Shock of Fate: A Young Adult Fantasy Adventure (Anchoress Series Book 1)

by D. L. Armillei

  “Are you okay?” Van asked. “You look a bit tired.”

  “I had a rough time getting here,” Daisy said in her airy voice. “I’m fine now, thanks.” She bent forward and said to Paley, “I like your eyes. Are they common in your family?”

  “No,” Paley said, taken aback. “They’re contact lenses.”

  Van didn’t have time to wonder what kind of doofus would think Paley’s eyes were natural, because, as Daisy leaned back frowning, the boy seated on the other side of her leaned forward.

  “Ugh! Not you!” Van said.

  “Good to see you, too,” Brux said sarcastically, flashing that infuriating smile.

  “Ohhh! Brux! Hi!” Paley leaned her elbows on the table and twisted her shoulder under her chin. “Brux Lake and Daisy Lake. Are you two related?”

  “He’s my brother,” Daisy said.

  Brux gave a proud nod.

  “Attention, please!” Fynn appeared in the doorway. Everyone quieted down.

  “HG Huxatec is busy attending to the final details of your mission. She wishes for you to start dinner without her and will join you as soon as she is able.”

  “What about our briefing?” called a girl with a dark blonde Mohawk. She was dressed in combat leather and built like a refrigerator.

  “You’ll be briefed after dinner,” Fynn said. “For now, I suggest you eat. The road ahead will not be easy.” This caused some murmuring, until Fynn pushed a red button on the wall nearest him.

  Behind Van, a panel the length of the room slid open, displaying a buffet-style banquet. Mouthwatering aromas permeated the air. Plates and bowls overflowed with an assortment of foods—roasted turkeys and baked sweet potatoes, spiral hams with clover sauce, sliced roast beef with mushroom gravy, homemade breads, and a variety of fresh veggie side dishes, along with all of the fixings.

  The brutes stormed the buffet. Brux stayed back and waited with his sister. Van and Paley held back as well, for fear of being trampled to death.

  Van didn’t care much for meat but shoveled down the fire-roasted potatoes, honey butter mixed vegetables, and hearth bread. “I’m a vegetarian,” Van told Daisy.

  “Me, too,” Daisy said in her whisper of a voice. “The thought of harming animals makes me ill. I’d rather die than hurt an animal to feed myself.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Van replied. “Me, too.”

  Paley snickered at Van’s response. The two of them knew that Van wasn’t a true vegetarian; she’d only become one to make herself more interesting.

  People kept the conversation over dinner to a minimum until they finished at least their second helping—except Van, who was on a perpetual diet, and Daisy, who barely touched any of her food.

  As the butch girl with the Mohawk rose from her seat, she roughly wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand, which was missing the index finger.

  “I think we should go around the table, introduce ourselves, mention our special skills,” the girl said, jabbing the air with her finger nub for seemingly no reason, except to make everyone uncomfortable. “I’m sure it’s what HG would have us do, if she were here.”

  The others grunted their approval, while continuing to stuff food into their mouths. Only Daisy sat there motionless, as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

  “I’ll start. Name’s Jorie Alquest. Testing placed me as a Weapons Expert, allowing me into Advanced Studies after I graduate next year. Also placed Expert Level in tribal customs but prefer hand-to-hand combat and weaponry.” She unsheathed a massive war axe scribbled with runic symbols from her leather belt and held it high. “Meet Zachery. To all you dolts, he’s a labrys. His curved double blades link him with the power of the moon.” She glowed as if speaking about her child and then re-sheathed the terrifying thing.

  Jorie sat down, and the girl to her right popped up. She had crazy-curly, short, white-blonde hair and introduced herself as Swanhilda. She ran through a list of impressive survival and combat skills and sat back down. The introduction went from person to person. Van’s head spun. She swore the boy with a strange name—Yoatl—said something about being a wizard.

  Van started to sweat. If her placements had been fixed, as Pernilla had claimed, it meant she didn’t have any true skills. Van knew she was good at twirling and finding things, but neither compared to the proficiency of these beasts. She dreaded her turn; telling them her skills would only expose her worthlessness to the group. And what about Paley? Her skill was being Van’s friend. Confessing this to the group would probably get them lynched. Brux would likely lead the pack.

  Van’s turn came closer. A bead of sweat dripped down her back. She regretted eating so much, and her stomach churned, making her nauseated. This triggered tormenting visions of standing to introduce herself and instead vomiting all over the table.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Daisy said in her dreamy voice. “Uxa hand-picked each of us. She didn’t base her selections solely on our placement tests.”

  “Oh.” Van breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good.” Now Van understood why someone like Daisy—and herself, for that matter—would be here among these brutes. “What else did she base her selections on?”

  “Lineage.”

  That one word left Van feeling worse than ever. She hadn’t earned her birthright, and it wasn’t a skill. She jumped when Fynn bellowed, “Everyone! If I could have your attention!” He stood at the door again. “HG Huxatec has decided to meet with each of you individually before giving you a group briefing.”

  Van felt grateful for the interruption. She let out a breath and sank into her chair.

  Until Fynn said, “First up, Vanessa. Follow me, please.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Day 1: 8:04 p.m., Living World

  Looking grim, Uxa perched on the edge of her desk in the messy study. She extended her hand toward the worn, high-backed leather chairs, indicating that Van should sit. Fynn stood to the side of the desk, his arms behind his back, as if Uxa had given the command “At ease, soldier.” The odd grandfather clock read: 700th hour, 56th minute.

  “Since Miss Nutting filled you in on our world, I’ll get right down to it,” Uxa said, before Van had a chance to settle.

  “Three nights ago, your father encountered a demon in the field—outside a mall in the Earth World. Demons don’t usually kill humans, but this one was stronger than average, and it exhibited unusual behavior. It killed your father’s partner. Your father managed to escape. He wasn’t able to kill the demon.”

  The words stunned Van, prompting her to say in a monotone, “It’s the Grigori’s job to kill demons.”

  Uxa silently scrutinized Van, as if considering whether she had suffered brain damage from her trip through the portal.

  But hearing someone say, “Your father encountered a demon,” point blank, was jarring. It forced Van to face the truth. Demons were real. Her father’s job was to fight them. Things she had overheard and seen during her childhood began to make sense, such as her father’s scars. Had he gotten them from fighting demons? The scar on Van’s back tingled, causing her to shift in her seat.

  Van hadn’t asked a question, but Uxa answered with a nod anyway. “It is the job of the Grigori to protect the Living World by keeping demons under control in the Earth World. We have protocols in place to ensure this happens. Your father, instead of following protocol, which entails lowering the demon’s vibrational frequency and anchoring it, raised the demon’s frequency—”

  “Why would he do that?” Van interrupted. She knew a bit about vibrational frequencies from physics class.

  “To help it into our world,” Fynn scoffed.

  Uxa frowned at Fynn. Van had forgotten he was in the room.

  “If the demon slips away while being held at a higher frequency, it could find its way here,” Fynn continued. “It’s a very suspicious move for a Grigori.”

  Van didn’t like how Fynn made it sound as if her father had done something wrong. She had already heard enough gossip about him for o
ne day.

  “Demons have grown stronger for the last several years,” Uxa said. “Because of this, we are short staffed. I gave your father permission to go back into the field, something he hadn’t done since you were born. We need all hands on deck, you could say.” Uxa forced a smile.

  Van wasn’t endeared.

  Uxa continued, unperturbed. “Grigori are required to submit field reports to the Balish Counsil—”

  “What does this have to do with my mission?” Van interjected.

  “It’s called being briefed,” Fynn said, in a tone that inferred Van was dim-witted.

  Uxa turned her face toward Fynn. “Thank you, Fynn,” she said dismissively. Her eyes returned to Van. “With your father’s help, I was able to alter the reports to hide the steady increase in demon activity in the Earth World, so the Balish wouldn’t get nervous and claim the Grigori were not doing their job. But word reached the Counsil’s ears nonetheless, and I needed to know what King Nequus and Prince Devon were up to, specifically regarding Manik’s law.”

  Uxa slid off the desk, then leaned against it, appearing relaxed, but Van wasn’t fooled. Uxa was someone who always remained alert and ready. And if Uxa had made Van’s father fix Grigori reports for her, she was someone who could also be shady.

  “Once demons gain enough strength,” Uxa said, “they are able to rise into our world on their own and become a threat to the citizenry, which is a violation of Manik’s law—a law put in place a thousand years ago that protects Lodians and their beliefs from Balish rule and prevents the Balish from invading our land. The law gives the Balish Counsil the right to receive our field reports for review and to ‘inspect’ Salus Valde on a whim, but they can’t interfere with our daily activities, beliefs, or justice system. The Balish have no choice but to abide by this law because it is bound by the magic of the Elementals.”

  The law sounded boring to Van, but Elementals being magical sounded cool! Van envisioned a group of divine beings whose magical abilities gave them power over mortals. Van was dying to know if she was right, but she didn’t want to appear stupid if she was wrong. So, she kept her mouth shut.

  “Balish are allowed to repeal the law, if Lodians’ beliefs cause direct harm to the Living World,” Uxa went on. “Basically, we keep the law intact by controlling the demon situation. With hard evidence of stronger demons, well, the Balish Counsil wouldn’t hesitate to call for an Elemental ruling for the law’s repeal, which would remove our protection.”

  “The Balish have wanted control of Salus Valde for a millennium,” Fynn said, unable to keep quiet. “They constantly seek ways around the law so they can take us over.”

  Uxa glanced at him, then went on. “I sent your father undercover to spy on the Balish royals. He managed to get a low-level position as a palace guard in Balefire—the Balish Palace—and has worked there for the last few months. When he wasn’t working a shift at Balefire or taking a rare day off, I assigned him to the field. This way, he could train new recruits and get first-hand information about demon activity. His partner’s death validated that demons have grown strong enough to reach our world.”

  “The only other time in history demons have reached our world was during the Dark War,” Fynn said. “No current-day Grigori knows how to kill a Class III—a demon strong enough to reach our world.”

  “Vanessa’s been hidden away on Providence Island,” said Uxa, turning her head slightly toward Fynn, while keeping a sharp gaze on Van. “She doesn’t know about the Dark War.” “Oh, right,” Fynn said. “Okay, a thousand years ago there was a war between the Lodians and the Balish, called the Great War. It lasted years and became so violent, it drew demons into our world. The Lodians and the Balish were forced to work together to defeat this greater enemy, and the Great War became the Dark War. Original documents written during the Dark War are not available to the public, but we all know the Balish version. Well, all of us except Vanessa.”

  Van resisted rolling her eyes at him.

  Unfazed, Fynn continued. “The Balish Prince Goustav saved our world by using magic to create a weapon powerful enough to defeat the demons. Shortly after the war, Goustav destroyed the weapon, claiming it was necessary that the weapon be returned to the ‘earth elements.’ We don’t know why he did this or why the Lodians’ Grigori couldn’t handle the situation or what really happened.”

  “And we needed to find out.” Uxa began pacing. The twists in her long plait caught the light, contrasting the beauty of her hair with her tough demeanor. “Our ancestral records had been confiscated by the Balish once they took control after the Dark War and to this day are concealed in their Hall of Records, the archives of Balefire.”

  “So we—er, Uxa—changed Michael’s mission to comb through the Hall of Records,” Fynn said. “To search for unaltered eyewitness accounts of the Dark War, not Balish-translated propaganda.”

  “Your father was successful, to some degree.” Uxa stopped pacing and turned to face Van. “He discovered a bit of Balish lore that claimed Goustav had destroyed only the physical part of the weapon. The powerful magic of the weapon had been contained in an object that still exists. It is hidden in a location that is bound partly in the spiritual realm and partly in the physical—accessible by a doorway or a window—where it remains untouched, waiting for someone to retrieve it and use it once again.” Uxa rested on the arm of the high-backed chair across from Van. “He needed to do more research, access more untranslated documents that could help us find this object. With it in our possession, we could keep Manik’s law intact by proving to the Elementals that we have the ability to keep the Living World safe from demons.”

  “Michael claimed to have found a text called the Veridicus Libellus,” Fynn said, “commonly referred to by the Balish as Manik’s text. King Manik’s brother Goustav ousted him from the throne shortly after the Dark War ended. This is when Manik wrote the diary. The text gives a full account of what happened during that time, and afterward, including where the object was hidden and the recipe Goustav used to create his weapon.”

  Van wasn’t sure why, but the little white animal she had seen on the island crossed her mind.

  “Due to the impending rise of demons into our world, your father was instructed to get the information from that text as soon as possible,” Uxa said. “He planned to retrieve the object himself.”

  “But it wasn’t as simple as it seemed,” Fynn said. “The text was a valued artifact from the Dark War, preserved by enchantments and protected by an alarmed, sealed glass case. He had to finagle a way to get at it.”

  “Last night, he succeeded,” Uxa said.

  Van frowned; their annoyance at her father made no sense. “It sounds like my father did everything you asked of him, including risking his life.” Without caring how Van felt about it and regardless of the fact that she had already lost a mother. “So why are you acting like he did something wrong? You were the ones who asked him to do it.”

  “The problem is, he disobeyed orders,” Fynn said, in a tone that implied he took pleasure in pointing out others’ faults. “Michael was supposed to read the text only. To go in and out of Balefire undetected. Instead, he stole the text, triggering a search for the thief. Which lured Prince Devon into the woods, into a trap, where the prince was ambushed and killed by demons.”

  “So?” Van said, beyond frustrated. “That wasn’t his fault.”

  “Demons he brought here,” Uxa said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Day 1: 8:33 p.m., Living World

  Van wasn’t sure how long she sat there with her mouth hanging open.

  Uxa said in a gentle voice, “Vanessa—Van, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. We think your father stole Manik’s text because he’s working with the Balish Princess Solana in a bid to take over Salus Valde.”

  Uxa paused, possibly to make sure Van was still breathing, then continued. “He conspired with demons to kill Prince Devon so Solana would inherit the throne. He brokered the deal. Inci
dentally, the prince’s death resulted in another tragedy. Earlier this morning, Queen Brigid was found dead in her bed. She’d died of a broken heart on hearing news of her son’s death.”

  All was quiet, except for the steady tick, tick, tick of the odd grandfather clock.

  “Your father had access to demons,” Uxa croaked, overcome with emotion. “As a Grigori in the field, he had access—”

  Van used all of her might to whisper, “W-Why? Why would he—?”

  “He just . . . he just . . .” Uxa also seemed to struggle to understand. “He just couldn’t resist the temptation.” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat before continuing. “The Lodian Consilium was upset by his marriage to your mother. Your father had common blood, and your mother’s, well . . . the purest Lodian bloodlines we refer to as ‘royal,’ despite our government being a democracy, and hers was the purest. Their children—you—would then have a diluted bloodline. Our tribe encourages its people to make an effort to keep our bloodlines pure, based on family lineage. We believe maintaining the purity of our bloodlines pleases the Elementals and strengthens our tribe as a whole. And Grigori are discouraged from marrying, from having children. Their first commitment is to the Grigori. Family would always come second to their oath. Because of these things, he was taken out of the field, demoted from being a Lead Grigori to the position of Third Assistant, an office job. He and your mother were banished to live on Providence Island. He had an axe to grind.”

  “If he was after power by marrying Aelia, he didn’t get it,” Fynn said judgmentally.

  Van didn’t care about their crazy bloodline rules or her father’s Grigori commitment or Fynn’s rudeness. “Demoted?” she said, stunned. “I thought he voluntarily stepped down to raise me.” Van felt crushed by this revelation, which seemed to hint that her father didn’t love her as much as she had hoped.