The Last Winter (The Circle War Book 2)

by Matt King

“Of course you do, you just don’t want to face it. You’ve known it for some time and haven’t wanted to confront her. The story of your youth is exactly that: a story. She’s used you, Gemini. She’s used you since the start. You are not special to her. You are not the object of her love. You are a tool to be dismantled and discarded when her goals are complete.”

  It was all too easy to think back to the reporters, to see their faces as Amara corrected their memories while he watched, to see them strain for the truth they knew was there but couldn’t grab hold of. He’d felt that same thing before standing in the kitchen of his father’s house.

  My house.

  “My father never did those things to me,” Michael said under his breath. “He never hurt me.”

  “No,” Paralos answered. “But she made you believe he did.”

  “I killed him.”

  “And many others.”

  He didn’t care about them. They deserved to die. Or did they? No, those memories rang true. Years of suffering through the jeers and the names, people telling him he was sick and crazy. They asked to burn.

  But his father wasn’t like them.

  “You see now,” Paralos said.

  “Yes.”

  “Amara deals in lies. She rules by manipulation and kills anyone who dares shine a light on her darkness. Ule knew it. She killed him in the name of a phantom higher power to keep her title. She won’t stop until all her enemies are dead.”

  “And are you any better?”

  Paralos smiled. “What do my actions tell you? She used your mental ills against you, causing you to sacrifice a loved one. I exposed her lie. She wants to keep you just powerful enough to slay her enemies. I want you to join me as a god.”

  There was no use hiding the desire. Paralos had already seen what he wanted. He’d seen everything else, too, including what Amara had done to his memories. “If I go with you, what happens next?”

  “There is only one path for you, and that is destruction. I will guide you. I will provide you access to the far corners of the universe.”

  “And what do I provide you?”

  “The deaths of those who’ve wronged me.”

  “Dillon.”

  Paralos’ light flared to a bright red. “Not just him. All of them. Together, we will leave no champion alive.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  First of all, thanks so much for reading. Second, please don’t shoot me for what happened to August. There had to be some consequences for taking on someone as powerful as Gemini, right? Given the circumstances, August is pretty lucky he didn’t lose something more than just a couple measly eyes. Also, don’t shoot me for what happened to Shadow either, even though I probably deserve it. Poor girl. Talus is such an asshole.

  Man, I loved writing The Last Winter, in no small part because it introduces two of my favorites: Aeris and Ion. Prism (coming in 2018) will be my first book with a female lead, but my desire to do that came while writing Aeris’s character during this process. Female characters make up a lot of my comic favorites. People like Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Scarlet Witch rank right up there with Spider-Man and Deadpool in my eyes. We need more female representation in the superhero world, and Aeris is the beginning of my contribution to that goal. As for Ion, I had no idea it would be so much fun to write a robot consumed by existential nihilism, but it was, and I’m in no hurry to get rid of him anytime soon.

  Before you move on to Ascension, take my advice and check out The Tria, a short story I’ve included as part of this book release. Mordric and his children play a big role in the next novel, and I couldn’t fit their origin in without making the next book way too long. As an added bonus, you might recognize a certain nihilistic sphere if you read really close.

  Finally, it’s time for my usual indie author plea: if you liked what you’ve read so far in the Circle War series, I would love you forever if you left a review on the bookish site of your choice. But what if you’re like, “Dude, I already did that? Now what?” Tell your friends! Make it a game. See if they can guess your Ion impression, and when they can’t, quietly shun them until they read the books. Passive-aggressive guilt is a marketer’s secret weapon.

  I’m only kidding. Don’t do that.

  That’s it for me. Until next time, turn the page to check out The Tria. Happy reading!

  - M

  THE TRIA

  The ward had a stain to it. Mordric could feel it before he ever saw the faint white lights of the birthing tower. A thin ribbon of silt coated the bottom of his robe as he waded past the edge of the swamp and onto the layer of charred leaves that blanketed the forest floor. The burning of the curgeon trees left a thick layer of soot in the air. The matrons of the tower had resorted to wildfires to control the overgrowth of the man-eating plant, a lack of ingenuity that worried him given the importance of his order, but there was little choice. They were the only ones in the known worlds who could provide him with the children he needed for the war ahead.

  Neither of the guards met his stare as he strode past the parted gates of the tower. His braided gray hair, so curious to the hairless indigenous people, usually tempted them from their ordered indifference. These two had been told not to engage him in any way. He could still see the memories in their thoughts like a child’s drawing, reminding them not to disobey the matrons for fear of being cast into the curgeon. Part of him wanted to let them feel the fear of it anyway, despite their obedience. Later, he thought, once I have what I came for.

  “Gairn Mordric,” the leader of the matrons said with a bow at the waist. Heavy rock walls and thick doors sealed off the bottom floor of the birthing tower to prevent the sounds of their machinations from reaching any timid volunteers. Her words stayed imprisoned in the room, dying with a whisper. “I am so pleased to finally meet you.”

  “Have you completed the task we agreed upon?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes and nodded. Her face was a picture of serenity, and it was a lie. Beneath her curtain of calm was a woman who feared she had lived to see her last setting sun. “We have never been late with an order, Gairn, and we would certainly not dishonor such an important request from the goddess Anemolie by forgoing our duties.”

  “Call me Mordric. I want no part of your ceremonial names.”

  “As you wish.”

  He looked around at the black walls of the room, painted with strokes of orange light from the castor flies hovering overhead. The effect was supposed to be decorative, another ploy to subdue the minds of the volunteers. The ribboned bodies of the swamp insects drifted through the air, no bigger than a flower petal.

  “Where are the submatrons I spoke to before?” he asked.

  “Away,” she said, seemingly aware that she answered too quickly. “I will provide the tour of our facility myself, if you have no objections.”

  “My interest in these facilities begins and ends with my order.”

  “Of course, Mordric. I only thought that if I showed you the process, you might understand some of the…difficulties.”

  “What sort of difficulties?”

  “Nothing preventing our success, I assure you, but I only offer the tour as proof that we left no subject untested.”

  “Fine,” he said, folding his hands together. “Get on with it.”

  The matron led him toward the far door, which slid apart as they approached. Mordric joined her in the transport capsule, an oval carriage with clear walls that gave a view of each floor as they spiraled through the building.

  “Is this your first visit to the upper laboratories?” the matron asked.

  “Yes. I hope it will be brief.”

  The capsule sped past floor after floor, giving him only a brief glimpse of each level. He felt the palpable mix of shame and despondency from the tower volunteers, a thick, acrid taste on his tongue. Weakness. They deserved what they wrought.

  Eventually, the capsule slowed to a halt and its doors opened. The matron brought him into a narrow hallway, lit
across the top and bottom by rows of yellow lights. Along the walls were rounded bulging windows packed together like cells of an insect hive. The matron stopped by the first in line.

  “These are our birthing chambers,” she said. “As you know, we pride ourselves on our advancements in biotechnology. There are no other facilities that can perform the procedures we do, or produce our results.”

  Mordric looked into the nearest chamber and caught his breath. A hairless woman stared back at him with pale, milky eyes. It took him a second look to realize that she wasn’t staring at him, but straight ahead like she was frozen alive. Arms of ribbed tubing kept her suspended above the floor, connecting at points along the sides of her chest and waist. Between her legs, pressed against her crease, was a black metal machine with a single portal window in front. A yellow liquid churned inside.

  “The birthing pod,” the matron explained, perhaps seeing his eyes linger. “When the gestation is complete, it removes the child from the womb.”

  “She’s still alive.” It wasn’t a question. He could sense her thoughts, see them like a moving picture in his third eye. Her mind was in a state of retreat, warring against her reality by stealing her away to happier times as though they might somehow dull the pain. And she was in pain—great pain. It would be so easy to turn her thoughts against her and drive that pain like a spike through her skull.

  “Mordric?”

  He hesitated, not wanting the matron to know she’d surprised him from his own dream. “Does this one have my seed?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Her biological makeup was not a sufficient host for your unique gifts. The goddess gave you—”

  “Anemolie merely added to a power that was already there,” he said. “Nothing more.” His gaze shifted to the birthing chamber behind her. When he realized what he was looking at, his chest flamed with heat. “What is a man doing in there?”

  The matron looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Giving birth. As I said, our advancements are unparalleled. Given the right augmentations and cellular therapy, we can use either sex for harvest.”

  “You used this abomination for my children?”

  “And with great results. More than half lived through the day.”

  His mind was already at work, reaching out to the unnatural abomination to connect with his memories. He had been a soldier once, surviving some colonial war on a planet Mordric hadn’t heard of before. He walked through his memories, pushing away the few thoughts of joy in search of the darkness, the fuel that would light the man’s fears. At last, he found it. A memory as common as water, and yet deadlier than any poison. There she was, a mother who swore to love him, cracking her hand across his face until he went to sleep in tears. Mordric took the memory and washed away the rest, replacing the man’s thoughts with a scene he would surely recognize. The room in the river home was small and damp from misuse. The man—a boy now in this memory—sat huddled in a corner, looking through teary eyes at the woman lurching toward him. Mordric left enough hints of her so the boy would know who it was. He made her eyes a deep shade of red, looking down at him through tufts of hair on sunbaked skin. She held no weapon, and yet the boy was no less frightened.

  Come to me, child, and tell me what you’ve done. Mother loves you.

  She reached out for him with fingers raw and blistered. Screaming, he thrashed against her grip as she dragged him to the open door. The river sloshed against the side of the home.

  Mother loves you, wicked child.

  She pushed him slowly over the edge, letting the water rise over his head until it coated his eyes so he could only see a blurred vision of his monster. The river dripped into his open mouth, muting his screams.

  She kept pushing.

  Let me hear you now. All you have to do is say it.

  The boy fought, struggling with all his draining strength to gain enough breath to say he was sorry.

  A warning alarm fired and the yellow lights around the man’s cell turned to red. Behind him, two submatrons ran into the room, frantically checking his biometric readings.

  Mordric looked down at the matron, who cast a glance at him after seeing blood leak from the man’s eyes.

  “I would see my children now,” he said.

  “Of course.” Her thin veil of composure was more transparent now. “As you wish.”

  They returned to the capsule in silence. The spiraling transport ended its climb on the top floor, where a single long window gave a view of the endless swamps below. A dedrical flew past, crowing into the muddy clouds.

  “Before we go through,” the matron said, motioning to the doors, “I wanted to warn you of what’s ahead. What you see may seem cruel, but we find it to be the best method for determining the strength of our subjects. In your case, it also gave us a chance to evaluate their abilities, as it were.”

  “So you were able to replicate my power.”

  She pursed her lips. “With varying degrees of success, as you will see.”

  “You would waste my time with a parade of half-breeds? Bring me the finest and be done with it.”

  “You misunderstand,” she said. “What’s beyond these doors may all be considered successes. I merely wanted to give you the option of which set of powers you most desired.”

  He dropped his stare to her. “What do you mean?”

  “They are not all like you. Whatever you have inside manifests differently in your offspring. Sometimes in ways we were not expecting.” She walked to the doors and touched her hand to the console embedded in the wall. The doors moved apart quietly. “This way.”

  Mordric stepped forward, still trying to fathom her words. His promise to Anemolie was that he would find ways to reproduce his power. He never considered that his power might morph into something else entirely. The possibilities sent a spark through his chest.

  Ahead of him was a metal catwalk leading to a circular platform. The viewing stage looked down to a floor some twenty feet below with spiraling lines leading away from its center.

  On the other side of the stage, the catwalk continued to a hallway ending with a single a room fronted by glass. The lights inside flickered. He could sense something in there—someone, more specifically—but couldn’t see the thoughts of the person inside. When the demonstration was over, he meant to find out what was so special about that room.

  The matron followed him out to the middle platform. He put his hands on the rail and sneered at the blank floor below.

  “Where are they?”

  “It’s almost time for them to wake. Our timing is perfect.”

  The overhead lights dimmed to a faint glow. Beneath the catwalk, the floor began to give way, retracting into the walls, revealing a round room segmented into chambers barely large enough to allow someone to stand. The lights beneath the platform gave him a veiled glimpse of the children—his children—moving in the shadows.

  The dividing walls lowered into the floor, leaving behind a room filled with standing children. They stayed in place, looking at one another like they were waiting for something to happen. He could sense an overpowering flare of the same power that moved within him, but in a different way than he expected. Most of it felt foreign to him, like he was reading a language he couldn’t understand.

  He started to ask what he was supposed to be looking for when the matron put a finger to her lips.

  “We should keep our voices down,” she whispered. “Better not to disturb them.”

  “How am I supposed to judge their abilities this way?”

  “The food is about to be served.”

  A line of thin slits opened around the exterior wall of the room and out of the opening came a stream of follusks—small six-legged creatures hunted by swamp-dwellers for their tender meat. The follusks scattered as soon as they hit the floor, running through the maze of children as they looked for shelter. The children stayed still, eyeing the follusks with hunger. Waiting.

  At last, a sharp signal blared from beneat
h the platform, unleashing his brood.

  The burst of power nearly pushed him back on his feet as the children let loose with their gifts, each trying to best the others to catch one of the racing animals. One of the boys, a skinny child with flat white hair, knocked three of his brothers out of the way with a bolt of orange light and then pulled three of the animals toward him without moving from his spot. Mordric reached out to him, testing the strength of his mind in hopes that it would match his considerable abilities. He was disappointed to see it filled with self-doubt and pity. He would make no champion. Mordric felt like killing him on the spot.

  Another child caught his eye amidst the chaos, a larger male who had the bald head of the planet’s people. Mordric tested him mentally before he saw what the boy could do. Where the first child was timid and weak, this one was strong with a singular focus—to dominate. Mordric stepped down the stage to get a better view. Despite the child’s power and drive, he lacked intelligence. He would be a blunt instrument, a weapon Mordric couldn’t trust to act on his own. Still, he waited to see how the boy reacted to his siblings chasing follusks around his feet. One by one, the children grew still as the boy stood in the middle of them, casting his eye on each. Then, like trees burning to embers, the children started to flake apart. Each had the same frozen, helpless expression on their face as their bodies disintegrated, leaving behind a cloud of fleeting sparks that disappeared in smoke. Once they were gone, the boy grabbed the follusks at his feet and ate happily.

  A possibility, Mordric thought, although he kept his impressions to himself. The matron watched him closely, waiting for the praise she so craved. He moved away from her, crossing the stage to study the other side of the room. Her nervous footsteps followed.

  The second half of his litter was just as disappointing as the first. Too many weak minds with powers they either couldn’t control or couldn’t use effectively. Most were too inept to do something as simple as kill an animal. He cursed their existence. Anemolie would have his head if he came back empty-handed. He wanted to reach out to all of them at once and put the entire stock out of their misery.