49. Fearless Skies
Icy winds with the force of a brick wall gusted into the wheelhouse. Regina pulled off her helmet and sat upright against bright rays of a deep azure sky. She blinked, glanced about the glass-walled wreckage that surrounded her. Thick white clouds passed by on either side of her, like birds in migration.
“We did it...” she whispered, dumbfounded. The gravity of what just took place slowly settled upon her shoulders like a heavy blanket. Her dopey expression melted, bloomed into a wide-creeping smile of prideful surprise. “By the Goddess, we did it!”
The heretic was too busy still fighting with the Alliance Skylord to notice her excitement. With some struggle he finally tore free out of his assailant’s grasp. He paused to study the weight of the limb, then pulled the whole bat’s arm in through the porthole to find that it was severed at the shoulder. “Yech.”
Regina’s nerves were on fire with adrenaline. “—Ohh!! If only Master Astral could have seen it! Wait until Dwain hears an earful! Oh my goodness! He won’t believe his spines! Okay – where are we headed next?! Can you believe it, I’m piloting a flying machine! Oh, I could get used to this.”
“Don’t.” The heretic grabbed at the air before Regina, despite a fruitless struggle to pull himself off of the dagger pinning him to the door of the wheelhouse. “You’ve no business aboard this airship.”
“Excuse me?” Regina threw him a nasty glare. The distraction was enough for her to accidentally veer the vessel off to a hard left.
“You – heard – aggh!” The force of the dip pushed the heretic’s weight into the door, causing it swing back on its hinges. It slammed hard against the exterior wall with him still attached.
Gasping, Regina corrected her course. She glanced about the remains of the wheelhouse for something to keep the steering wheel secure so that she tend to the heretic’s misfortune.
Runes that read “temporary autopilot” caught her eye from a sign hidden against the corner behind the navigator chair. Below it was a long hooked wand connected to an upwards hinge fastened against a steel column that conjoined the wheelhouse’s rear glass walls. The wand was heavy and stiff, but with some effort, Regina heaved up on the thing until it snapped into place, hooking securely round the inner rim of the wheel to keep it from spinning out of control.
She started out towards the open door when something caught her attention, bundled up on the floor. It was a ball of scrunched up angora – the belt of fabric the heretic had stolen from her to clean Nimbus with, back at the Stone Zephyr. It was soaked all the way through with fresh blood, the coppery stench thick in Regina’s nose and mouth. Blood seeped between her metal-clad digits, pattered the boards between her footpads.
She blinked and slowly looked up past the wheelhouse portal. Drops of blood smattered an arc-shaped path across the floor, out onto the upper deck.
...It … it can’t be…
Regina stumbled outside the wheelhouse and found the heretic slumped against the bottom of the door with legs splayed. Life Energy pumped free through a vertical gash in the side of his cuirass, pooling about his tail and thighs in thin streams. Heavy eyelids fought to stay open. It was a struggle to lift his chin. He stared off into nothingness past her shoulder.
“Hey...” Regina dropped to her knees in front of him. “…What’s happened to you?!”
The sound of Regina’s voice caught his attention. He looked her in the eye and offered a weak sneer. “Get away from me. Any closer, and I’ll tear your throat out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, scratching and searching for the clasps to unleash him from the Alliance bonds. “We have to get this armour off you to stop the bleeding.”
“Why?” he asked. “Your captor is at your mercy. Nimbus is out of reach. I’m unarmed, at my weakest. You could get to it quicker than I. We both know freedom would be yours with a single slash to my heart.”
Regina stopped what she was doing, looked him in the eye with grave uncertainty.
“Take it,” the heretic dared her. “Take back your freedom and kill me, now.”
The blood in Regina’s cheeks froze numb. She hesitated for a long moment. A dry lump formed in her throat. She swallowed it down the best she could.
“I stole you from your home,” the heretic continued. “I’ve risked your life. You were my prisoner, your life collateral for an airship. I used you for my own gain. It’s clear you attempted to rectify this in Warminister. What are you to me? A chess piece – words from your very lips.”
Regina quickly shook her head back to the present. “Everything you’re saying is nonsense. Let me take care of—”
The heretic grabbed her by the wrist.
“No,” he said. “Retainer blood runs through your veins. I was once an underling of the Zuut. I am a fox – a canine. We are enemies, alchemist. To end my life is your birthright.”
Regina sent a sharp swat across his cheek with such force his whole face jerked away. The heretic blinked, regarded her with a stunned side look, gyrating his jawbone back into place.
“You coward. In no way am I a Retainer,” Regina uttered in a dark tone. “In the same way you are in no way a heretic. We’ve been through too much together to still be so petty. Like it or not, we’re in this together. Now help me get your damned armour off.”
The heretic grumbled. “I needn’t help from a back-stabbing…”
“Backstabbing?! – Hullo, have you paid attention to anything that’s happened up ‘til now?”
He growled. “Back in Warminister you—”
“I got us where we needed to go – twice! Three times, maybe!” Regina stated. “I’m not as blind as it may seem; if we don’t protect the Wind Crystal, something terrible will surely happen. Now, help me get this armour off before you bleed out for being such a stubborn fool.”
The heretic averted his gaze as a sense of guilt started to overcome him. With a grunt, he brushed Regina away, unhitched everything without even having to look.
She wrenched the chest plate off him, heaving it awkwardly away like it were a cursed relic to skid across the deck boards. What lay beneath was total horror. The heretic’s torso looked like it were hit by a cannon ball. Splintered ribs protruded from fur, flesh, and broken chainmail. His chest quivered with each shallow breath, pushing the broken bones outward, before being sucked back inward with every struggle to inhale.
Regina looked away in revulsion. “By the Goddess … What in the blazes happened to you?!”
“Tetra Blacktail happened,” wheezed the heretic. Almost instantly, the crater in his chest puffed out, inflating back to normalcy. With a long and ragged breath of relief, the heretic’s exposed ribs sank beneath the confines of his broken mail, shifting and writhing like faulting earth as they healed back in place, leaving not a mark or speck of gore behind.
But the wound at his side still seeped.
Regina planted both paws firmly against it, but not even all the pressure in the world stopped the thin torrent of blood. “Goddess, why won’t it stop? Why isn’t it healing? What—”
The heretic inhaled like a thin whistle and took on a gaze of abrupt, far-seeing revelation. “…I’m dying.”
“Here, I know what to do.” Regina rummaged about in her belt pouches for the herbs collected from the farmstead at the Sylvian Flatlands. She stuffed them all into her mouth, chewed everything up, and spat a single pulpy blob into a paw.
The heretic puffed with a painful chuckle. “Some alchemy that is.”
She ignored him and smeared the concoction onto the injury, then wrung out her angora belt until it was dry. She bundled it into a tight clump and pressed it firm to the wound. “These herbs will soak up the toxins, and will release nutrients into your bloodstream to hasten coagulation. There, the flow’s starting to let up already.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Regina sighed. “You really are so dense, aren’t you?”
This brought a pained smile to the heretic�
�s lips. “L-look at you, alchemist. Steal an Alliance airship once, and it goes s-straight to your head.”
She hid a grin and started to remove the bundle of angora from the wound when the heretic grabbed her wrist again. The suddenness of his grip startled Regina, but he simply stared deep into her with hazy eyes. His breaths were deep, laboured. “…The Crystal of the Wind … It’s not the only one.”
Regina nodded. “We’ve an airship now. We’ll find them all. Just rest. Your friend York will help us once we get to Lylia Province. I’ll get us there, don’t you worry. Everything will be all right.”
“…You would risk your life against the Alliance? Against your betrothed hedgehog?” asked the heretic. He shook his head, eyes never leaving hers. “No. What if I won’t allow it?”
This caused something small to spark in the shadows of Regina’s memories. A veil of knowing sadness flashed across her face. She offered him a weak smile and said, “It seems … the choice isn’t yours.”
The heretic smirked at her, a smirk that bloomed into a weak smile of his own. Then his eyes slowly lolled backward and he slumped on one side, crumpling to the deck boards.
Regina blinked. She nudged the heretic gently, but he didn’t react. She shook him, hard. He didn’t grunt, nor did his eyes blink back into consciousness. She slapped his shoulders and pinched his ears, but he didn’t flinch, nor scold her.
“No…” she whispered. “No – wake up. Please – wake up! By the stars, don’t you dare! We’re in this together, didn’t you hear me?! Wake up!!”
Regina put her ear to his chest.
Lub … dub … lub …
She let out a sharp breath; there was still a pulse. It was faint and distant, but the heretic’s Life Energy was still very much in existence – if only for a few moments longer.
“Oh, Goddess – what do I do, what do I—”
A brilliant luminescence. The Crystal of the Wind. Regina remembered how it had beckoned to her at the farmhouse. How it had spoken to her through its very glowing essence. She remembered the farmhouse, and the maddened child. She remembered how the child’s howls for reprieve, echoing across the icy night skies, had shared rhythm with the Crystal’s shard—
The shard.
Regina gasped. “Yes, of course!”
She scrambled back to the wheelhouse, where Nimbus and Uriost’s saddlebag awaited. She rooted through the bag’s contents until the crystalline sliver found its way into her unsteady paws. Dull, golden, light throbbed within the shard’s core.
Lub … dub … lub …
“Just like at the barn,” she marvelled, wielding the shard in both paws. “Please, please Mother Azna, let this work!” Regina swallowed hard and bounded back outside.
It beats like a heart … it beats with his heart…
“Eydra Mey’rhossoh!”
Without a second’s hesitation, she plunged the crystal shard deep into the heretic’s chest. A golden radiance erupted from his body. It enveloped Regina at once, a wave of excruciating warmth that seared the skies, melted every cloud in sight.
There was a loud gasp of breath. It was the heretic. The blinding light dimmed until only shadows and stars danced before Regina’s eyes. The heretic inhaled sharply once more and pushed her away – doing so withdrew the shard from his chest, leaving not even a mark behind as it clattered to the deck boards.
When Regina finally blinked away the stars behind her eyes, she realized the fatal wound at her companion’s side simply ceased to exist. The slash on his arm, received by Sergeant Aruto, had also vanished.
Regina broke out into a bright smile then. She threw herself at the heretic in a great big hug and cried out happily, “It worked! By the goddess, it worked!”
“Augh! What are you doing – get off of me!”
“You’re alive! Oh my goodness, it worked! It worked, it worked!! Here, let me help you stand!” She grabbed the heretic by the paws and pulled until he had enough leverage to get up on his own, wobbling on weak heels.
Regina found the shard, bloodied and dark with but a dull throb within its core. She stood with it cradled in her paws.
“Blazing whiskers – Goddess forgive me, alchemist … You were right.”
She looked up at the heretic. He regarded the crystal shard with a look of disbelief. His expression then twisted into deep regret.
“…You were right the whole time…”
Sadness panged in Regina’s heart for thoughts of the maddened kitten and her family. She shook her head with eyes closed, before any tears could form. “Regret won’t serve us any purpose. What would we have done, brought her along with us?”
The heretic didn’t answer. He averted his gaze, idly caressing a patch of matted fur over his heart.
“What’s done is behind us,” Regina whispered to him. “She and her family are reunited in the afterworld. Be pleased for that, as I am.”
The heretic nodded, sat with this in his thoughts for awhile. He then swiped the shard out of Regina’s grasp and turned towards the wheelhouse portal, using the exterior walls to balance and guide the way.
“Commander Blacktail – he’s your brother, right?” Regina suddenly asked. “That’s what he said. You both – you’re twins!”
The heretic paused. “I have no brother.”
“…So then who are you?”
He threw a look over his shoulder at Regina and grunted. “I haven’t a name to speak of. Not anymore. Who I was before no longer matters. There is only my quest for the Crystals. I am my quest. That’s who I am, now.”
Regina furrowed her brow. “And what of me, then? What am I to you? Will you simply drop me at the Hollow and be on your merry way?”
“Sounds good to me.” With that, the heretic motioned to duck inside the wheelhouse.
“You’ve still a deal to uphold!” Regina reminded him. “I want to help you. And you promised to take me to Dwain.”
“That was when we both thought he was at Warminister. He is clearly not. If you believe me an escort, alchemist, prepare to be sorely disappointed.”
“We had a deal! I saved your life, for goddess’s sake!”
With a great sigh, the heretic’s shoulders sagged.
“Please,” Regina begged him. “All I want is to help. I want to help your cause and be reunited with my Dwain. Nothing else matters.”
The heretic turned around to face her. He chewed his tongue in silence a while.
Regina stood her ground. Silent. Staring. She pursed her lips, brow furrowed.
The heretic wrinkled his nose, then strode back towards her. When they were mere inches apart, he extended a paw that naturally lined up with Regina’s nose.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s the least I can do. Gratitude is in order, and I’m a fox of my word.”
She regarded the gesture, blinked up at the heretic, but he offered her only an unreadable expression. Regina waited for her gut to react, but nothing sparked.
She took a deep breath and shook the heretic’s paw with as firm a grip she could muster. “Thank you.”
He snorted. “I must say, of all the wheda I’ve met along this life’s path, never have I crossed one with such tenacity as you. All for a hedgehog. My, what a tendency love has to bring us both strength and stupidity.”
“I know what I saw at the Stone Zephyr,” said Regina. “I’ve seen the Wind Crystal’s power face-to-face – the kind of corruption it can brew within a mammal’s heart, I mean. If what happened in the Keeton Woods is any indication … I fear the world will end if the World Stones all fall into the Zuut’s clutches. I just – I know it to be true.”
The heretic studied Regina for a long time as he seemed to contemplate everything she had just said. After a while, his hardened features softened. His eyes became compassion.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
Regina nodded. “Mm.”
He sighed. “I was wrong about you. I was wrong about a great many things. You, yourself – You’re no
t a Retainer, not a killer – but your parents … they would be damned proud to hear such a thing from your lips.”
Regina beamed at this.
“What’s your name, alchemist?” he asked. And then quickly added, “Don’t – don’t turn this around. Just answer the question. What’s your name?”
“Regina,” said Regina. “My name is Regina Lepue.”
The heretic nodded. “Regina. It suits you.”
“I think so too,” she said, smiling up at him. “So, then. Where in the world do we go from here?”
“East,” said the heretic. He ruffled her hair with gentle care. Then, before he could even think to catch such a thing in its tracks, a prideful smirk blossomed at the corners his muzzle. “Take us east, Regina Lepue.”
To be continued in
THE QUEST FOR THE CRYSTALS: THE BOOK OF EARTH
Coming soon
Euphoria Blackwood has backgrounds in journalism, psychology, and pop-culture analysis. In addition, she is an honours graduate of journalism from Humber College in Etobicoke, Ontario.
Miss Blackwood encourages readers to connect via Twitter and Facebook (@EEBlackwood) and her writing blog, www.eeblackwood.com.
The Book of Wind: (The Quest for the Crystals #1) Page 37
