by Matt King
“Leave him alone,” Aeris said.
Cerenus walked off with a wave of his arm. His cape moved with the wind as he ran his hands through his hair. He only made it a few steps before he turned back to them. “Bear, you need to call Meryn.”
Bear looked around nervously. “What?”
“I think we’re past the stage of keeping secrets from this man. You have to call Meryn. I don’t have a way to get us off this planet without her. There’s nothing close enough and thanks to him we’re without my ship.”
Call her? August looked at Bear. “What’s he talking about?”
Bear’s eyes shifted from Cerenus to August. His expression wilted. “I was going to tell you eventually.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’ve been seeing Meryn. Alone. I haven’t asked for her help—”
“I told you we weren’t getting the gods involved anymore, Bear.”
“I know you did.”
“But you did it anyway.”
Bear paused. His jaw tightened. “You don’t get to tell me how I live my life.”
“Great. This is just great.” August clinched his jaw. “So what I’m hearing is that everyone is just doing their own thing and ignoring what I say, all the while smiling and pretending to follow my lead. Is that about it?”
“No,” Aeris said. “You’re taking this the wrong way.”
“You’re right. My fault, again. I should take all of this as a sign of respect.”
Aeris narrowed her eyes. “Respect is earned, not freely given.”
August stood in the center of them and caught the eyes of each one. Even Ion failed to come to his aid. All this time he’d thought they were a team, when all they really were just a bunch of people fighting alone, trying not to die.
“All right. I guess that’s it, then.”
He broke through the group and continued on toward the pale blue sun setting over the horizon.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But do me a favor and do what you all do best—don’t follow me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
August switched his infrared on as soon as the sun started to set. Seeing in the dark wasn’t the point. The muted colors helped calm him. It was soothing to see an ocean of blue when he looked out at the landscape, rather than nothing at all. It was like being at the Cape again, looking out over the Atlantic.
A red speck appeared over a hill to his left, interrupting his daydream. Although he couldn’t see the face, it had to be one of the Horsemen. They never let him out of their sight for long.
You’re going to be one bored son of a bitch. Even I can’t get into trouble out here.
With nothing but time and room to think, he began to stack rocks into a pyramid. At least he could make something that looked like a fire to warm him since they were never going to find any wood out in the endless sea of smooth hills. As he placed the stones, he thought about what Cerenus had said. The godclone was a walking, talking asshole in a cape, but judging by the reactions of the rest of the group, they didn’t disagree with him. August was halfway to feeling bad about it until he swung back to thinking about Bear and Meryn, and the realization that the group was only humoring him with their loyalties. So what if he didn’t know every little detail about the Horsemen? Knowing their birthstones didn’t make a difference when it came down to a fight, did it?
The words felt hollow no matter how much he wanted to stand in his own defense. I can’t think about this shit anymore. He tried to place the final rock on top of the pyramid. It teetered and then fell to the side. He tried twice more before standing up and throwing it as hard as he could into the endless night sky.
“Piece of shit.” The rock landed in the distance with a faint thud. When he turned to sit back down, he startled when he saw Aeris behind him.
“I hope you were not aiming for us,” she said.
“No, I was just—” He didn’t bother completing the sentence. He didn’t know the answer anyway.
“May I sit with you?”
He motioned to the clear spot of dirt beside him and Aeris knelt. She placed her hand over the pile of rocks. White flames seeped out of her skin, directed at the stones below. After a few seconds, the stack of rocks began to glow red hot. They stayed that way when she took her hand away.
Hand flames. Why didn’t I think of that?
The Horsemen left his post on the hill as soon as Aeris sat down.
“You have been gone for some time,” she said. “I was worried.”
“Just needed some time to myself.”
“To think.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, to think.”
“I see.” In her brown armor, she blended in with the dull landscape lit by the fire. “And what is the result of all your thinking?”
“Nothing,” he said, and it was true. He looked up at the stars to escape her probing eyes. The sight of space reminded him that they were no closer to finding the rest of the champions. No closer to ending the war. “I suppose we’ll have to figure out a way off this rock soon if we don’t want Galan’s Legion giving us a ride.”
“Galan can not follow us here. Cerenus believes he tracked us by our ship, which is no longer an issue.”
Her quasi-French accent didn’t make the words any easier to swallow. “Cerenus believes, huh? Well it must be true then.”
“He means well, despite how he acted earlier.”
“So you’re apologizing for him now? Have you two reached that stage?”
Her purple eyes closed in a long blink. “August, I have told you before, Cerenus is nothing for you to worry about.”
“Worried? Who’s worried? I’m not worried. I’m happy for you two.”
“I do not love him,” she said, her words losing their even tone for a second. She gathered herself, finally turning to him again, her face lit by the makeshift fire. “It is because I care for you that I am out here now, saying what I have to say.”
Despite the heat from the stones, a chill ran across his skin. “Alright, then. Let’s hear it.”
“What Cerenus said before, he may have said out of anger, but he spoke the truth.”
“Oh, great. That’s just perfect. I don’t know why I expected anything else.”
“I do not know either.” Her face was unforgiving, stoic despite the undercurrent of concern she seemed determined to mask. “You had to know something like this was coming. We have been without direction for too long.”
“I have been giving direction,” August said. “My direction. That’s what everyone’s so mad about. If you all don’t get your way, you automatically blame me when something goes wrong.”
“That is the burden of a leader.”
“Don’t talk to me about leadership. I know what I’m doing.”
“What you have been doing is not leading, August. It’s running toward your death and hoping we’ll follow.”
His first instinct was to fight back, to hate her for what she said, but the look in her eye and the feeling in his gut stopped him. She’d struck a chord he wasn’t ready to acknowledge, much less do anything about.
He stammered, hoping the added time would help him recover. “I’m not suicidal. I’m not that guy.”
“I do not believe so either. What I do believe is that you feel guilty for the things you’ve done, so much so that you are willing to give your life as payment.”
“Guilty for what?”
“Think of all you have been through,” she said. “Your planet was first wounded, then destroyed. Billions of lives—gone. You have lost friends to the other side, people who trusted you.”
“This isn’t helping.”
“I mean to heal, and you cannot heal if you do not acknowledge the fuel that causes such a raging fire to burn.”
“So you’re a psychologist now?”
She sighed. “What does this mean?”
“They’re—never mind.”
“So m
any times I have tried to talk to you about this and each time, you push me away with words. I will not allow it this time. This war is on the verge of ending, and we will not be on the winning side if we continue down this path.”
A rare breeze rushed past them, momentarily dimming the glow of the rocks. “What about the others?” he asked. “Do they think this too?”
Aeris paused, seemingly searching for the words. “Bear is concerned for you. He sees what you are doing as self-destructive. The Horsemen feel a need to be closer to you, for protection. Ion, for all his silence before, now spares few of his opinions, but he agrees with what I have told you. And Cerenus—”
“You don’t need to say it.”
“Cerenus wants a change,” she continued.
He laughed at first, unable to process the confirmation of what he already knew. Anger broke through next, and for once, he didn’t hold it back. “All this time—all this time—I’ve done nothing but give everything I had to this fight. What have I gotten for my troubles? What do I get in return? Two missing eyes, a billion dead people, murdered friends, and now, this.”
Her expression softened. “You see, there is your problem.”
“What?”
“You expect something in return.”
He immediately deflated. “I didn’t mean that. Not like I said. What I meant was—”
“I know what you meant. I know because I felt the same as you in the early days, after becoming Revenant. The other matriarchs questioned my every action. I was held responsible for things beyond my control. I felt guilt for my failings—and I had many. Were it not for Dondannarin, I may have driven my people to ruin simply by striving to attain the approval of my peers. She helped me see what I was missing. She told me that to lead is to serve, and to serve means you do things not for a return, even if that return is a feeling of accomplishment. You serve so that others feel a sense of completeness in their lives. Her words were just that, though—words. It took me years of practice before I knew—really knew—what she meant.”
“I know about all that,” he said. “To serve. To lead. I know every word of it.”
“But you do not know how to achieve it. Not yet.”
“Tell me something. Were you hung out to dry like this in your early days as Revenant? Were you the victim of a coup like me?”
“You are not a victim, and no, I was not in the same position as you are now. None of that matters, however.”
“How could it not?”
“I told you it took me years to experience what Dondannarin told me about leadership. You, me, the Alliance…we do not have the luxury of time.”
At the moment he first realized what she was saying, he felt a resonance, only for a fleeting moment, but he couldn’t deny its existence. He was even conscious of the defenses his mind took up to fend it off. It wasn’t real, he told himself. You didn’t feel it.
But he did.
When he looked at Aeris, he knew she’d seen the change too, no matter how quickly it took place. Even with his mechanical eyes, he couldn’t have hidden it from her.
Still, he found himself asking the question, if only to hear her say the words. “What are you asking me to do?”
She stood slowly before offering him her hand. “I’m asking you to do what is right, for everyone.”
■ ■ ■
When they got back to camp, August felt the immediate weight of the Alliance’s eyes on him. The Horsemen stopped sharpening their knives. Bear looked up from his spot on the ground where he’d been fiddling with his suit. Cerenus floated back down from his perch in the clouds and settled beside Ion, whose face swirled with yellow light mixed with blue.
August forced his mechanical eyes to visit each of them, fighting against the urge to turn away from their stares.
“I’m not sure where to begin,” he said. He mentally shut his eyes. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
“Before you start,” Cerenus said, “I should do something. Aeris, what’s the word?”
“Apologize.”
“Yes, apologize.”
“It’s okay,” August replied. “You weren’t wrong.”
A ripple ran through the group, and August felt it right away. They were just as uncomfortable with the situation as he was. I need to do this already and get it over with.
“I did some thinking and… I realized something, after a little help,” he said, nodding toward Aeris. “We have the ability to win this war. We have all the pieces. The problem is that lately, the pieces have been out of order, at best. Scattered, at worst. That’s, uh… That’s my fault. Since this fight started, I’ve felt a need to be the leader, like I needed to take on this job myself. I made it my responsibility without asking.”
Some of the Horsemen looked away. Bear stood from his seat on a rock.
August pushed ahead. “The past few weeks or months or however long it’s been, we’ve had some rough times. Even though I’ve had a plan, maybe it wasn’t the best one, and let’s be honest—things never really went according to that plan anyway. I kept thinking that maybe it was just bad timing, or even bad luck. What it really was was bad decisions, and that’s my fault. Luckily, it’s something I can fix.” He took a deep breath. “From now on, the Alliance will have a new leader, one who should’ve had the job in the first place. All I want to do is end this war without sacrificing innocent lives. Aeris is the one who can make that happen.”
He glanced to his side to catch eyes with Aeris, who looked every bit as regal as the day he stood on the platform with her on Vontanu and watched her command her people before the Battle of Garoult. A wave of relief hit him again, not just because he was freeing himself of the burden of rule, but because he knew it was now in the hands of someone who fit the role like it was made for them. This is the right thing to do, he told himself, and despite the rising sensation of embarrassment, of failure, he knew it was the truth.
He walked forward to take his spot in the Alliance next to Bear. Bear laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m all right,” he told him.
“Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t,” Bear said. “But I think we’re all headed that direction now.”
Alone in front of her troops for the first time, Aeris seemed like she was in her element. She stood tall in her Revenant armor and commanded the stares of each of her fighters, including August. When her eyes settled on him, she gave a slight smile before returning to her stoic look.
“Bear,” she said, turning her attention to August’s right.
“Ma’am,” Bear replied.
“Would you please contact Meryn?”
Bear’s eyes cut to August briefly before he removed his gauntlet, exposing his wrist. He pressed his fingers just below the palm and closed his eyes. A blue light glowed beneath his fingers. It swelled gently until Bear pulled his fingers away.
A synapse formed above the ground in between the group and Aeris. Its cloudy tail pointed toward August. Standing with the group, all he could see was the wispy backside of the portal.
When it began to shrink away, it revealed Meryn in a white form-fitting dress with blue highlights glistening in the fabric. Her golden brown skin shimmered. Beside her was Soraste, who in her simple gray robe looked relatively plain next to the radiant Meryn.
“You are Meryn?” Aeris asked.
Meryn looked back over her shoulder at Bear. She gave him a smile. When she looked to August next, her smile diminished. She turned back to Aeris. “I am. And you must be Aeris of Vontanu. I have wanted to meet you for so long.”
“And we are well met, Lady. This is my Alliance, and we need your help if we are to win this war.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
August sat beside Bear on the flat side of a boulder half-buried in the ground. They watched as Soraste and Meryn spoke with Aeris off to the side. August nodded toward Meryn. “So you two…”
“Yeah,” Bear said.
“When did that happen?”
“I don’t know exactly. Can�
��t keep track of time anymore. I guess I had something for her all along, though we didn’t really do anything about it until that thing with Balenor.”
“Huh,” August said, and it was the most profound answer he could muster at the moment. Things seemed like they were in a whirlwind around him, and yet oddly frozen in time, like the war and everything else was on pause. “I guess I never really saw it.”
“We weren’t exactly out in the open.” Bear dropped his gaze from the group of women. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I mean it. I hated keeping it from you. It ate me up inside, but we thought it might upset things if I told you how we felt.”
An hour earlier and August might’ve gotten angry. Now, he only shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Things are different, you know?”
Bear looked back at the gods talking to Aeris. “Yes, they are.”
The hairs on August’s neck stood on end like he was about to be shocked. He turned to see Ion floating behind him. Soraste’s champion passed without talking and floated toward Aeris and the gods. I wonder if he’s gone back to being mute, or maybe he only talks to those in charge.
Soraste saw him and touched her hand to his shell. When she took it away, she spoke something quickly to Meryn before the group split apart.
“Here we go,” August muttered.
Cerenus drifted in just as the meeting was about to start. “Well you all look like you’re brimming with good news.”
“The situation has evolved,” Aeris said, answering to the group rather than Cerenus. “We must act quickly.”
“Act against what?” August asked.
Meryn stepped forward. “Galan’s forces have begun an all-out attack against our worlds. The last attempt on your lives was the final effort to seek you out. It seems they are now hoping to draw you into a fight by attacking civilian populations.” Her eyes dipped. “Soraste?”
