The Last Winter (The Circle War Book 2)

by Matt King

  A thin veil separated Earth and space over the grasslands. A growing synapse stretched its edges toward the horizons. It dominated the sky, casting a weak blue haze over the city, even though the portal was miles above the planet. Its warped surface showed a wavy view of the darkness of space on the other side. It would not stay dark for long. She knew what would soon pass through it.

  Shadow’s scream broke her stare. Down the wide archway at the end of the corridor, a pair of guards dragged August away. Polaris followed behind them. Her blue eyes caught Aeris’s for a second before she and the Ministers disappeared through a doorway that closed behind them.

  Aeris followed Shadow in a sprint. The beast made it to the door first. She pounded on the surface, cracking the thick stone with each strike. Finally, her claws broke through, and she tore one half of the door away, then the other.

  They ran down a set of stairs to a junction at the bottom. To her left were the guards leading August away. To her right stood Polaris. The cyborg waited for her at the other end of the hall with August’s sword staff held across her waist.

  “Save August,” Aeris said over her shoulder. Reaching behind her, she took Dondannarin’s chakrams from her back. “Leave her to me.”

  Behind her, Shadow thundered down the hallway, roaring in angry pursuit of the guards who held her child.

  “I wondered which you might choose,” Polaris said. “Your desire for revenge or your desire for the Dillon man.”

  “Those swords don’t belong to you, creature,” Aeris said. “I plan on returning them to their rightful owner.”

  Polaris charged in a blur. Aeris sent fire through the chakrams in her hands and ran to meet her. The machine separated August’s swords, creating a pair of whistling signatures for Aeris to key on. That is your first mistake.

  A shock went up her arm as she used the chakrams to block the arcing swords. She pushed them away, then aimed her weapon toward Polaris’s exposed leg. The machine stepped back in a flash, dodging each blow and countering with looping swipes of August’s blades. Aeris danced around them. She struck when she could, hoping to find a way past the shield glowing over Polaris’s skin. The song of August’s blades gave her the sensory tracking she needed, but she was constantly on the defense, unable to take control of the fight.

  Polaris attacked with cool precision, never overstepping her balance. She concentrated on alternating blows, high and low, each one delivered with a quickness that denied retaliation. Aeris tried to keep her frustration in check. She looped her chakrams around one of the swords as it made a slicing path over her head, pulling tight to trap the blade between her weapons. The metal was too dense to cut through. She whipped it to the side instead, bringing Polaris along with it and flipped the machine over her shoulder to the floor.

  Two quick strikes barely missed the machine’s throat. Aeris thrashed at her, hoping something would land that could penetrate the glow of the shield. Polaris fought back to her feet, driving a kick into Aeris’s midsection to give herself room. They came back up facing each other on opposite sides of the hall with their weapons at their side. Polaris held one of August’s blades in each hand.

  A low rumbling vibrated the floor beneath their feet. Aeris glanced through a window behind her. Velawrath’s portal now took up the entire sky. He is near. No sooner had the thought entered her mind than the castle started to shift. Tiny flecks of stone sifted down from the ceiling. She looked over at Polaris just before the full shock of the earthquake took hold of the castle, wrenching it from side to side.

  She couldn’t make out where she was. Images blew past her vision in streaks. The floor lurched sideways, and she barreled over with it, not coming to rest until the quake settled into a tremor.

  With the worst of it over, she jumped to her feet. Polaris had landed farther down the hall. Her blue eyes searched through the chunks of debris until she found Aeris. She still had the two halves of August’s sword staff in her hands.

  A crack in the floor caught Aeris’s eye. Polaris came for her, leaping over piles of stone. Aeris waited until she saw both blades and then rolled forward, coming to a stop behind the machine as August’s swords sank into the stone where she’d been. Aeris threw one chakram, then the other. They struck August’s swords, pinning them to the walls. Before Polaris could free them, Aeris called the fire to her hands and shot two powerful blasts into the stone beneath the cyborg’s feet. The floor opened up, swallowing Polaris into a pit of darkness. She hit bottom with a loud crack.

  Aeris put her hand to the wall to steady herself while the castle still trembled in the wake of the earth’s shifts. She looked over the edge of the hole. When she didn’t see anything, she inched closer. Her foot stopped just past the edge of the floor’s maw.

  Without warning, a second quake rocked the castle. She lost her footing and fell through the hole, her fingers barely missing the edge. She crashed into the rubble, rolling into the darkness as the castle seemed to tip on its side. Scrambling to her feet, she stuck close to the small column of light coming through the floor above as pieces of rock rained down through the opening. Her eyes stung from dust. She held up her hand to block the falling debris as a slab of the wall crumbled from the center, falling across the opening. In an instant, she was entombed in darkness.

  The quakes subsided again, settling into a constant low rumble. Her senses were on fire, trying to decipher her surroundings without any light to see. She listened for Polaris, but without August’s blades she would be silent again, cloaked beneath the sound of the tremors. With careful steps, she moved away from the thin pinholes of light coming through the broken rocks until she was deep into the black shadows of the room. She shut her eyes, concentrating on the sounds to guide her.

  “You fight with abandon,” Polaris’s mechanical chorus echoed through the room. “Unlike your brethren.”

  Aeris held her tongue, afraid to let her voice mark her in the darkness.

  “But I wonder if your will is strong enough to see your mission through. Paralos’s plan will fail. Our champions will not be here when this trap is sprung. Your life is forfeit.”

  Aeris concentrated on her voice. She squeezed her eyes together as she tracked each sound.

  “There is nothing left to fight for, and yet here you are, so eager to lose your life in the darkness.”

  There.

  “That is where you’re wrong, creature,” Aeris said. She ignited the fire in her hands. “The Vontani know darkness too well.”

  As soon as her light spread into the room, she saw Polaris clinging to the ceiling. The machine dropped to the ground and lit the shield around her frame. She tried to form her staff. Aeris shot forward and tackled her before it materialized. Without her chakrams, her only hope was to keep the fight close.

  The two went crashing to the floor. Climbing on top, Aeris grabbed her by the thin tendrils of hair and held her in place, slamming her fist into the hard shell again and again until the floor beneath Polaris’s head started to crack. Still, the shields absorbed it all.

  Polaris took her by the waist and threw her sideways, but Aeris hung onto her hair, driving her face-first into the floor. She shot a pair of fiery beams toward her. Polaris’s shields kept them from connecting. Their purple light gathered before the fire left her hands, but they gave away their weakness in the process. The shields could only protect one part of Polaris’s body at once.

  Aeris let out another stream of fire aimed at Polaris’s feet. The shield snapped to life instantly, blocking the damage, but leaving the rest of the cyborg vulnerable. She looped her other charged fist into the side of Polaris’s face while the protection was gone, touching the cool surface of the machine’s skin for the first time.

  Polaris stumbled backward. She brought her hand to her face. Her blue eyes pulsed with life as she ran her fingers across the thin fracture running down her cheek.

  A droning sound shook the sides of the cavity, coming from somewhere lower in the castle. The rumbl
ing beneath their feet was still a dull tremor, meaning that the sound wasn’t coming from another quake. Polaris turned her head slightly toward it, then looked back at Aeris with a hint of a smile.

  “Another time,” she said.

  Aeris ran for her. Polaris caught her with a backhand that sent her flying backward. She landed in a pile of broken stone. When she looked up, Polaris had conjured her weapon and sliced it across the cavity’s wall. The room filled with the soft blue light of the synapse. Polaris gave her a final look before jumping through the hole.

  “No!” Aeris called after her. She took off in a sprint toward the opening. When she looked over the edge, she saw Polaris land on the wing of a ship hovering below. The sky teemed with an armada of the silver oblong ships. They darted around the castle, collecting Amara’s troops. Some sped towards the synapse, breaking through its membrane to take on Velawrath on the other side. She squinted to make out the white face of Velawrath through the synapse’s fog. He was nearly upon them. They had minutes left, if that.

  Another earthquake slammed her against the wall. She held onto the opening until it subsided. Across from her, the mountains surrounding the city showed red cracks along their faces as lava poured from their peaks.

  Behind her, the entrance from the hallway was still closed. She eyed the stone facade outside of the hole Polaris made and climbed onto a thin ridge. She scaled the wall, digging her fingers into the crevices. The stone beneath her hands vibrated from the tremors. She climbed as fast as she could without losing her balance, trying to make her way to the window above her before another earthquake tossed her off the side. The rumbling grew more intense. Dust and debris rained down on her face. When she was below the window, she gathered her footing and jumped, just grasping her fingers around the edge of the opening as the next quake struck. The castle rocked violently. She held on, pulling herself through to land on the undulating floor.

  Dondannarin’s chakrams still sat wedged in the stone with August’s swords caught in their blades. With the walls feeling as though they might fall around her any second, she stumbled over to grab them. She put the chakrams on her back and joined August’s swords together at the hilts.

  A plan started to form in her head. It felt dangerous to hope, but she couldn’t help the spark that formed. If we can fight our way to a ship, we can escape. We may survive this yet.

  Panicked voices carried through the halls above her as Amara’s troops scrambled. She made her way in the direction she last saw Shadow run. Chunks of stone littered the floor, but it wasn’t hard to track her path. She followed the trail of bodies. The line of slain guards led her down a staircase as another tremor hit. Near the end, a cyborg guard lay in pieces beside a wall. Its oily interior oozed out of a gaping slash across its chest. Half of its head was gone, exposing something inside that looked like it might have been human once. More troubling, though, was the site of blood smeared across its white shell. Shadow had been wounded.

  She got to an intersection and chose a direction. Through a winding corridor, she rounded a corner and stopped. Shadow’s mane was just visible in the darkness of the dank causeway. She was low to the floor, leaning over someone in front of her.

  Aeris ran to her side. Shadow rounded on her with a growl, then relaxed when she saw who it was. Her eyes returned to the floor where August sat propped against the wall. His head hung listlessly to one side.

  “August,” Aeris said as she knelt beside him. “Are you all right? Speak to me!”

  His mask rose slightly at the sound of her voice. “You’re late,” he said.

  Shadow leaned down and sniffed the side of his face, coming back up with a snort.

  “I have a gift for you,” Aeris said. She held out his sword staff.

  His mask looked listlessly over her shoulder. Something is wrong. Either he didn’t care about his weapons or he couldn’t recognize what she had.

  “Did they hurt you?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here, Aeris?”

  “I came to save you. We can still make it out of here. Come on. If we hurry, we can take one of the ships outside.”

  “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it that quickly.” He pressed a button, retracting his mask.

  Aeris gasped. She blinked back sudden tears.

  Beside her, Shadow roared—an angry cry that challenged all comers—and the castle walls shook again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Michael said.

  Amara glared at him. “This is not for you to question. When Galan’s ship arrives, you will be on it.”

  “We should hear the vote on Meryn’s fate now before Paralos’s champion attacks,” Anemolie said. “Tamaril, what do you say?”

  “Guilty,” he replied.

  The floor of the arena started to vibrate again. Michael put his hand on a bench to steady himself. Another earthquake. This castle won’t make it through many more. He took the air, hovering above the floor to escape the tremors as the arena started to shift from side to side. Outside the window, streaks of lava rushed from the sides of the barrier mountains toward the city below. Buildings that housed survivors came crumbling down. People ran screaming through the streets. He couldn’t help but smile.

  Something above him popped. The ceiling of the arena gave way, sending shards of stone plummeting to the floor. He raised his hands and let loose with a pair of wide blasts. The shards exploded, raining debris down on the arena stage. Blue light from Paralos’s synapse filled the room through the hole in the ceiling.

  When the quake was over, he landed back on the floor. The gods traded glances.

  “Cerenus, where are you going?” Tamaril asked. “You cannot leave yet, not until we have your answer.”

  Cerenus had already begun to fade. “I wish I could stay, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’m far too weak in this form to withstand whatever is coming through that synapse. Best of luck to you, though.”

  Amara’s teeth clenched. “Cerenus!”

  Michael looked at her. It was the first time he’d ever heard her say anything in anger. He stepped away to the window and looked up at the synapse. Paralos’s portal stretched from one end of the sky to the other. One of Galan’s ships appeared over the mountains to the west. It came to a stop just below Amara’s chambers. A stream of Ministers filed into its hull.

  “How soon until this champion gets here?” Amara asked.

  Tamaril faded slightly, then came back to his full form. “It will break through the synapse in short time. We may have just enough of a window to escape.”

  A screaming roar sounded from above, like a wildcat. It came from just below Amara’s room.

  “Talus, see to that,” she said. “Leave nothing alive. And do not linger. You will need time to escape.”

  Talus cut his eyes to Michael before he took off for the exit. He burst through the doors, ripping both off their hinges.

  Michael looked over his shoulder to see one of Galan’s ships settling outside the arena window. A door slid open from the metal side and extended a bridge to an opening in the wall created by the quake. A minister stepped onto the platform.

  “My Lady,” Anemolie said.

  “Leave us,” Amara answered. “This is not your fight today.”

  Anemolie and Tamaril faded into shafts of light and streaked out of the arena.

  Amara watched them go before settling her eyes on Michael. “I will meet you on the ship,” she said.

  “I’m not going to be on that ship,” he answered.

  Her eyes flared. “Tread lightly, my prince. I will not forgive insolence any more than I will forget it.”

  He fought back the nervous twinge in his stomach. “I told you, I’m not going. I’m going to kill that champion.”

  “If you do that, you will die.”

  “I can beat him.”

  “No,” she said. “You can’t.”

  The floor shook again. Behind him, he heard so
mething that sounded like muffled explosions coming from the mountains. He never took his eyes off of her. She was challenging him, and he had no intention of backing down.

  He held out his hands, cracked from the power he held inside. “Why did you make me this way if it wasn’t to fight?”

  “I made you this way to kill, not to fight.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He took a step back.

  Michael, stop this, she pleaded in his mind. Gone was her scolding tongue, replaced with the silky sweet voice he remembered from days gone by. I don’t want him to take you from me.

  He looked up. Through the haze of the synapse, he saw the face of Velawrath, milky white and growing larger by the second.

  “I was never yours,” he said.

  Without looking back, he let his heat surround him and took off through the opening in the roof, streaking towards Paralos’s synapse with Velawrath’s form filling the sky. He pushed himself to fly faster. When he sped through the portal’s membrane, he barely felt its effects. He came out the other side in a black void. The sound of the energy leaving his body faded to nothing, his ears at once filled with the muted calm of space.

  His stomach reeled when he looked up and saw the true size of Velawrath for the first time. It was like the Earth was falling right on top of him, an Earth covered with mountains of ice that cast shadows larger than a city. He hovered in place, unsure of what to do.

  He is unstoppable, even by the likes of you. Paralos’s voice was an unwelcome memory. But was he right?

  Michael stared at the rocky world bearing down on him. No.

  He flew toward the planet, even as he felt himself being pulled toward its surface. It was getting close to the portal’s membrane. He waited until he could feel the heat of its atmosphere tickle his exposed skin and then slowed. He concentrated his power to his hands and fired a single blast. The red streak left his fingers and sped toward the surface. It struck and dissolved instantly, leaving behind a black scuff mark on the ice.