War: Bridge & Sword: Apocalypse (Bridge & Sword Series Book 6)

by JC Andrijeski

  She remembered who she was.

  He stood there, a stately apparition cutting a shadow over a view port on the side of the underwater ship that had become her home.

  Truthfully, Cass thought of it more as a creature than a ship. The beast in which they rode had its own heartbeat, its own way of swimming through the waves beneath the waves, its own blood circulating, its own nervous system. It had its own mind, one that governed all its movements. Cass could talk to it, as could Feigran, and the old man. She could talk to it so easily, easier than most of the living things sharing the ocean with them.

  Cass studied the man standing there, and saw him looking at her.

  His expression was untainted by lust, despite her nakedness. His eyes remained solely on hers. In them, she didn’t even see that less-definable but ubiquitous want, where most people seemed to always want something from the people around them, consciously or not.

  Logically, she knew he did want things from her.

  He was open about that fact, transparent in his intentions. Also, the things he wanted of her, he also wanted for her.

  Moreover, they were the things she never would have dared whisper she wanted for herself. The old man knew all of her secrets, and loved her for them––praised her for them. He never flinched when she spoke, or frowned in that way that told her he didn’t approve.

  She never had to hide who she was with him.

  According to him, she never had to hide who she truly was, ever again.

  The old man must have felt some fragment of her thoughts, because he smiled.

  “It is true,” he conceded gently. “I do want things, Cassandra. And yes, I want them from you. But realize this, my dearest of intermediaries… it only seems the world wants in this way, hungers in this way, because of who you are. To others, there are only things to want, things that elude them. You are powerful, War Cassandra, and the weak always hunger after the strong. You see that want because it has surrounded you, in various ways, your entire life.”

  The gaunt face turned towards her more squarely.

  His skull-like features had bothered her at first, back when she first reached that house in Argentina.

  They bothered her no more.

  Truthfully, she saw him completely differently now. Since the pain and her change, he actually physically looked different to her. Now he had a kind of sophisticated austerity to him that she liked, like a grandfather who’d once been a war general, versus one who’d been a farmer or a factory-worker or a doughy office employee.

  She watched him clasp long-fingered hands in front of the tailored jacket he wore, and she thought everything about him perfect. His angular face was tinged blue and orange by the hull lights and the water outside the view port; he watched her with pale, golden eyes, and she could see him looking at her, really seeing her, even now. His expression didn’t change, apart from a slight lift of his chin, and she liked that, too.

  “Powerful people are always desired, Cassandra,” he added gently. “I’m sorry to say, you must accustom yourself to this. It will only get worse, with your power growing as swiftly as it is. You will be sought out, pressed for aid, coveted, envied, feared, secretly loved and just as passionately hated.” He shrugged eloquently with a pale hand. “You will soon learn to see these things as they are, War Cassandra. You will learn to feel pity for these people, even as you look through their wants with a strategist’s eye, utilizing them where you are able, utilizing everything around you. For all of it, even their childish want, is necessary to the cause.”

  He let his lips quirk in a small smile.

  “…Of course, you will need to view me the same, if you are to take your place in the world. I work for you, Cassandra. I do so happily, willingly, with love, loyalty and pride. I will continue to do so, for as long as you will have me––but I would be lying if I said I did not do this in part for selfish reasons. Or if I said I was immune to the power you possess myself.”

  She laughed, and saw his lips quirk higher.

  “Should I expect you to ask me for something now, uncle?” she said teasingly. “Since you’re so obviously going out of your way to butter me up with your pretty words? Or is stroking the ego of War part of your sacred duty, as well?”

  His sculpted lips smiled back, even as he clicked humorously with his tongue.

  “Would I be much of a servant if I could not do this smallest of things for my beloved intermediary?” he said, humor also in his voice. “If that is sacred duty, then I perform that happily as well, my most Formidable Mistress.”

  When she laughed again, louder that time, he tilted his hand and head, still smiling that wry way of his.

  His smile faded then, and his melodious voice turned deadly serious.

  “You joke, Cassandra, but in truth, there is something real behind what we both are saying. I would not consider it ‘stroking your ego,’ however, so much as helping you remove the filters from your eyes––filters imposed on you by your inferiors, and by those who wished to keep you in the dark about who you truly are.”

  His eyes hardened. His voice hardened, too.

  “Truthfully, it angers me beyond reason, how much your self-image has been distorted by animals and inferiors.”

  Looking at her, he pursed his lips.

  “All beings suffer pain, War Cassandra. Intermediaries more than most. With pain comes wisdom, and growth… all life is birthed through pain.” His mouth curled into a frown. “But you were subjected to lies beyond count… blatant lies about who you are, and your place in the creation. The millions upon millions of small, devious lies, told to you by your own family––your human family and your spiritual one––are simply beyond my capacity to forgive. The petty, jealous, controlling manipulations and gaslighting. The way you were constantly treated as inferior to that pampered, narcissistic Bridge, makes me angry not only at her but at the entire Seven and Adhipan, who certainly should have known better.”

  His gold eyes reflected hull lights through the view port as he frowned.

  “I know you probably tire of hearing me say this as well, Cassandra,” he added. “But I am so happy and gratified at how swiftly and easily you have overcome their decades of mental abuse and outright brainwashing. I admit to no small pride in my role at helping you accomplish this, in being blessed to come to the aid of the most powerful of the Four. Any small thing I can do now, to help you remember your true self, to shed those years of toxic programming and shaming, I will happily do. I see it as no different than passing on the skills I have spent a lifetime learning, all to prepare you for your work here.”

  He smiled finally, tilting his head.

  “…These things fulfill me in ways you cannot imagine, my dear child. This is the true source of my love and pride. And, of course, my conceit.”

  Cass snorted another laugh, clicking humorously.

  Her face had flushed with warmth, though. She still struggled to take in his words, to not react to things he said with embarrassment or by closing down her heart.

  Even now, she couldn’t not make a joke of it.

  “Your conceit looks an awful lot like flattery,” she smiled. “If it exists, you hide it well.”

  “Do I?” He smiled again. “I had thought myself rather obvious with it.”

  She laughed, shaking her head.

  She didn’t look away from him, though. She continued to study his face where he stood against the blue-green of ocean, lit by the submarine’s lights in defiance of the dark. Her eyes were pulled briefly by a cruising shark that paced the ship.

  Briefly, she felt its mind, the slow, primordial roil of its curiosity about the underwater creature that was so much larger than it.

  Then its visible black eye rolled white, yellow in the submarine’s lights, right before it darted, knife-like, back to the darker reaches of ocean.

  Still turning over the seer’s words, Cass felt her smile falter.

  “You don't really believe that,” she said.

>   Her own voice grew serious.

  “…I understand why you would want me to feel better about myself. I really do. I believe you, uncle, when you say I have a distorted image of myself, that I don’t see my true potential, or understand my role in events to come. But you don’t really believe what you said about me and the rest of the Four?” Looking up at him, she added apologetically, “I’m better now. I really am. You don’t need to flatter me, uncle, really. You can tell me the truth.”

  The seer didn’t flinch. His face remained guileless, politely curious.

  “The truth about what? In which respect?” he said only.

  “You can’t really think I’m the most powerful of the Four.” Cass folded her arms, looking past him to a school of fish, their silver sides flashing in the lights. “Not next to Allie. Certainly not next to Revik… your precious Nenzi.”

  Her last words came out tinged with a faint bitterness, in spite of herself.

  Yes, she was jealous of how the old man viewed Revik. She knew the old man knew that, but she couldn’t quite shake that jealousy entirely.

  He was the old man’s first choice, after all. He was the infamous Syrimne d’Gaos, who he’d trained from a small child. Whether he’d fought his destiny at the beginning or not, Revik brought the human world to its knees in the end.

  He’d been loyal too, until that loyalty was stolen from him.

  The man’s thin lips rose in a perceptible smile, as if he heard that, too.

  Cass fought to smile back, but heard the edge in her own voice. “Did I say something funny, uncle? Or are you simply in an amused mood?”

  “The smile is due to irony,” he said, clicking softly. “My dear War, this insistence that I am flattering you is the product of the exact same brainwashing I was just complaining about.” He laid a pale hand on the metal rim around the window, shaking his head. “I am quite serious about what I said. And while I may be deluded about myself… and my own motives… I feel quite certain I am entirely clear-headed about you, War Cassandra.”

  “I’m human,” she reminded him.

  “You were human,” he corrected gently. “And then, only to the undiscriminating eye. So was our departed brother, the Shield, if you recall.”

  “He was Elaerian.”

  “He was,” the seer agreed. “Are you forgetting you are, as well?”

  At her silence, he tapped a long finger thoughtfully on the curved organic window.

  “Your brother, Shield, chose to incarnate in the same form as you,” he said. “For much the same reasons, I suspect. This shows a strength of spirit, my dear, not the opposite… a willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.”

  His lips quirked in another faint smile.

  “…Further, you speak of Shield as your superior. You know you outrank your brother, yes? Unlike the Four, who are all essentially at the level of peers, you are considered an older soul than our friend, Galaith. Were he alive, you would, quite correctly, refer to him as ‘little brother,’ and not uncle or father.”

  He lifted one eyebrow, his voice a touch colder.

  “…and he would take the knee to you. Willingly. Reverentially. Just as I will, War Cassandra, once this period of your training is complete.”

  “Family,” Cass muttered, looking past him through the oval portal.

  “Family, yes,” the seer said thoughtfully. “Indeed. They are a mixed blessing, are they not, dearest War? The people for whom we are most responsible. Yet those most likely to break our hearts… even to try and destroy us. Paradoxically, they are also those who need us most when they have fallen. At times, we must even destroy them, in order to save their souls.”

  There was another silence.

  Cass folded her arms.

  Her mind turned over his words. They hurt her heart, but she felt the truth in them. She felt that truth somewhere past her mind––in some part of her light that understood more. She’d been learning to listen to that part of herself, even when she didn’t like what it said.

  “You really believe it,” she said, speaking to herself. “You believe I’m her. War.”

  When Cass looked up the seer was smiling, his eyes openly affectionate.

  “Knowledge of an indisputable fact is not a belief, my most beautiful intermediary.”

  She bit her lip, flushing as she gestured with one hand.

  “So?” she said, blowing at her bangs to get them out of her eyes. “You say I had ‘reasons,’ to come here as a human. What reasons would those be? Why would I come back like this? Why would Galaith?” Cass gestured down at her own body. “What’s the point, to be only half of what I am? What’s the point of spending the first thirty years of my life a cripple?”

  “Intelligence, I suspect,” the seer said at once, his voice certain. “…in the infiltrator sense, I mean. Information. Knowledge of what you are truly up against. A deeper understanding of the challenges faced by those of the last race. And, more importantly perhaps, the challenges faced by those of your own race in dealing with them.”

  He paused, letting her think about his words.

  “Thirty years is a lot for a human,” he reminded her gently. “For a seer, however… much less an Elaerian… it is nothing. The blink of an eye.”

  “So all that wasted time. It was just to learn about humans?” She frowned, arms folded. “That seems like the slow way.”

  His smile grew more serious.

  “Not at all,” he said gently. “And the time was not wasted, War Cassandra. You, yourself, needed to spend time buying into these delusions, in order to truly understand how pervasive they are. It was a necessary step in recognizing the full extent of the grip they have over the human mind. That is not something you could learn from the outside. You had to see it from within, to fully experience being human, and the limitations that entails. Galaith got much of his power off his deep understanding of the weaknesses of the human mind.”

  Cass frowned. “But Allie. Didn’t Allie do the same––?”

  “Your friend, the Bridge,” he said, his voice colder. “Is the biggest weaver of delusions of all. She is the only intermediary I have ever heard of to be damaged from her contact with the human life wave, rather than educated by it. She was too pampered, too protected from the realities and limitations and sheer brutality of that world to learn the lessons she needed to garner from the experience of living within it.”

  His voice grew colder still.

  “Now she spreads those delusions to others. She does it to her own husband, after practically forcing the bond on him. She has since used that bond to manipulate him at every turn. She used it to force him to take the knee to her, stopping the work he was doing, freeing his people. She does all this under the guise of ‘helping’ him.” His sculpted lips curled in a grimace. “Yet, does it not seem a coincidence to you, that he went from being the most famous and most beloved of all seers to merely being the Bridge’s employee?”

  There was a silence.

  Cass frowned, thinking about the Registry job, about the real, concrete things Revik accomplished while leading the Rebels under Salinse. After Revik left, that whole movement just splintered and died.

  By “rescuing” her husband, Allie destroyed the most successful rebellion against race-based slavery since World War I.

  “You see?” the old seer said. “You see how she does this? She even used her husband to bring Wreg to her side––a seer who worked for me for over one hundred years. Before she came along and poisoned her husband’s mind, I would have confidently said Wreg was unable to be corrupted. I have never known a seer more loyal or dedicated than brother Wreg.”

  After a pause, his voice lost some of that edge.

  “And whether they were once or not, humans are not your people anymore, Formidable One. That time of your life is over. You must learn to identify with your own family, on the level of peer, at the very least, if you are not yet ready to see yourself as their leader.”

  Cass gave him a harde
r stare.

  “If you mean Allie and Revik––”

  “I do mean them,” he cut in. “I also mean Feigran, Stanley, Maygar, Galaith and all of those who choose to stay behind for the betterment of the lesser races.”

  Cass blinked, then felt her mouth twist in a frown.

  Elaerian. He meant other Elaerian.

  Watching her think about this, he sighed a bit as he folded his hands.

  “I would very much like to help you discover exactly what and who you are, War Cassandra. I suspect that you have come into this incarnation much more heavily armed than your wildest dreams would suspect.”

  Cass studied his face, her heart beating harder in her chest.

  It occurred to her she was afraid.

  A memory flashed at her, of Revik, naked, the overlapping criss-cross of scar tissue on his back. The image slid apart, dissolved, and Cass saw herself in a cave in the Pamir, holding Allie one night after Revik turned back into Syrimne, listening while her friend cried and told her and Jon in excruciating detail, exactly how Revik got a lot of those scars.

  Allie told them it had primarily been done to wake up his telekinetic abilities.

  Cass remembered those scars.

  She knew Allie wasn’t exaggerating.

  Layer upon layer marred Revik’s skin, covering his back from his collar to his waist, bad enough in places that his skin shone nearly white. Baguen told her once how difficult it was to scar a seer. They healed so much more quickly and completely than humans, especially when they were young––

  “It won’t be like that for you,” the ancient seer told her softly.

  She started, looking at him.

  “That work in you is already done, War Cassandra. It will not be repeated.”

  She frowned, remembering that gelatinous cage, those organic threads wrapping around nerves, bone, flesh, skin, the screaming––

  “There is that, yes,” the old man conceded. “But it is not only that. The Sword was the first to arrive. His was the sole such light in the world when he incarnated. His was the responsibility to reignite that flame… ‘so that, like the first Light, he could touch it to the others and thus share what he has wrought through blood and sweat and effort.’”