits were silent. None were surfacing. The chil
l from the ice swerved past Caleb.

  “They’ll never see this coming,” said one of the sentries.

  Caleb sneaked in a bit closer. Six soldiers had their hands outstretched to the ice block. Their thick coats hung tightly around their shoulders.

  “I can’t let them do this,” Shauna said.

  “Shauna! Don’t!” Caleb yelled in a sharp whisper.

  Her eyes turned black. Spirits growled around them. Fear invaded the caves. Her hair blew over her shoulders as she dropped into the Hellstate. Her head tilted to the side. She focused on the woman, taking over her body as Shauna collapsed to the ground.

  “Guide Shot!” Gardiv yelled.

  Caleb snatched off his bow and pulled an uncharged arrow, having no Anaerobia to charge it. Gardiv let off an arrow that cut through the heart of one of the guards.

  The woman who Shauna commanded fought against the control, but Shauna’s hold was too strong. Shauna forced the woman to grab one of the guards, clasping his throat and freezing his neck. The man fought back. His temperature dropped too swiftly for him to survive. His windpipe closed as a seal of ice clogged his airway. Gargling for air, he fell to the ground, gasping for breath. But there was none to be found.

  The guards maintained The Deficit. Caleb struggled against the cold. He yanked out another arrow and released it at the man who stood two heads taller than the others. The man formed an ice shield over his torso and blocked the arrow that sputtered to the ground.

  The man shot a run of ice across the ground. The ice rose from the surface, and a frozen blob wrapped around Caleb, locking him in place.

  “Sarai!” he called.

  Without aiming, she launched an arrow at the man who had Caleb entrapped. She missed. She tore her dagger from her hip and slung it at the man. It sunk into his chest, but his coat was too thick, and the blade did not cut through.

  The guard reached towards her. A mass of ice crumbled in on her from the ceiling. She rolled out of the way, the ice barely nicking her ankle. She sprinted towards the man, jerking an arrow from her quiver. This time, with precision, the arrowhead sliced through the guard’s eye.