“What should I name him?” she asked Etyne, tossing the plush at him.
He shrugged. “I haven’t named a stuffed toy since I was eight. He was a little puppy my mom got me from the consignment store. I named him Sir Wuffruff.”
Brisethi busted out laughing at such an adorable little kid Etyne story. “Hey, how many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?”
“Eight?”
“Ten tickles...” she bit her lower lip to keep from prematurely laughing.
“Tentacles, yes. You’re a child,” he slightly chuckled anyway at the joke. “I think you found his name, then.”
She caught Ten-Tickles when Etyne launched him back at her. The roving watch was hovering in their hall and since it was past curfew, he would have to summon his mystic to sneak to his room. “Or you could just hide out in here until the morning,” she had suggested and moved over to allow him room on her bed. Though they were never intimate with one another, she enjoyed his company and he found comfort in her warmth each time they fell asleep next to one another.
She heard birds chirping when the sun began to rise. She lay still, awaiting the guards to take their turn on her, now that Sulica was gone, then drag her to the laboratory. If they weren’t in the mood to feed her watered down oats, she hoped they would at least give her water, with or without the inky suppression that prevented her from calling upon her mystics.
Hours had passed while she sat in the middle of her murky cell, listening for any sign of activity from anyone. Her stomach perpetually ached from hunger while her mouth and throat longed for any sort of liquid relief. She had never been so hungry before and hadn’t realized how painful it was to have nothing in her system.
“Does anyone hear me?” she raspily cried out. The other inmates in the prison chamber had passed on days ago, leaving only Brisethi left alive. The Lantheuns had not removed the bodies, so she had to live with the scent of death hovering in the room. Her senses were more or less used to it except for the overwhelming amount of excrement that was also still in the cells.
She wondered if she was even needed anymore or if the Lantheuns had abandoned her to die like the others. For all she knew, her mystics were completely exhausted from their inhumane experiments. With her mystics gone, she was left to waste away until new Resarians were captured so they could continue their crimes on them. She picked at a scab with her teeth letting out a sudden, shrill shriek from the pain. She covered her finger in the dripping blood and began to paint symbols and designs on the wall of her cell.
“Summon the stars from the skies, Asellunas,” a voice echoed through her head.
“I can’t,” she replied and instead painted bloody stars falling from the maelstrom in the sky she had created. She was convinced that her spirit had left her. She should be dead without it. “Our doctrines are lies,” she whispered, frantically biting at more scabs for more blood. “Our spirits really are nothing but scientific anomalies.” There was no such thing as the Sea of Renewal. The spirits condemned her, abandoned her to rot in a foreign land. The Dominion never even tried to find me, she thought with final resignation of life. “Worthless fucking spirits,” she stifled a sob as tears formed. She attempted to wipe the tears from her cheeks only to have smeared her bloody arms across her face.
She felt her hopeful ambitions in the Dominion, on Sariadne, in the world of Falajen, escape just as Sulica had, just as her spirit had. Her recruits probably already forgot who she was. She felt forgotten by her commanders, given up by her friends, including Etyne and Korteni. She could only imagine the anguish her mother had gone through at hearing what befell her husband and daughter. Her father probably infiltrated the wrong continent, misled into believing she was in Pahl’Kiar and drinking himself into unconsciousness. She was going to die of infection, starvation, dehydration. She wasn’t even going down as a hero, or a warrior. She was dying of helplessness as a slave in a foreign land, in clothes that were not her own, bleeding out if only to finish painting walls with her own blood like a madwoman.
“The spirit of our land resides in us through the breath of dragons,” she muttered, mixing her tears into her blood. “Our fire from the sky scarred the nations.” Her voice cracked at repeating such sacred words. In a parched whisper, she continued, “From the scars of Sariadne, the Dominion was born. I will defend her from her enemy. I will die…” she paused at those words. “I will die before I commit treason.”
Black tears stained her cheeks as she crawled from the walls to the gate of her prison, rattling it with the last of her strength. “I refuse to die here,” she gritted her teeth. “I represent the antecedents who have passed their spirits unto us! And I will use such spirits to honor our nation, never against my brethren.”
She searched her vessel for any sign of mystics, summoning the smallest spark of the hottest fire to melt the iron bars. But nothing happened. What remained of her energy disappeared, and she lost consciousness at last, her body collapsing to the floor.
Chapter XII
Korteni used her mystic to snuff out the lights of the street lanterns all around their vicinity with a slight hiss as the water met fire. Even though Etyne’s distortion shield protected them from any onlookers in the middle of the night, she did not want to take unnecessary risks. Both of them stood before the locked doors of the large building, translating the words above it. “Anomaly Diligences” it had read in common Lantheun language. They nodded to one another and gestured for Sergeant Livian Reej to make her way out of the bushes to them.
Korteni applied mystical ice to the windows on the doors. Etyne gestured a countdown to Livian. He kicked the glass at the same time as she summoned a wind with her mystic to buffer the sound of the breaking glass. They hurried in with Ibrienne and Kanilas following after.
“Search every floor,” Etyne whispered. “I’ll start at the top.” He raced up the stairs three at a time, disappearing into his vapor form to travel faster. He wasn’t even sure this was the right building, that Kanilas Trenn could have very well sent them into a trap to fill his own pockets again. It all seemed too convenient that he happened to know a Kiaran who knew a Lantheun who knew where Resarians were being smuggled in for mystic testings.
Etyne arrived at the large chamber containing multiple barred rooms. The smell of death nearly sent him retching. He hooked his coat over his nose to breathe better. Using the small lantern he carried, he stormed through the unsettling corridors. Each cell he peered into housed a rotting corpse wearing a blood-stained gown. He felt disturbed at the thought of finding Brisethi in such a place and hoped with every ounce of faith in the spirits that she wasn’t among the dead.
Near the end of the chamber, he found the only completely empty cell he’d seen so far then hurried across to see one occupied by a person he couldn’t tell was dead or just unconscious. The blood-red paintings of destruction on the wall flared recognition in confirming her identity. He placed his lantern down then turned to mist to easily traverse through the bars, rematerializing on the other side in the cell. He knelt down beside her and brushed away strands of hair from the woman’s face. His heart pounded at the sight of the tortured vessel of Brisethi’s spirit. “What have they done to you?” his voice cracked as he wiped the blood from her face.
He whistled loudly to alert the others of his location, the sound echoing in the long chamber. Then he searched for Brisethi’s pulse. Her skin was warm at her neck, and he felt the faintest pulse slowly beating.
“’Sethi, come to me,” he whispered, cradling her head and allowing his mystic to flow through her vessel in search of her spirit. It was all he could do to keep from panicking that he was about to lose her. He felt that his life would never be the same if he no longer had someone to look forward to seeing alongside him. Not just someone, you, ‘Sethi, don’t leave me alone, please, he mentally pleaded as though his soul was speaking for him.
He heard the footsteps of the other Resarians who accompanied him running in their direction.
“Cursed spirits,” Korteni whispered when she reached the cell, applying ice to the gate’s hinges and kicking it in with the help of Reej. Korteni instantly dropped to her knees to begin hydrating Brisethi with her mystic by conjuring drops of water from the air and slowly trickling it into her friend’s mouth, lest she choke on it. She allowed warmer water to flow along Brisethi’s skin, wiping the blood and dirt with her own hands in an attempt to clean her.
Ibrienne spared no time healing the open wounds and curing the myriad infections running through her veins. “I’m trying to regenerate the missing pieces of her skin,” she told them earnestly. Brisethi’s skin began to stretch and form over the open wounds on her arms and back, leaving it bright red where Ibrienne’s mystic touched her. “Dear spirits, she was filled with diseases,” she muttered woefully as she purified her blood.
“Where are you, Sulica?” Kanilas angrily called, searching the remaining cells.
Etyne, meanwhile, struggled to find his companion’s spirit. His mind raced back to expedition training, when the acolytes had taught the strongest of the spirits the ultimate remedy, were it ever needed. He hesitated momentarily, not because of the sacrifice he was about to make, but to assure he was in the correct stance and state of mind lest he accidentally release both of their spirits, killing them both. It was at that moment that he was certain he’d rather die to let her live so that he didn’t have to live without her.
He gently dragged her frail body toward him to set themselves in the proper position. Holding her from behind, he placed one hand in the middle of her sunken chest and the other on her forehead. He summoned the deepest part of his spirit to partition a small portion of it, separating it from his own vessel. What followed next was an inner painful shock he never imagined could hurt so much that for a second, he thought he had died. He flinched visibly at feeling the smallest tear of his incorporeal aura separate from his spirit and flow into Brisethi’s vessel.
“What is he doing?” Livian asked Korteni, staring in shock at the illuminating blue aura surrounding Etyne and Brisethi.
“Dear spirits, he’s performing Soul Reclamation,” Korteni replied. The acolytes hadn’t taught her the mystic, saying that she might be eligible in another century because her spirit was still too young. A spirit that was not strong enough to endure the tear risked prematurely sending it to the Sea of Renewal, ending the lives of both parties in an instantaneous, painful death.
Ibrienne knew the sacred act he was performing. She, too, was one of the few to be taught how to partition her spirit in order to revive another’s. Chills crept up her spine at hearing Etyne yell from physical agony.
Livian and Korteni looked on with fear and reverence. Seconds later, the ambient aqua glow dissipated from Etyne and Brisethi, leaving him breathing rapidly in exhaustion and incomprehensible pain. Brisethi inhaled deeply, opening her eyes and blinking away inky tears.
Her breathing intensified when she sat up, staring in disbelief at each Resarian looking back at her. “Korteni,” she whispered, her voice still weak. “What are you all doing here?” Her eyes filled with tears of overwhelming emotions.
Korteni wrapped her arms around her, despite the disgusting mess of water, filth and blood on her friend. “We’re getting you out of here, silly!”
“Sen Asel!” shouted Kanilas, seeing her rise. “Where is Sulica?”
Brisethi leaned against Korteni for support. “She was rescued some time ago – maybe yesterday or the day before?”
“Rescued? By who?” he demanded.
“I think he was Kiaran,” she mumbled, still drowsy and weak. “He bought her freedom.”
Korteni gave her standard issue rations to help replenish her nutrients, which Brisethi tore into. Korteni turned to look at the wall and stared in horror and awe at the dreadful bloody paintings. Ibrienne, still hooded to conceal her identity, pulled the half-finished rations from Brisethi’s hand, admonishing Korteni for overloading Brisethi’s malnourished body.
“Freedom? Do you know what Kiarans do to lone Resarians?” Kanilas was outraged as he stormed into the cell. “How could you let this happen to her?”
“Do not blame me for the fuckery she caused us both to endure!” Brisethi screeched. She cast a longing gaze at the food in the hooded woman’s grasp.
Though still slightly disoriented from the Soul Reclamation, Etyne’s anger caused him to reach over to Kanilas, and pin him against the wall. “You will stop talking to Sen Asel! If you have something to ask, I will ask her for you!” His training commander persona flared up.
“I just wanna know where she is,” Kanilas whimpered under the force of Etyne’s forearm against his throat.
“Sulica is the reason for both their suffering! Go find your precious Sulica before I do,” his voice bellowed dangerously. The only thing holding Etyne back from murdering the man before him with his bare hands was the presence of his fellow service members.
Kanilas pulled himself away from Etyne and glared at Ibrienne, “Let’s get out of here, Ibrienne.”
“Ibrienne,” Brisethi whispered, her eyes moving from the rations to her former friend beneath a hood. “You aided them? What have you done?”
“‘Sethi you don’t understand – I had no choice!” She couldn’t bring herself to meet Brisethi’s eyes. Dropping the rations, she ran out of the cell to catch up with Kanilas.
“You’re letting them go?” Korteni questioned Etyne’s decision. “After what they put her through, you’re just letting them go?”
“As you were, Chief,” he ordered.
“Belay my last, Sir,” she muttered through gritted teeth.
Through blurred vision of teary eyes, Brisethi watched the uncanny conversation, washing down her rations with Korteni’s flask of water. She wondered about Etyne’s choice as well but did not feel the need to question him. She wanted Ibrienne to return, and her own dignity to return. She wanted it all to return to how things were at the end of their expedition training.
“Sir, with my help, we could have apprehended them-“
“The decision’s been made!” he shouted, cutting Reej off. “We’re not going to stand around debating the two criminals. Chief, go find her uniform or anything other than this filthy gown,” Etyne’s spirit had darkened quickly. He glanced at Brisethi, “Are you capable of walking?”
“Yes,” Brisethi immediately replied, unsure if she could walk for long, but too unsettled by his tone of voice to tell him.
Etyne felt mentally exhausted from retrieving Brisethi’s spirit. His patience was too short to safely bind Kanilas and drag him along with them to their rally point miles away. Furthermore, the sight of Brisethi’s abominable appearance had him discreetly losing his composure. All he wanted was to hold her close, to protect her from anyone ever harming her again. Her very soul was tormented, and he had felt all of it at once in the second he had seized her spirit. So many emotions poured into his grieving spirit, overwhelming his decision-making functions. Wanting to place the blame on someone for everything that had just happened, there was a high chance that Kanilas would suffer mortal injury by Etyne if left in his presence.
Sergeant Livian Reej glanced at the indisposed officer that she had once considered powerful, intimidating and beautiful when she enlisted her three years ago. Before her now stood a broken, defeated weakling. She was even more concerned about the haunting images on the wall the captain had painted with her own blood. What kind of troubled mind does that? Reej wondered. As far as she was concerned, the Dominion captain had failed in escaping and was giving up on life when they found her. Had Captain Vorsen not given her a second chance, the woman would be dead by the morning.
Brisethi turned her palm up. She stared into it, feeling a sense of renewal wash over her. Something anomalous yet at the same time familiar inhabited her vessel. Somehow, her spirit had returned, but with more vigor and enhanced mystical virtue. Scarlet flames ignited in the palm of her hand, flowing outward to the iron bars
of the chamber. The mystic leapt to her command, like an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time.
Once the four Resarians were outside, Brisethi spread her flames throughout the entire building, crumbling it to ash.
Spirits of Falajen
Part III - Fallen Paradigm
Chapter I
When did it all go so wrong? Ibrienne asked herself. She glared at Kanilas Trenn sitting across from her in the cargo hold of the train. “What was she thinking, going after Dominion officers?” Ibrienne asked aloud. “We’re enemies of our own empire, now. We can never return to Sariadne.”
“It’s a good thing we’re going to Pahl’Kiar, then, isn’t it?” Kanilas replied flippantly.
“And then what are we going to do? Ask our adversaries if we can live in their land despite the fact they’re not allowed to live in ours? We don’t exactly look like Kiarans-“
“But we do look like every other race they get along with,” he interrupted. “When we get to Beccilia we’ll change our clothing and work on our accents. I need to message one of my Kiaran contacts for word of Sulica as soon as we’re there.” Kanilas busied himself with a few documents he’d pulled out of his travel bag.
Ibrienne sighed heavily. When she agreed to work for Sulica’s father, the youngest son of a very prominent family in Res’Baveth who had fallen from grace, in his shipping business, she never imagined they would end up as adversaries of their own people.
She recalled the day that their lives took a tragic turn. Four months ago in the winter of 4th millennia, 3rd century, 28th year, the sea-faring lives of Sulica, Ibrienne and Kanilas were changed forever. What started as a routine international waters inspection from Lantheun authorities escalated into catastrophe when contraband was found on their ship. Sulica’s father, Hantir, had acquired schematics of Kiaran weapon systems and fortifications when his crew, posed as Lantheun allies, burglarized a Kiaran frigate in port. Upon discovery, Hantir’s crew opened fire on the Lantheun officials, causing an outbreak of violence on his ship.
Spirits of Falajen Page 31
