“Someone has kept up their training,” An’alepp said. She strained forward, longing to see what was in the information waterfalls on the sides of the projection.
I strode forward and joined Astrex by the desk. I might not know much about this world of Axum, but if An’alepp got close maybe she could pick up some information from the words flowing there.
“What powers these ships, An’alepp? Is it the Common?”
“Ha! Usually solar arrays would power it, if the fusion reactor was off-line. In this climate though … I don’t know. Let’s see. Looks like they rigged a geothermal system of some sort. Clever. They had a half decent engineer.”
“You’re going to have to teach me what those words mean someday.”
“Better yet, I’ll teach you how to use the things they refer to.”
An’alepp leaned in so close that her face was almost in the waterfall of words.
I cleared my throat, trying to focus on the real world and pull out of my deep immersion in Ra’shara.
“We’re almost ready here,” Astrex said. “Strap her in, Kjexx.”
“Strap…” I began. A heavy hand weighted my shoulder, and then Kjexx was steering me to a chair to the side. It was large enough to sit both Rusk and I, and long tubes and wires led off from it in every direction.
“The wireless system must have broken, but why would they bother diverting all that power to a VR game system?” An’alepp’s comment was as opaque as usual.
“It’s not a game, An’alepp. It’s real life.”
“Ha! You just watch.”
I caught Kjexx’s eye. “What are you testing for? My pain tolerance?”
“Something else.”
Well, I didn’t have much patience, if that was what he was looking for. Not with a dead great-grandmother constantly feeding her stream of consciousness into me and a steady flow of people inserting themselves into my path and trying to redirect it. I clenched my fists and my jaw. I’d do their tests, but then they would dance to my tune. Didn’t they realize I had a world to save?
“I don’t like the look of it,” Rusk said, with his arms crossed over his chest.
Kjexx leaned an elbow against the chair, a picture of calm. There was a little glitter in his eye. “What did you do to get chained to this woman…other than lose a battle?”
“Not ‘woman’, ‘Tazminera.’ The daughter of a great ruler with the mark of an heir.” Rusk’s expression was tight.
Kjexx paled slightly, his eyes drifting to my torn sleeve and bared shoulder. To my eye the puckered skin of my brand looked like an arrowhead with three curving lines through it, but to Kjexx it meant something completely different.
“Don’t provoke Rusk. He is my san’lelion — an honoured position among my people.” I lifted my chin as arrogantly as I could. These barbarians should not think they had the upper hand. They wanted something from us, or we wouldn’t be here and whatever it was, they would have to pay for it. I was Lesser Tazminera Tylira Nyota, not a barn elephant.
“I meant no disrespect, Windbearer,” Kjexx said with one of his fist-salutes. “Please accept my apology.”
“Let’s get on with this test,” I said.
I sat in the chair, laying my arms along the armrests and supressing a shiver that went through the core of my body and right up into the stem of my brain. It wasn’t just the cold. It wasn’t just the nerves of facing a test I knew nothing about. It was something that went deeper than that.
Kjexx bound me into the chair with small straps. After one arm was fully immobilized, he moved something that made a snapping noise and then I could move again — but my arms were now encased by the hinged chair armrests. I moved them experimentally, mesmerized by the long black threads and tubes that flowed behind it with every movement.
“I have your back, Tazminera,” Rusk said quietly.
“Rusk,” I said, in my command voice. “If these people look like they will threaten your safety, kill them all.”
Kjexx flinched. My voice had been pitched for his ears. I glanced over at Rusk and gave him a sly smile. Outnumbered, with no knowledge of our surroundings, our only advantage was that they knew nothing about us. We needed to keep them on their toes so they couldn’t predict what we would do or adapt in time to stop us.
Kjexx snapped the last clip and, experimentally, I stood up. The framework didn’t feel heavy, but I was pinned to the floor by a support under my hips. I could move my legs, but I would go nowhere. With our tether in play, Rusk wouldn’t be able to move either. When High Tazmin Uili Dymoru bound the first san’lelion to his dar’lelion, had he ever considered how difficult it would make their ability to function in crisis situations? Rusk could go as far as the desk Astrex was working at, and not a step beyond.
I was starting to feel nervous. I could pass any test they threw at me — after all, I was a Tazminera of Canderabai — but Rusk and I were very vulnerable in this situation. I needed to do this quickly. There must be a way to assuage these people enough that we could be on our way. They obviously had ideas about this ‘Windbearer.’ Perhaps I could speak a few words that fit the situation, convince them that I was doing whatever it was they wanted. Somewhere on this world was the information to save Everturn from the cataclysm, and I had to find it.
“An’alepp, do you think the information we need to stop the cataclysm is here? Now that you’ve seen the place?” I asked.
She looked up from the flowing text in the progression. “Actually, I do.”
Astrex left the desk and strode to face me, planting her feet wide apart and putting her hands on her hips. She saluted as Kjexx had, fist-to-hand.
“I see in the code that they buried a trans-world communication system and a full database upload in a metal box. That would be what we need to find a solution to our problem.”
“Perfect,” I said, as Astrex’s guards fanned out along the walls of the room.
They stood shoulder-to shoulder, ringing it entirely as Axrun pulled a series of long, transparent boards down from the ceiling, till they looked like the upper set of teeth in a jaw. He ran his hands on them and they began to glow, showing a moving landscape of towering buildings suspended in the air and a network of bridges between them.
“Not quite,” An’alepp said.
“The Black Talon bears witness to your trials, Windbearer. We will watch and bear your truth. Remember, faithfulness always. Do not hesitate.” She fixed me with a cold stare. “Say it.”
“Faithfulness always. Do not hesitate,” I repeated.
Astrex almost smiled before leaning in towards me.
“We’ll time it. For every minute you take beyond the record time set, your man here will lose a digit — a finger or when they are gone, a toe.” Now she really smiled. “A little extra motivation to lend you wings.”
“Touch him and you will pay in pain,” I countered.
The room filled with laughter and I rolled my eyes. These barbarians had an unpredictable sense of humor.
“Any chance you’ll tell me what the test is?” I asked.
“Faithfulness always. Do not hesitate.”
“I thought so.”
I locked eyes with Rusk. “Remember what I said.”
“Hold fast.” His face was grim and pale.
I opened my mouth to say more, but Kjexx lowered a rounded, black helmet over my face, and for a moment my world was dark and silent.
“The box is buried somewhere on this planet,” An’alepp said. “And it seems the Empire that tried to kill you possesses most of the planet — except for the part ruled by these charming people. If you don’t pass their tests you might as well have stayed in Everturn.”
As if I needed any more motivation.
Chapter Eight: Testing
MY VISION CLEARED FROM blackness with a jarring suddenness. The smell of sulphur and other rank gases filled my nostrils at the same moment that a wall of sound almost knocked me over. All around me screams, shouts, and loud booms sounded.
Above us those cities in the sky hovered like guiding stars, but here on the ground, war waged. People in strange, identical clothing — not unlike my jumpsuit, but patterned in way that twisted the eye and blended into the landscape — ran or fell or screamed.
“Get down! The enemy is launching explosive devices!” Someone was tugging on my clothing.
I sank into a crouch. Was that a sword in my hand? A shield on the other arm? The man beside me had an elaborate helmet with flaps on either side that tied under his chin. An officer? Where was I?
“Good, so you can listen to orders if they’re yelled! Keep your head down. Reinforcements are coming. The sensible thing to do is just hold the line until General Clifftang arrives.”
I had no idea where I was or what was happening. I peered up over the edge of the rock in front of us. Ahead was a ridge and on the ridge a line of men in black garb were lining up machines of some kind. The machines had long arms and something on the far end of them was smoking. Behind them a man rode on a white horse, pointing from one soldier to the next. Their leader. The ground between them and us was littered with bodies.
“Keep your head down when they launch! Hold your position!” the man beside me was screaming.
“It’s been a long time since I was in virtual reality,” An’alepp said. An old woman on a battlefield?
“What are you doing here?”
“We never fired up our VR after the Event Alura crashed. I had no idea…but look…it’s a part of Ra’shara! I’m really here!”
Oh yes. It was a test. I was supposed to be showing what I was made of somehow. By dying on a battlefield?
The enemy roared and then projectiles were sailing through the air and plummeting through our ranks. I squeezed closer to the ground. The sound of their explosion was deafening, and I swayed back and forth in the blast from the nearest one, my eyes tightly shut.
When the shaking stopped, I opened them. Beside me a man lay in the dirt, screaming and pawing at his broken body. I stared in horror. This is what Rusk had expected when we crashed on a battlefield. He’d expected us to die in terrible, shattered pieces. Where was the man’s leg? I couldn’t see it anywhere. He gripped my foot.
“Please. Please, help me.”
I sucked in a breath. I could help him. I could try to staunch the bleeding and hold his hand while his life seeped away. I could do what the screaming man in the fancy helmet was ordering and hold the line. Neither of those things was going to save any of these people. What they needed right now was someone to destroy those launchers. Right now, while they were reloading.
I shook off the hand of the man beside me, gritted my teeth, and launched myself up, leaping over the rocks we had been hiding behind and racing across the divide. I didn’t look down when my foot caught on something. I didn’t want to see what it was. I kicked it free, racing onward. I was close now, and they had no archers. I gripped my sword in white knuckles.
“Well I have to say, I am impressed. It takes courage to charge an army on your own,” An’alepp said from beside me, easily keeping the pace.
“Even in a pretend world?”
“It’s not pretend. It’s just not the one you usually live in.”
I leapt over a fallen body and saw the enemy rushing towards me. Figures peeled off from the main force one by one, but growing like a pool of wine dripping off a table. They charged towards me, shields and swords gleaming under the sun. What had I been thinking? I didn’t know how to fight with a sword and shield. I’d never done this before. I skidded to a halt and threw my weapons away.
“Yes, very good. Throw away your weapons. A winning strategy in an armed conflict.”
I ignored An’alepp, reached forward and pulled at the threads all around me, spinning my lightnings viper-fast and flinging them in every direction. Here in this alternate world they were tamer, going almost where I willed them to go. I thrust the main force of them forward and as they flung men away like rag dolls, searing them into smoking piles of cloth and death as I followed in their wake. My steps were careful and measured, but I moved ever forward. Lightning after lightning seared through the sky, scattering every foe.
“Well now. This is something I’ve never seen before,” An’alepp said. “Changing Ra’shara for fashion’s sake?”
I glanced down. I was wearing a black and gold sarette, like royalty. Well, in fairness, I was royalty and I had every right to wear it, but how had I changed what I was wearing?
“Ra’shara and VR are both heavily influenced by the mind. It seems you can play tricks with it that I’ve never seen before.”
“Hopefully they extend beyond fashion, I said with an acid voice.
The rider on the horse was in my sights now. He sat tall and straight, his eyes boring into mine, and a grim expression on his face. Slice off the head and the body dies. To end this madness, I needed only to destroy the mind controlling it. I wove — or rather unwove — my lightnings.
The lightning bolt that extended from my hand was thicker than my arm and hit him square in the chest, lifting him off his charger and carrying him through the air, frozen in a rictus of pain, smoke drifting from him with the remains of his soul.
“Well, I suppose it’s too late to remind you that you shouldn’t be unweaving,” An’alepp said. She was crouched in a ready position. “Good thing it’s only in VR. Just don’t try it when you get back to the real world.”
The battleground faded to black and for a moment I caught a glimpse of the room in the Black Talon. Rusk, Kjexx and Astrex stood shoulder to shoulder peering at one of the screens. I saw myself on it as I delivered my final lightning bolt. A booming cheer erupted from the warriors circling the room.
“I don’t think I’m meant to see that.”
“It’s because you can move so fluidly in Ra’shara. You can also move your consciousness back to the real world — even here where it is artificially contained.”
My mind felt like it was falling and then resurfacing in a deep pool. I lurched slightly as my vision cleared and I looked around me. I was in a grand hall, wrought of stone and iron in curving, swooping designs. Multi-colored murals decorated the terraced room and wide windows let in the light of the sun as if we were under the sky.
A hawkish man in ornate robes smiled at me and made the sweeping gesture that I had come to hate in my enemies. As always, guards encircled me. Two pinned my hands to a glossy wooden table while two more dragged Rusk, gagged and blindfolded into the room. Wait! Not Rusk! They held his hands to the table in the same way as mine.
“And now we choose,” the hawkish man said. “Perception, Charm, Power, or Love. Which would you lose?”
“None,” I said through gritted teeth. A guard beside me cuffed me. Why couldn’t I remember how I got here? Where was this place?
Beside the hawkish man in the robes another man in close fitting dark clothing was staring at me with one finger tapping his chin. He could have been my brother, he looked so similar to me.
“Today you will lose an eye, a hand or your tongue,” the hawkish man said. “A lesson in values. Or, I could take one of them from your loved one. A reasonable sacrifice, yes? Now choose.”
Could I fight back somehow? Was there a way to avoid making a choice? My head felt so foggy, but there was a pain between my eyes as if I was trying to remember something important.
“Hesitate again and we will take the life of your beloved…and you will still have to choose.”
“My hand!” I blurted out. “Take my hand.”
Oh, Sweet Penspray! I was going to lose a hand. My breath came in gulps, tears spilled down my face, as the hawkish man pulled out a large sword. Behind him the man in the dark clothing tilted his head to one side. His head was shaved and it gleamed in the light. Why did he seem so familiar? Why did he look at me like he was expecting something?
The guards shifted their hold on me, readying my shaking hand for the blade. I took a deep breath, preparing myself, and then I reached out, wildly and in
stinctually with my mind. Lightning filled my vision, searing everything around me. When the light cleared, I drew a deep breath and looked around me. No one stood, except the man with the gleaming head. He smiled.
Everything faded to black, and once again I could see the room I was in, with my last moments replaying on the screens for those watching. It wasn’t real! Rusk was okay. I drew a long breath, relief sweeping over me. It was just a test. Just a trick to see what I would do. I tried to wipe my eyes, but my hands couldn’t reach. Good thing they couldn’t see my face. Rusk’s fists were clenched tightly, he looked like he might start punching something at any moment as he stared at the screen. Was he furious with me? He had just seen me accidentally kill him with my wild lightning strike. Or was he upset about something else? Was he worried I wouldn’t finish in time?
“She fought the immersion even though we made it stronger,” Astrex said.
“I can’t make it any stronger than that. Mental safety protocols won’t allow a deeper programming.” Axrun was moving his hands through the flowing text so fast it was hard to see them. “The tests are still working. We are seeing her character unfold.”
“But they are going too quickly. She keeps sabotaging them, and I don’t know how! And what was with that error? All I saw there was a blur!”
“Just send her into the next one. Either she’ll do it, or she won’t.”
“Are you sure?” Astrex said, scrubbing her knuckles over the shorn half of her head. “I think the program is glitching, and you know that most people don’t survive the third test even under optimal circumstances.”
“Wait,” Rusk said. “Send me instead. You don’t need to kill her.”
Astrex gave him a cold glare. “You aren’t marked as Windbearer. We don’t need to test you.”
“Please,” Rusk said. “We can serve you in other ways. There’s no need to kill her. You have a war going on and we are fine warriors. We can help you. Please, spare her.”
Lightning Strikes Twice (Unweaving Chronicles Book 2) Page 5
