Goddess of the Moon (Young Ancients: Tiera)

by P. S. Power

  Young Ancients: Tiera Book Three

  Goddess

  of the

  Moon

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Chapter one

  Tiera looked up at the dragon, and just stared for a while. It was beautiful. The head was a good two or three stories above her, and the large green eyes looked almost like those of a cat. They had slits in them, instead of round pupils. The scales weren't all huge, but many of them were the size of her hand or better, all in an iridescent purple color. That part, the color, was a dead giveaway as to who had made it, of course. Only one Builder in the whole world was all that married to that particular shade.

  Her brother. Tor.

  The thing wasn't really looking at her, even as it moved toward her position, which really, wasn't hard to find. She was standing out in the open, just looking at the thing. There was jungle to the left of her, and she stood on a sandy beach, with a crystal clear ocean to her other side. The creature, which she understood not to be real at all, moved on her anyway. It didn't scrabble on the white sand however, moving toward her smoothly, as if designed for uncertain footing. The black claws looked sharp and like they'd lend toward that end, at any rate.

  Kolb, her Weapons Master from school, pointed a copper tube at it, but naturally, nothing happened. It was made out of shield material. That basically meant, even though it was visible and solid, it really wasn't there at all. It also didn't have a brain.

  That meant, she realized after half a second, that she needed to look for the real threat, which would be the mind behind the thing. It wasn't Tor, she knew. Or at least hoped, since that would be bad right now. She didn't have time for a long drawn out discussion, or half an hour to find him. Her brother was a Master Builder and possibly one of the best Wizards in the whole world. That meant he could hide his thoughts from her, if he tried, she didn't doubt. She could hide hers from him, after all, and she really doubted he was less capable of that than she was.

  Pulling herself up, a dragon closing with her and the muscular bald man next to her, she let it all go, and simply focused, as if she had all the time in the world. In that dark bit of clarity she reached out with her mind and felt the line that ran from the mythical beast to the left, into the brush, about two hundred feet. That was what she had to hit then.

  Without opening her eyes she pointed with a bit of white glassy looking stone that had the rough shape of a pen. It was a weapon of her own making and a thing of true magic, but it was a bit different than what everyone else had. It didn't have a sigil on it at all, and it was activated by simply thinking what you wanted it to do. Well, as long as it was one of the four things it could. It had a nice explosive weapon on it however, which is what she chose to strafe the tree line with. It made the world shake and roar, like lighting striking for nearly twenty seconds.

  Then she opened her eyes.

  The line of mental connection to the dragon was gone, and in a way that she thought might mean that the person controlling the things was dead. That was, if it wasn't being faked, in order to catch them off guard. They were dealing with people that might be clever enough to have figured out how to get that done, after all.

  She no sooner thought the words when a person stepped out of the Jungle about half a mile away, and fired something at them. A missile, she thought. It moved at them rapidly enough, and both she and Sir Kolbrin waved at it with their weapons, causing it to explode. Then, being the better fighter by far and having so much more life experience than she did that it wasn't even worth joking about, Kolb immediately picked out the others in the group of cloned Ancients and started trying to kill them, before they could escape.

  Tiera did the same thing, but focused on the forest behind the two men and the woman that suddenly decided that the jungle was a nice place to visit. She nearly hated to do it, but she burnt the trees behind them with a line of fire. Not really behind them now, she corrected, since they turned to face it.

  The goal wasn't particularly to take prisoners this time. They knew what this was, which was a small group of clones that all looked like Gray or Cordes, that had been trying to infiltrate Noram as a group. Probably to lay waste to a city with that dragon and some of their other old tech devices.

  It was, she knew, disturbing.

  At least she thought so, on a deep level. It took a bit, but Kolb killed them all, even at a distance. They were all fast, but the two women were faster than the man by far. It didn't help at all. When they moved toward the water to flee, they died. Blowing up into thousands of chunks and turning the air into a red mist. That was hard to look at too.

  Regina had died like that, and seeing these people go that way... well, it hit her so hard she nearly cried. It was only the fact that she lived in a pretty deep trance state most of the time now that stopped that from happening. It still wasn't perfect, but she was doing a lot better than she ever had before. Her concentration was tighter and she could keep herself from thinking about things, if she tried hard enough. For the most part.

  Kolb didn't move, so she held her position too.

  "Wait. Neither Gray, or Cordes, habitually works in groups of four. You may have taken one already, but we can't tell that for certain, and I don't want to trigger any traps. Let's give this some time, and see if anything moves in the brush." The man watched it all closely, not concerned about the dragon in front of them at all. It hadn't shut down, which could mean anything from it simply not doing that, by design, to its owner being dead already.

  That last one was what she was hoping for, to tell the honest truth. It was horrid of her to hope for death, normally, she knew, but right now there was just a glassy emptiness in her head, and that let her think things like that without judging herself too harshly. Her job right now, their job, was to hunt down all the Ancients that were trying to kill them, and their clones, and stop them. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen by inviting them all out for a nice dinner, and hashing things out over the brandy.

  No, they had to kill them all. There were just so many of them, and they'd spread out a lot. Probably to make killing them harder, which was inconsiderate of them. If they would have just gathered together in one place and put out a nice sign or something, she could have handled the whole situation already.

  She waited, standing in the open with her Fast Craft, which was a Timon built model, shrunk to nearly its smallest size, with the doors opening up like wings, so that they could jump in at any moment. Being exposed like they were wasn't on accident, since Kolb wanted the enemy to try shooting them. He had good intelligence that said they didn't have anything that could go through the new shields yet. That wasn't perfectly true though, she knew.

  Their faces were too familiar, and that went right through the shields, didn't it? Gray literally looked like her own mother, and grandmother. Each one of them she killed, or saw die, sent a pang through her middle, worried that she'd just accidentally got the wrong one.

  Cordes was easier, but not that much.

  At school, in her morning combat classes, there had been a boy... the whole time she'd been at school. Longer than she'd been there, in fact. Mitchell. He'd turned out to be a Cordes clone with a copy of the first five hundred years of the man's life in his head. Tiera and he hadn't been dating or anything, but they'd worked together and she'd thought they were growing slightly closer over time. Almost like friends.

  It was the same mind that was in her older brother too. The exact same one, which meant that, if Cordes, the Mitchell version, was a bad guy, then the Tor version probably was too. Not that there was a lot of doubt of that. She blocked that errant thread out of her thoughts,
and tried to concentrate on her surroundings. It was a good thing that she did, because it gave her a chance to fire at the very fast silver vehicle that moved from the forest, shooting through the air without hesitation.

  Her weapon caused it to glow a bit, as it moved off. It was like a shield, except it gave off a flash of blue as the thing flew away with a deep roar. It wasn't as loud or powerful as the explosive weapons had been, being so far away after even a few seconds, but it was enough to signal that, whoever it was that piloted the craft, they'd sort of won. If living while all your fellows on the battlefield died counted that way.

  Even better, the man in the craft, who didn't actually feel like anyone she knew, managed to fire off a single pulse to the dragon before getting too far away for that to work. If there was a limit to that kind of thing at all. Tiera kind of thought there might not be. Tor had made the purple giant of a monster, and also the communications devices. Ones that would work from space even. There was no reason he couldn't have added that kind of thing in. Really, he should have, if he wasn't on their side still.

  The beast moved, shaking its head a little, the large glistening scales shifting color ever so slightly in the bright sunlight. Then, it started to move the powerful back legs, and went for them, rearing up just a little. It closed the distance between them with decent speed too. Not faster than, say, a man in good shape could run, but it was so large it was still impressive. Heavy too, for all that it wasn't really there. Each single step made the whole world shake under her feet.

  Kolb made a small sound that nearly seemed like a laugh.

  "Back to the craft." Then he started to move, which should have been what Tiera did too.

  Instead she left her mind in a deep trance state, not feeling much of anything at all. Not even awe, though that was a thing that was within what she could manage, emotionally. The Dragon was certainly worthy of that kind of response, being so pretty, but she took a deep breath, pointed her slim white weapon and thought at the thing instead.

  At first, for about three steps, nothing happened at all. That was a thing that she'd worried about. Not that the device she was using wasn't working, or didn't function right, but that her brother, a man that many simply called The Builder, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, might have realized that making a large weapon like that without an off switch would get around new devices like the one she was using, pretty well. After all, she'd thought of it, and Tiera was at best an amateur when it came to magic. Even her school work had all focused on math, economics and fighting. Well, that and meditation.

  Which was why she didn't move, just using her mind to cause a stream of information to organize toward the thing that came at her. It took another two steps before the man behind her called out.

  "We need to not be in front of that thing when it gets here." There wasn't a lot of tension in his voice, but then, he'd probably seen something like this before. He was three thousand years old after all. A bit older than that, if she had it right.

  Really, he probably thought that she was freezing up, standing there like that, just pointing her little new, stylus looking, weapon at the thing, with nothing visible happening. Right up until it suddenly blinked out of existence.

  She grinned, trance state or not.

  "That's the Tor I know and love." She said it without a hint of anger or anything, which might have been a bad idea, even a week before. They could be observed from space, or had been, until her other brother, Timon, had finally gotten their Aunt Orange to start a full on program to take down the enemy satellites. She'd actually refused for a while, which wasn't like her normally, being that she was, biologically, a warrior by nature. She didn't want to lose the resource, even if it was in enemy hands at the moment.

  Tim had to get his own network up first and prove to everyone that it worked before she was willing, in fact. Their new system wasn't as good at things as the old one was. Even her brother, who'd made the new one, assured them all of that. They could get pictures of the planet, or of space, and the things had the ability to move around, like tiny space craft, but that was it. The old network had computers on each one that could do amazing calculations, and had twenty or more different kinds of sensors each. It wasn't really the same thing at all. It was, however, kind of neat anyway. Tiera had a little handheld in her hip pocket that would, with only a bit of time and effort, let her look at anyplace on the planet.

  As long as there were no clouds in the way.

  Orange hadn't been pleased at all with the new system, but had agreed that it was a good sign that the original one could be replaced soon. Not that she trusted Tim to do it. She was, by nature, very untrusting of good looking men. She tended to think they were lying to her, or trying to trick her. Normally into bed, which she didn't seem to mind that much, but it was a thing she had no hold over, and couldn't fight.

  In the end it had been Gerent, Tiera's adopted brother, that had assured the fleet Admiral that the work would happen. He wasn't even a tiny fraction as good looking at Timon was. He'd started out a midget, and had health problems. Now he was...

  Well, not tall. He was going to make it to over six feet though, and a lot of the asymmetry of his body was coming around. That thought got Tiera to freeze in place, for real. Not for long, but she blinked at it and then smiled again.

  When had being over six foot become not tall to her? True, she was over seven herself now, but almost her entire life she'd been less than five. Tor had changed her, so she could grow, because, as he'd explained it, Cordes, the Ancient King, was a moronic ass.

  Actually, she realized, he hadn't put it that way, being kinder than that most of the time. No, Tor had explained that the man had tried to improve the world and end war, by making a two tiered system in Noram. A slave class that would follow orders and do what anyone tall enough told them to, and a ruling class that would look at the small people and have an overwhelming desire to protect them.

  That last bit hadn't gone so well though, and the genetic changes caused the tall people to look at the little ones as less than human. Like they were property, or slaves in truth.

  Common trash.

  So her brother had made her and Timon grow, in order to give them a chance to change things, being at the top, instead of fighting against prejudice all the time. It made a difference in noble circles. Tiera had felt that one already. In common ones too, which was less than fun. She didn't really want people to grovel when they saw her, after all. It was too hard to change everyone though, and Tor was only one man. Timon might be able to do that kind of thing, eventually, but so far he hadn't. As far as she knew. If so, he hadn't mentioned it.

  Shaking her head a bit, and sinking back into herself, she jogged forward, looking for the bit of shiny that had the dragon field on it. It wasn't that hard, since it had purple glowing letters on it that said, helpfully enough, Dragon. It was in Tor's handwriting even, though the glowing letters were magic, not ink.

  It was on a piece of metal however, which was unfortunate. Tiera made a face, but it was Kolb who spoke, standing behind her suddenly.

  "Damn. I was hoping that he would have made it on Focus Stone, so that we could match the soil type." That was basically just highly compressed earth after all. After a few seconds she got the idea and nodded. Kolb kept speaking, looking at the magical device, but not touching it. "We should destroy that. I'm not willing to leave it, or take it with us. Can you imagine that kind of thing in a town?"

  She nodded, because she really could, and without the ability to turn it off knew that it would make a pretty effective economic weapon. A lot of people had good shields now. It wasn't everyone by a long shot, but in most places the things would be met by people that wouldn't be instantly killed when they got in the way. The buildings, roads and sewers didn't have that kind of protection, and this thing had looked ready to lay waste to all of those, having huge and wickedly sharp looking claws, as well as being so heavy that any hollow space in the ground would have been in danger
of collapsing as it walked over.

  "It's a good sign though. Tor didn't do half the things with this that he could have, if he'd really wanted mayhem. It can be turned off for instance. Not easily, but it's no harder than a shield, from the outside. That means he made it that way on purpose, I bet." That, or she was being too hopeful and was in denial about what her older sibling was actually doing. That was possible she knew. She really didn't want him to be taken over by the evil Ancient King.

  That would not end well, for anyone.

  Kolb seemed to get that, and pretty wisely kept his mouth shut about all the other possibilities. Like Tor just not having thought of that at all, since only a tiny handful of people in the world could turn a shield off from the outside and most of those had a range that was under ten feet, which would be death, against this beastly creation. Or the fact that her brother might have lost it, due to exhaustion, and not really known what he was doing at all. The only saving grace in the whole thing was that building had been done. It was her understanding that Cordes wasn't up on magic at all. Not that he might not learn, being a smart person, but it was Tor that was the Master Builder. Not the Ancient King.

  Not as far as anyone knew at least. The dragon's field felt like him, at any rate. She could tell that without even trying.

  Pointing her little white weapon, she used another field, which, again, wasn't impressive seeming at all. Except that the metal melted into the sand almost instantly. That was all though. No fire, no heat of note even, it just became liquid and then flared slightly, on the base level of reality, as it lost organization, and the field dissipated.

  Kolb gave her a sidelong look, but didn't shake his head or ask about it. Tiera grinned, the move not reaching her eyes at all.

  Then she sighed softly.

  "It has four fields. All original, though it's probably hard to tell. One turns off any magical device that can be turned off with intent, which is what I used on the dragon device. The explosive is mine too, which isn't that big of a deal, except that I can mentally increase or decrease the power level. This just makes things with fields on them melt and lose their form. It works on anything with a magical field, but will leave living things alone. Hit a battlefield with it and it will make the magic go away, but not harm anyone." Then she shrugged, which wasn't a very noble thing to do at all. "The last, well, it isn't as neat, just being a force lance, of a sort. It has a tighter diameter than what most use, about the size of the tip of a finger. Otherwise it's about as strong as what the military uses."