Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  All those higher levels told him now was that he was outclassed by whatever this was.

  It was too different. It had too many moving parts, too many structured pieces, too many different ways of thinking and analyzing and understanding. Revik saw no way of even accessing most of it, no matter what he did with his light. It operated on a different level than his light altogether, he suspected. He felt like he was looking inside a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope that had order, meaning, purpose, and intelligence woven into its very fabric.

  His mind swam through those morphing and reformulating pieces of light, fighting to understand, without any ability to even catalogue most of what he saw.

  He couldn’t comprehend it; he could feel that much. No amount of looking would yield true understanding. It felt like being lost inside a dense sea of writhing lightning.

  His vision phased, filled with complex structures like breathing mathematical equations…

  Silver snakes. Cold fire.

  That animal panic in his light worsened.

  He felt the creature sum him up in a myriad of ways, like a human dissecting a frog on a metal table. He knew it might kill him simply because it found him uninteresting.

  The metal snakes writhed, deciding. Deciding what to do with him.

  Deciding his fate.

  He knew the flavor here. He knew it…

  He let out a gasp.

  Then everything went dark for real.

  46

  NEPHEW

  HE OPENED HIS eyes, gasping at the shock of light and sound.

  He wasn’t where he expected he would be.

  His mind coiled around him in impotent circles, fighting the pain that wanted to rise, feeling it creep up on him as his light returned to his body, pounding already at the back of his head, his neck, his kidneys.

  He felt like he’d just had the shit kicked out of him.

  Not just his body––his light, too.

  He wasn’t in the right place.

  The thought repeated, even as he fought to clear his eyes.

  When he could finally see, he found himself kneeling on a lawn, his hands and arms bound behind his back. A collar circled his neck. He could feel it was attached to something straight and metal, something held by the guard standing at his back. They’d also locked the collar and his wrists and arms to his cuffed ankles.

  The fact of the collar sank in slowly, but hit hard once it had.

  He also realized he’d been struggling to see with his light, that his eyes were fine, it was his light. His light was––

  Well, it didn’t hurt. He didn’t feel anything really.

  His light was just gone.

  The collar didn’t hurt.

  It just killed… fuck, it killed everything.

  Everything. Like all of his aleimi had been stripped from his body.

  He’d never felt anything like it before. Like that presence in the organic room, the alienness alone scared him. The fact that he couldn’t see anything at all scared him.

  He gasped, fighting against it, trying to find those higher structures in his light––but those were gone too. All of it was gone.

  He’d been more than just blinded.

  It was like they’d stripped every ounce of feeling from him, cutting him off from the world. More than that… they’d cut him off from most of himself. Fear rippled his mind as it occurred to him what that might mean.

  Gods.

  What it might be doing to his wife and daughter.

  “No…” he gasped. “No, gods… you can’t. Take it off me! Take it off me! You’ll kill them… you’ll fucking kill them… please…”

  He stared up, fighting to focus his eyes.

  “Please…” he gasped. “Please. You have to take it off me… please…”

  Menlim stood there.

  His outline came into focus.

  Urine-tinted eyes stared down at Revik’s face. Motionless at first, his eyes remained unblinking as he surveyed Revik with that same clinical nothingness Revik felt from the sentient room. Then Menlim frowned, and those eyes seemed to darken.

  “You really do think me a fool,” he said.

  Clicking softly, he spoke so low Revik had to strain to hear him.

  “You really thought you and your wife could fool me with this ridiculous charade of yours?” His voice was laced with contempt. “You believed… what? That I would not know that I was being infiltrated, nephew?”

  Revik felt his heart clench, pain hitting at him somewhere far away.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the seer talked over him.

  “Did you think pretending to be a drunk degenerate would actually fool me… nephew? When I was the one who designed that very role for you? Years ago, now?” For the first time, a harder cold colored his words. “I trained you… you arrogant, ungrateful coward. I taught you to feed egos, to disarm. I taught you how to manipulate. I taught you to let others underestimate you, to play the fool. I taught you to play multiple cons, one on top of the other…”

  Revik’s chest clenched more, until he couldn’t breathe at all.

  Straightening, the Rook let out a humorless grunt.

  “I am now beginning to think you took that persona a bit too much to heart in your youth, nephew,” he muttered. “Perhaps you are far more of a fool than even I suspected.”

  That pain in Revik’s head worsened. Some part of him fought to think, then to fight back. That same part of him worked to scroll his thoughts ahead, to try and salvage this, to use his light, talk his way out of what––

  “Don’t waste your breath… nephew.”

  Menlim’s eyes shimmered like mirrors, strangely bright in the outdoor spotlights covering their corner of the lawn.

  “I know exactly what you and that whore wife of yours have been up to. I knew before you arrived on that dock in Hong Kong. I knew before you left Bangkok. So do me the courtesy of not treating me like the idiot you obviously think I am.”

  Revik felt his jaw harden more, hurting him.

  Fear overpowered any anger he might have felt, though.

  Allie. He had to warn Allie.

  She’d been coming here.

  She’d been on her way here––

  “It is too late for that, too,” the aged seer said coldly. “It is far too late for a lot of things, Nenzi.”

  Menlim looked to the guard to his right.

  He motioned to him with a flick of his hand.

  Without waiting, the tattoo-faced seer stepped forward. Pulling an organic strap off his belt, he wound his arm back. He hit Revik hard across the face and neck with the strap, cutting his breath. The thing had a charge on it that made it feel more like glass––like a knife through his skin, rather than a belt.

  Revik gasped in shock, his vision whiting briefly from the pain.

  Groaning, he had to fight to focus his eyes again when he raised his head.

  Menlim was staring at him, contempt in his eyes.

  “I should congratulate you on your choice of strategies, nephew,” the yellow-eyed seer said. “It was ingenious having your wife play the part of the unfaithful, lying adulteress and whore. It is a role she is most obviously suited for.”

  The tattooed seer wound up, hitting him harder with the strap the second time, that time across the neck and collarbone.

  Revik groaned, tasting blood when the edge of the weapon cut his lips.

  He knew Menlim wouldn’t just hit him out of spite. This had to be calculated too.

  He wanted Revik to open his light.

  He’d probably beat him to a fucking pulp to get him to open it.

  Unlike when he’d been a child, he wouldn’t care much about hiding scars anymore, either.

  Menlim clicked at him softly when Revik looked up.

  “I think you may have miscalculated this time, nephew,” he said. “I do believe the act may have gotten away from her… from both of them, perhaps. From what I saw of the intelligence reports there, she has develop
ed real feelings for this seer you put her with. I am told their light is so entwined now, they appear almost like mates themselves.”

  Seeing Revik wince, Menlim tilted his head.

  “I am sure it would have presented quite a difficult choice for her,” he added. “In the event you ever came back. Perhaps she will thank me in the end, for sparing her that choice.”

  Revik felt that sick feeling in his gut worsen.

  Menlim watched his eyes for a beat more, then shrugged, holding up his hands.

  “Ah, well,” he said, clicking ruefully. “I suppose it is in the nature of the duplicitous to be disloyal… even among their own kind. Still, I would think that would bother you, your own mate shifting loyalties so quickly. I wonder if they have discussed yet how to raise your child together, in the event you failed––”

  The tattooed seer hit him again, making Revik cry out.

  His head hung after the blow and the seer hit him again while he gasped, fighting to catch his breath. He couldn’t control his light, couldn’t feel it at all really, but its loss didn’t deaden the pain. He could feel the warm wet trickle on the side of his face, knew his cheek had been cut. He knew what Menlim was doing, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening.

  “It won’t kill them,” Menlim said.

  Revik looked up, squinting through the pain to see the other seer.

  “The collar,” Menlim clarified. “It won’t kill your mate. Or your daughter.”

  Pain whited out Revik’s mind, mixed with a relief he knew the other would feel. His light opened and the seer hit him again, hard enough to make Revik gasp.

  Menlim lifted an eyebrow, giving him a small frown as he pulled the gloves off one hand, finger by finger. “As tempted as I am to dispose of you and your mate––to finally rid myself of the despicable violence, turmoil and fairytales you attempt to foist upon your own people––your daughter shouldn’t be made to suffer for your crimes.”

  He nodded at the seer with the strap, and the tattooed seer wound up again.

  He hit him harder that time.

  Lowering his head, Revik gasped, spitting blood. It might have knocked him down if it wasn’t for the guard with the pole holding him up.

  The pain in his heart worsened as he replayed Menlim’s words.

  “We will wait for your bitch mate to come to us,” Menlim continued conversationally. “We will have you take her down, brother… which is only right, given everything. By then, you might even want to be the one to do it. By then, you might not need any coercion from us. Once she is disposed of, we will determine how best to retrieve the property she stole from me…”

  The tattooed seer hit him again, forcing a cry out of Revik’s throat.

  Again, he couldn’t be sure if it was from the physical pain.

  “I believe some small element of you might even be salvageable in all of this, when all is said and done, Nenzi,” Menlim said, giving him an openly contemptuous look. “Of course, you have utterly lost the privilege of a willing role in my administration. At this point, I’ll take pleasure in stripping every ounce of agency from that deluded mind of yours so that I might salvage what remains of your light. As much pleasure, sadly, as the same would have caused me pain only a few years ago.”

  His voice grew coldly angry.

  “…You are an embarrassment to your race, Nenzi. An embarrassment to everything you are supposed to stand for…”

  The tattooed seer hit him again, across the body that time.

  Blinking through blood now running into his eyes, Revik stared up at Menlim’s face.

  The expression there––even the shape of his skull outlined by those sharp, orange lights––brought back his childhood in a brutal rush of emotion and memory. That base, animal terror returned, so intensely he felt sick from the adrenaline that pooled in his blood.

  “Please.” His words came out low, almost hoarse. “Please… leave them alone. I’ll do whatever you want…”

  Menlim let out a low grunt, shaking his head.

  “The time for begging is long past too, nephew.”

  He nodded to the tattooed seer again, who hit Revik across the arms and back.

  Revik let out a grunt, jerking forward only to be stopped by the restraints.

  Slapping the gloves lightly on one hand, Menlim shook his head, his mouth firming as he looked down at him.

  “Of course, I know no amount of hitting you will accomplish much,” he said, that thinly veiled disgust back in his voice. “Luckily, we have other means of persuasion at our disposal. This is more to remind you of your place. And perhaps to remind you of who you are dealing with… since you seem to require the lesson more and more the older you get.”

  The tattooed seer hit him again, so hard that time, Revik grunted, blinded briefly from pain.

  The seer kicked him in the kidney and he groaned, blind with shock and pain, his vision going dark. He thought for sure he would pass out.

  He didn’t, though.

  “I would have preferred you willing, nephew.” Menlim’s voice dropped to a mutter, as if he were speaking to himself. “I always wanted you willing. Always. I never wanted you like this. Implanting the means of coercion was always intended only as a back up––a contingency, if you will. A last resort.”

  He turned, staring at Revik’s face with those yellow eyes.

  “Despite what you think, I never wanted you as a slave, Nenzi. Never.”

  The tattooed seer stepped forward again, about to hit him across the face, but that time, Menlim raised two fingers to stop him.

  “No. No more in the face. I don’t want him blinded before we deal with the girl.”

  Revik tensed even as he panted, recovering from the blows.

  He looked up to find Menlim staring at him again, his expression clinical.

  “Comrades,” he said politely. “Kindly bring her out.”

  Revik felt his throat close.

  He knew this part of the evening’s show. Some darker, more distant part of his mind understood even before he heard them.

  Even so, as the cries grew audible, he turned, fighting to see through blood and swelling flesh, his eyes struggling to make sense of what they dragged out in front of him.

  This was familiar, though.

  So damned familiar he felt sick before he recognized her face.

  The consort, Charlie, was being dragged across the lawn by three of Menlim’s uniformed guards. She struggled, yelling at the guards in Mandarin.

  Revik couldn’t make sense of the words at first. They confused him, though. The panic there, the knowing. Had they told her what they intended? Did she know?

  Then he saw the girl.

  He realized most of Charlie’s words were about her.

  “No! Please! Not her! Not her! Do whatever you want to me, but don’t hurt her, please!” Charlie screamed. “Not her! Gods… please, not her! She’d never be a threat to you!”

  Her voice held so much fear, so much grief, pain and terror, Revik felt his whole body react. Pain crashed around him, obliterating his mind, any semblance of rationality. He fought the bindings that held him, but he could scarcely move.

  They didn’t even bother to hit him to get him to stop.

  Now that he’d seen her, he couldn’t take his eyes off the girl.

  She couldn’t have been more than sixteen as a seer.

  In human years, she looked about seven years old.

  “No!” Charlie shrieked in panic. “Please! Please! Gaos, please! I’ll do whatever you want! Anything! Brothers… beloved brothers! Please! Don’t hurt her, please! Please!”

  Tears ran down Revik’s face. They blinded him. They blinded him more than the blood, but not enough. He could still see her. He still couldn’t look away.

  They pushed the girl into the clearing in front of him.

  He saw her stumble. He saw her catch her balance, confusion in her rounded face.

  Some part of Revik got lost there, staring at he
r small body. She wore a nightgown, like something from decades ago––from a different time, when people wore such things. Some cartoon character lived on the faded pink fabric in blue and yellow, what looked like a unicorn. She wore pink toenail polish, most of it worn off.

  A bruise darkened one shin, maybe from playing some game.

  He felt eyes on him, and realized the girl was looking at him.

  Almost without meaning to, he looked up, meeting her gaze.

  Chinese features like her mother. Light green eyes.

  She stared at him through a curtain of straight black hair, her expression confused, still containing flickers of fear, but now holding something else. Empathy. She was confused, fearful for her mother. But that compassion for him drove a spike through his heart––the warmth of her light he knew he’d feel if his light could have touched hers at all.

  Lily was like that.

  Lily felt everything. She loved everyone.

  He choked, feeling some part of his chest break inside.

  “No…” He scarcely heard his own voice. Some part of him was screaming, screaming into the night air, but his words came out a bare whisper. “Gods, please no… no…”

  “Shoot her,” Menlim said, his voice flat.

  Revik felt his whole body react. He writhed against the restraints. He was breathing too much, gasping, groaning in a kind of pain as he shook his head, still looking the girl in the face.

  “No,” he groaned. “No… gods, no. I’ll do anything… anything. Please…”

  The tattooed seer unholstered his gun. Turning towards the girl he raised it, aiming it directly at her head, his expression unmoving.

  “No,” Revik gasped, even as some part of him woke up for real. “NO! Please, brothers… please. Menlim!” He looked at his old guardian, hearing the pleading in his voice. “Brother… uncle! I’m sorry! I’m so fuckin sorry! Please! Please, don’t do this! I’ll do anything, anything you want, whatever you––”

  A shot rang out in the cold air. Clear. Loud in the morning quiet.

  Revik turned his head––

  ––and saw the girl crumple to the grass.

  The tattooed seer holstered the gun, still no expression on his high-cheekboned face.