Infused (Book 2 of The Pioneers Saga)

by William Stadler

“What we want is justice,” said Caleb. “Only the Alpha Council will know what to do with you.”

  “None of the Alphas wanted to have anything to do with the invasion when it came up in the last meeting,” said Raylen. “You’re wasting your time taking me there.”

  “I know what the Alphas said. Governor Rian told me. But I’m sure they’d be satisfied with a peaceful surrender,” said Caleb.

  “I just don’t want to see any of them. They’re going to ruin me.”

  Shauna grabbed his hair and shook his head. “Don’t you dare talk to me about ruining anything or anyone. Not after what you’ve done to Broughtonhaven.”

  “Shayna, I’m sor…”

  “It’s Shauna! You don’t even have the decency to get my name right.”

  “Shauna. I meant Shauna,” said Raylen, putting his hands up to protect his face. “Just don’t hit me.”

  “Let him go,” Caleb said. “We have to get him there in one piece. We don’t want to stoop to his level.”

  “I’ll stoop as low as I can to extract this weasel,” Shauna said.

  Raylen squinted in disappointment. “I’m not a weasel. I just want the best for my people, just like you do.”

  “You don’t get to compare yourself to me. Not now and not ever.” Her voice was calmer, but it was still unsteady.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what you want me to say to make this better.”

  “It’s not your words that I want. It’s that stone on your chest that you don’t deserve to wear.”

  He knuckled his emblem, considering the pain of extraction. There was no way that he could give it up. It was what made him who he was. To let it go would be to give himself up as well. His body temperature dropped, and his hands iced over.

  Caleb pressed the tip of his blade into Raylen's back, this time breaking the skin.

  “Ouch! What did you do to me?” His words were slurred.

  “This is Naturalist Anaerobia, and if you try to lower the temperature again, I will use more of it and shut you down.”

  “So you get to make threats and I don’t?” Shauna asked, shaking her head, furious.

  “I don’t intend to hurt him like you do. I need him to cooperate.”

  “I can make him cooperate.”

  “You don’t need to make me. I’ll do whatever you ask. Just don’t hurt me. I don’t like pain.”

  “Hmph. It’s not about what you like,” said Shauna as she grabbed him around his throat. Her eyes faded in and out of the Hellstate.

  “Let him go, Shauna.” Caleb grabbed her arm and threw it to her side. “You will not hurt him. Not while we are with him. Don’t make me have to say it again.”

  “You’re taking his side now?”

  “Far from it, but we are going to do this the right way.”

  “I’m sure you’d change your mind if you knew what he did.”

  They stopped walking, and Caleb turned to Shauna, keeping his dagger pointed at Raylen. “What are you talking about?”

  “What he did to Dena. If you knew. I’m sure you’d change your mind.”

  “How would you know?” Caleb asked.

  “When I took control of him, I read him. I’m sure you’d change your mind...if you knew,” she smiled slyly.

  Caleb grabbed Raylen’s cloak with both hands. “What did you do?”

  “I-I didn’t do…”

  “Tell me!”

  “Sarah, get him off me!”

  “It’s Sarai!” She growled as she thrust her dagger against his throat.

  “You killed her, didn’t you!” Caleb grunted and slammed Raylen against the ground.

  “Stop. You’re hurting me. You said you didn’t want to do that.”

  “Shut-up!” Sarai yelled, pushing her knee into his chest.

  Shauna stood back and crossed her arms, smiling at their rage. They needed to feel her anger, and they needed to act on it — like she did. “This is what he deserves.”

  Caleb squeezed Raylen’s throat. “Tell me what you did.”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  Caleb eased off of him, but Sarai kept the knife pressed on his neck. “Tell us!” she screamed.

  “It wasn’t me. It was Wex. He was the one who strangled her. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Liar!” Shauna yelled. The spirits growled in an echo to her words. “Tell them what you did.”

  Caleb banged Raylen’s head on the ground. “Say it, you pig.”

  “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you. Just don’t hurt me,” said Raylen, covering his face with his hands. “I was with her when she died. She asked for my help, and I didn’t do anything as Wex choked her. But that’s all.”

  “Tell them what you told Wex,” Shauna demanded.

  “I can’t tell them. They’re going to kill me,” Raylen pleaded.

  “Tell us!” Caleb said, banging his head against the ground again.

  “All right. All right.” Raylen rubbed the back of his head. “I could have saved her, but I when she begged for my help...I told Wex to finish her off,” he sighed. “But I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking…”

  “You killed her! It was your fault!” Caleb banged his head against the ground with each word.

  Sarai stepped back. “Caleb, stop….” Her words were barely audible. Raylen was the reason for her loss. He was the reason that Dena had not survived, but still Sarai couldn’t bring herself to be the reason for his death without the authority of the council. “Stop, Caleb,” she said more loudly.

  “Why should I?” Caleb said through his teeth, pressing down on Raylen with all his weight. “We have him now, and this is what he deserves.”

  “Pioneer Eaves. Stop!”

  Caleb looked at her with tears and anger and fury and rage. “We have him right here. The man who changed Clydenholm with his ego.”

  “That is not up to us, Pioneer Eaves. He needs to go to the council.”

  “Kill him, Caleb!” Shauna screamed.

  Caleb lifted his dagger, glancing back from Sarai to Shauna. He clenched the blade in his hands. The breeze retreated from him, and the sunlight hid behind the clouds and the canopy. Darkness covered the land, and the spirits snarled nearby. His knuckles turned white from how tightly he gripped the hilt.

  “Do it….” Shauna said.

  Caleb pressed the blade into Raylen’s chest. Raylen squirmed underneath. His lip trembled in fear for his life. Caleb could see the dread in the man’s eyes, and Caleb's sanity crept back into his mind. He pushed off of Raylen’s body and stood to his feet, running his fingers through his hair. “I can’t do it,” he said. “Sarai’s right. We need to take him to the council.”

  “Don’t let your weakness control you,” Shauna said.

  “Weakness? There’s no weakness in letting him live. Not when the easy choice would be to kill him. My weakness would be to give in to that.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” Raylen said.

  “I don’t want to hear another word from you, or I will let Shauna do whatever she wants,” said Caleb. His wrath had not subsided, but his soundness had fully returned. “Get up, and let’s go. The sooner we get you there, the better your chances of living are. I can’t guarantee that I can resist the urge to kill you more than once.”

  “And I can’t guarantee that I’d try to stop him,” Sarai said as she twirled her dagger around in her hand.

  Raylen slid off the ground and brushed himself off. “Now I’m all dirty,” he said to himself.

  A few more hours passed and they were close to Bachenlaw. The sun was close to setting, but the brightness of its rays still pierced lively through the canopy. “I really don’t think I can go through with this,” Raylen pleaded.

  “I really don’t think you should be talking,” Shauna threatened.

  Caleb slowed down.

  “What is it?” Sarai asked.

  “Shh….” He put his finger over his lips, crouched down, and sc
anned the landscape. The sound of cracking twigs and rustling leaves crept across the terrain. Whatever it was seemed be coming from the east. “What is that?” Caleb whispered. “Are these your people?” he asked Raylen.

  Raylen shook his head in fear. “I have no idea. They aren’t with me,” he whispered back.

  Caleb pulled off his bow and kept low to the ground. The sounds got louder, and Caleb caught a glimpse of an enormous shadowy figure slithering through the trees above. He backed up and eased out an arrow.

  A grumbling voice bellowed across the land. “You work with Raylen, you die.” Caleb felt the voice in his chest.

  “We’re not with him!” Sarai called back. “We’re taking him to the Alpha Council.”

  “You work with Raylen, you die.” The voice was closer. The slithering hastened, and branches creaked as the beast shouldered through them.

  “Raylen drop the temperature!” Caleb yelled. Raylen entered The Deficit. The trees cracked under the power of his pressure.

  The beast dropped from the trees in a powerful thud and whipped its tail at Shauna, knocking her backwards. She hit her head and rubbed her temples to ease the pain.

  The beast was a poisonous viper as long as twenty men and its diamond shaped head was the size of a carriage. Caleb rolled to the ground and released an arrow at the snake. The arrow bounced of its scales. “Lower the temperature, Raylen!”

  “Raylen!” Sarai yelled. “Caleb, he’s getting away!”

  Caleb looked over his shoulder and the heavyset man was huffing and puffing over the hills to escape. “Shauna, grab him.”

  She rubbed her head and focused on Raylen, but he was too far away. She sprinted after him. The snake followed her and coiled around her. Its violet emblem pulsed on its underbelly. “You work with Raylen, you die,” the snake said again.

  “Let me go. I’m on your side,” said Shauna. “And Raylen’s getting away.”

  The viper tightened around her. Caleb doused his blade with the Naturalist Anaerobia and jabbed it into the snake. Emerald fumes fused out of the wound. The viper hissed and shriveled up on the ground as it released Shauna. The Anaerobia wore off more quickly than Caleb assumed because of the size of the beast.

  It raised its head, and its neck ribs flattened out like a cobra. The snake fixed on Caleb and struck. Caleb rolled out of the way. Dirt from the ground flung into the air from the power of the constrictor. Caleb jumped on its back. The snake rolled over, smashing Caleb underneath and writhing frantically around on the stony ground. Caleb pushed the beast off, but it was too heavy. The viper met eyes with Caleb, and its tongue sputtered onto Caleb's face. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for death.

  Shauna raised her hands to the sky and spirits swirled all about her. She screamed into the canopy, and the spirits halted and submitted to her command. She reached out towards the snake and sapped the spirits from the creature. Shrieks and screams ripped through the air. The bellowing voice of the viper turned into the voice of a man. The scales dropped to the ground, and the beast uncoiled into a normal sized Spiritualist.

  Caleb forced the man off of him and pinned him to the ground. “We lost Raylen because of you!”

  “You didn’t lose him,” the man said through his teeth. “You were working with him.”

  “Working with him? We weren’t working with him,” said Sarai. “We captured him, and we were escorting him to the council, but your assault let him get away.”

  The man’s eyes widened, and he didn’t know what to say. Caleb let him up and looked off into the direction that Raylen headed. “We have to see if we can catch Raylen.” Caleb raced over the hill chasing after him.

  =====

  Several days passed, and even with Sarai’s expert tracking skills, she couldn’t find him. Raylen covered his tracks by freezing the ground. But as they followed the ice, the trails seemed to circle back in different directions with no pattern. He must have reconnected with other Polarists who were helping him out, Caleb thought.

  They set up camp with no fire to keep from being seen in the night. The Broughtonhaven breeze whistled past them, and a blaze would have been comforting with the chill from the gusts. The moon shined brightly overhead, but the canopy grabbed its rays so that the travelers could barely see one another.

  “We’re not going to find him now,” said Sarai. “And if we do, the council is no longer in session. We’d have to wait with him for two weeks before we could turn him in.”

  “Should’ve taken care of him when we had the chance,” Shauna said off to the side.

  “What’s your name?” Caleb asked the man who transformed from the snake.

  “It’s Kilna.”

  “What made you attack us?” Sarai asked.

  “I don’t know. I saw Raylen, and I couldn’t control the rage. It’s like it just took over me. I was too afraid to do anything before, but as the fear and the wrath came, I couldn’t control myself. The Hellstate was too powerful.”

  Shauna crossed her arms and shook her head. “This is what’s happening to my people. This is what he’s done.” She pointed at the Spiritualist. “My people can’t control their Hellstates. Soon they will either destroy themselves or all go mad.”

  Kilna dropped his head to the ground, and his thick hair covered his face. “I didn’t mean to let Raylen go. I really wasn’t planning to do anything but hide, but the more I thought about it, the less control I had. It’s like I don’t even know what day it is. It’s always dark, and I can only see the moon and the firelight. The sun is gone, and I feel numb all the time. I hate this.”

  “You let him go,” Shauna said to him. “We had him, and you let him go.”

  “Shauna, he didn’t mean to,” said Caleb.

  “All these excuses don’t bring sanity to my people. I’m tired of hearing them. Raylen is gone, and the torture continues.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Sarai asked.

  “We need to find Spiritualist Yael,” said Shauna.

  “Where would she be if the council is no longer in session?” asked Caleb. “She can't be in her office in Caldenholtz with all the Polarists patrolling the area.”

  “She’s not. She’s probably in Fairlow meeting with her Maturists. Most people don’t go so far south because there isn’t much near there,” said Shauna.

  “That’s where we saw Wex and the Void for the first time,” Caleb said.

  “Exactly,” said Shauna.

  “We should wait a few days for Gardiv and Uriel here in Bachenlaw, then we can head there,” Sarai said.

  “I can go with you,” Kilna said.

  “It would be better if you connected with the Spiritualists throughout Broughtonhaven to let them know that we are doing something about the invasion, just to give them some morale,” said Shauna. “They need to know that help is coming.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Kilna asked.

  “We don’t know yet. But the people need to hear that we are doing something.”

  They connected with Gardiv and told him about all they had encountered. Then they traveled down to Fairlow near the southern coast of Broughtonhaven. The canopy faded, and the sunlight beamed down on them from above. The waves from the ocean slid against the shore, and the region seemed at peace even with the Polarist invasion. It was a deceptive serenity, but Caleb accepted it.

  “Thanks again for getting Gardiv to come,” Caleb said to Uriel.

  “It’s the most I can do,” she said with a smile.

  “Can’t say that I’m looking forward to seeing this Yael again,” said Gardiv.

  “She’s not as rude as you think. Working as part of the council and being the governor is taxing on her. Especially here in the Spiritualist Region. The spirits in Broughtonhaven are as demanding as the people.”

  “Well whatever her problem is, I’d rather not have to deal with it again.”

  They knocked on the door of a small wooden building that was set off from the shore. No one answered. “Ya
el, it’s Shauna.”

  The door creaked open, and an aging hand invited the five of them inside. The house only had two rooms. Candlestick holders lined the walls. The windows were shut, and there was no other furniture, only chairs — one beneath each candle. There were no tables, nor was there a bed. Yael was meeting with her Maturists as Shauna had said. Also, the twins were with her, standing instead of sitting.

  “What brings you here, Shauna? Any news about Raylen?”

  “Nothing that’s worth telling.” Shauna didn’t want to admit that they had captured Raylen but let him get away. Caleb looked at her, confused, but then he understood. “What do the Alphas say about it all?” Shauna asked.

  “I didn’t go this month. They need to know how serious this is. A few slaps on the wrist don’t solve the problem that we have here in Broughtonhaven. It’s sad when the Wanderers are more willing to help us than the people from the provinces,” said Yael, pointing to Caleb. “We can use all the assistance we can get, and I apologize for how I treated the three of you the last time we spoke.”

  “Worse things have been said,” Sarai replied.

  “I’m sure, but they shouldn’t have been said by me. Having these two positions is sapping my soul from me. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t handle it.” Yael fixed her graying white hair with her fingertips, and she brushed off her sari. “I don’t miss Wex, but having him as governor kept me from having to do his job.”

  “We might need your help if we are going to be able help you better,” Caleb said.

  “Whatever we can do to expel the Polarists from our province, I’m willing to do. So many Spiritualists have been Dominated through this, and they have submitted to their Hellstates. Before now, I only looked at Hellstates as a personal choice – a path only to be left up to the individual, but I see now that I was wrong.” She looked solemnly at the ground.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Caleb.

  “Because I can see how it affects everyone. The region is in chaos, and even connecting with the spirits has become more difficult. They all are in disarray. What’s worse is that so many people dropped into the Darkened Temptation for survival, not knowing what it was going to do to them. Now they can’t find a way out. I don’t know which is worse for them, the invasion or the Hellstate.”