“You are not going to use Nero’s feelings for me to hurt him.”
A savage smile twisted his mouth. “Do you want to win, or don’t you?”
I ignored that statement. “And Delta? What’s her profile?”
“Delta Wardbreaker has been around a long time, even longer than Arius Demonslayer. She is well-trained, disciplined, and confident. She tends to favor the more aggressive, more explosive and showy side of the magical spectrum.”
“So vampire, shifter, elemental, and psychic?”
Colonel Fireswift nodded. “Yes. She is a wrecking ball that the Legion points at obstacles. She is not subtle. She has no appreciation for the nuances of magic.”
“So you don’t think she is the strongest contender of the level sevens?” I asked him.
“She is,” he replied. “She has so much raw power and so many years of experience. But others here would make a better angel.”
“Like Jace?” I didn’t bother asking him about myself. I knew his opinion of me all too well. He’d never been shy about sharing it.
“Time will tell. These challenges will show exactly what kind of soldier everyone is.” He looked at me like he already knew exactly what kind of soldier I was—and he’d found me lacking on all fronts. He didn’t even see any use for me as a mindless wrecking ball like Delta.
“Windstriker was in the Legion for two hundred years before he met you.” A frown furrowed Colonel Fireswift’s perfect angel face.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, Windstriker is no fool. He knows your weaknesses. He won’t sit on that information. He will tell his partner.”
“What do I care what he tells Delta?” I laughed.
“You might care to know that he and Delta Wardbreaker were once romantically involved.”
I blinked.
“You didn’t know that. And it bothers you,” he observed, watching me closely.
No, I hadn’t known that. And, admittedly, it did bother me. But I wasn’t going to throw fuel on Colonel Fireswift’s fire.
“Perhaps this is just the situation they need to rekindle their relationship,” he suggested.
I slanted a seething look his way. “Stop trying to manipulate me and turn me against Nero.”
“You are already against each other by being on opposing sides.”
“Only on the battlefield. Only in the games of gods. Not in real life.”
“This is your life now. You are just too stubborn to admit it.”
A flash of light pulsed off the magic mirror’s frame. It was time. Colonel Fireswift stepped through the glass and disappeared. I followed.
Another world waited on the other side, a beautiful, violent world. We stood atop a high open tower, inside a ring of burning torches. Ice stretched its bitter-cold fingers across the stone floor, climbing the torch stands, eating away at the flames, the only things keeping this place warm. Above us, red fire bled across the stormy sky, turning the clouds to ash. Far below the tower, every few seconds lightning pounded against a cracked and charred earth. And feral vines had almost completely swallowed the sea beyond the blackened plains. This world shouldn’t have been named Harmony. It was discord through and through.
“Water hurting Fire. Fire hurting Sky. Sky hurting Earth. And Earth hurting Water. This whole place is like one giant four-way elemental game of rock-paper-scissors,” I commented.
“Why are you rambling on about a children’s game?” Colonel Fireswift demanded in disgust.
I jumped, narrowly avoiding being struck by lightning. “Something isn’t right here.” When one of the feral vines shot out of the sea like a rocket and tried to land on my head, I gave it a taste of my lightning magic. It slithered away. “The whole world is trying to kill us.”
“It’s a challenge. It’s not meant to be easy,” Colonel Fireswift said pragmatically.
“The challenge,” I muttered. “That is the challenge: turning discord into harmony.”
“Explain.”
“What do we know about Aleris? That he controls the elements. He keeps them in balance.” I pointed at the hellish war of the elements raging around us. “Nothing here is in balance.”
“We have to put the magic elements back in balance,” Colonel Fireswift realized. “That will win the challenge. That will reveal Aleris’s treasure.”
He said it like this had been his idea all along. So much for sharing in our victories.
“The question is how to put the elements back in balance,” I said.
“There.” Colonel Fireswift pointed at a thick stone mountain jutting up from the center of the tower platform. Eight giant granite slabs, each one marked with a rune, covered it. “It’s a puzzle. We must use our magic to move the slabs into the right order.”
He’d no sooner spoken the words, when a soldier in red armor materialized on the platform. She immediately charged at us, swinging her enormous battle axe.
Colonel Fireswift blasted her away with an explosive bundle of telekinetic magic. “I will hold her off. You solve that puzzle.”
I approached the stone mountain, glancing up at the eight granite slabs. The runes on them looked familiar.
There was another flash. Andrin Spellsmiter and Colonel Silvertongue, Aleris’s team, were now on the tower too. They rushed me, trying to drive me away from the puzzle. Colonel Fireswift cut them off, snapping at them with the lightning whip he’d conjured with his magic.
I stared at the runes. I was sure I’d seen them before. But where?
Another soldier appeared on the tower. Colonel Fireswift wove spell after spell and sent them at our attackers, but he was slowly losing ground. He wouldn’t be able to hold them off much longer.
I tilted my head and squinted at the chiseled runes. From the side, one of them bore a striking resemblance to a flame. And if flipped vertically, another looked just like a snowflake. And there was a lightning bolt too. A whiff of smoke, a dewdrop, a cloud, a tree, a lump of metal. These eight symbols were the elements. I just had to put them where they belonged and harmony would return to Harmony.
Another flash of magic delivered Jace and Leila to the tower. Time was running out. Aleris’s soldiers were popping up every minute. The competing Legion teams arrived every five minutes. This tower was filling up fast. Before long, we’d be completely overrun.
I wrapped my telekinetic magic around the flame slab, moving it into the bright red corner of the mountain. That had to represent the element of Fire. I next moved the lightning bolt. As it clicked into the indigo-and-gold Sky corner, a flaming potion bottle shot over my shoulder, missing me by mere inches. It smashed into the stone puzzle and exploded. The mountain was unbothered by the thunderous explosion. Thankfully. I couldn’t imagine Aleris would appreciate us blowing up his tower.
The puzzle was still in one piece, but that explosion was a jolting reminder that the other soldiers were nearly upon me. I hastily rearranged the marble slabs into their respective elemental corners. The whiff of smoke settled into place beside the flame under Fire. The cloud joined the lightning bolt in the Sky corner.
By now, sweat lathered my skin from crown to heel. Maneuvering those marble slabs around the board was straining my telekinetic magic in a way mere psychic blasts did not. I kept going. The tree and lump of metal went to Earth. That just left Water’s snowflake and dewdrop.
Something hard pounded into the back of my head, knocking me to the ground. My head spinning, my vision blurry, I pushed up.
I was too late.
Jace stood in front of the puzzle. And he’d just locked the final two pieces into place. There was a soft click, followed by a thunderous roar. The mountain split down the middle to reveal a pair of gold opera glasses with a painted handle. Jace grabbed them.
The warring elements stopped clashing—and so did the warring people on the tower. As Aleris’s soldiers took the staircase down into the castle. Colonel Fireswift closed in beside me. He didn’t look happy.
“The Seer’s Opera
Glasses,” Leila said, looking at the glasses in Jace’s hands. “They’re an ancient relic. An immortal artifact.”
“What do they do?” Jace asked her.
“I don’t know, but right now they’ve won us this challenge,” Leila said, winking at Colonel Fireswift.
His scowl deepened. Wow, he really did not like losing. He looked even more upset than Colonel Silvertongue and Andrin, and they’d lost the item they were supposed to be guarding for Aleris.
“Congratulations.” I slapped Jace on the back. “You bested us.”
“Yes, we did,” he replied, his gaze shifting to Colonel Fireswift. I’d never seen him look at his father with such excitement.
The magic mirror reappeared on the tower platform. The six of us stepped through. A moment later, we were back in the gods’ audience chamber. The other four teams were still waiting to go through.
“Sorry you missed the party,” Leila teased Harker.
It had all happened so fast. The other teams had not even made it to the challenge on the tower.
“Your son is looking pretty triumphant,” I told Colonel Fireswift, noting that Leila wasn’t the only one looking mighty smug right now.
“You are not taking this seriously,” he snapped.
“Look at them.” I pointed out the other losers’ glum faces. “They are all taking it seriously.”
“Might you learn from their example.”
“They are miserable, Colonel. Because they are taking this game seriously. And they lost today.”
“We lost today too,” he ground out.
I arched my brows. “Did we?”
“What did you do?” he said slowly, suspicion dripping from every syllable.
I smiled. “Nothing.”
“You will tell me now.”
“Later. Back in the apartment.” Which happened to be completely sound proof, impervious to the super hearing of even angels and gods.
His eyes drilled into me. I could feel his magic testing me, trying to peel back my mental defenses.
“That won’t work,” I told him. “I’ve had a lot of practice blocking angels.”
“I am not Windstriker.”
“No, you’re not,” I agreed. “He is an archangel. You are not.”
Across the room, Nero snorted.
Colonel Fireswift glared at me like he was contemplating setting me on fire. It was a good thing I was fireproof.
The gods dismissed us from the hall. When we were back in our assigned apartment, the door securely sealed, Colonel Fireswift turned his Interrogator stare on me once more.
“Explain yourself. What have you done?” he demanded.
I pulled Aleris’s opera glasses out of my jacket.
Surprise flashed in Colonel Fireswift’s eyes. “How did they find their way into your possession?”
“I don’t know. It happened around the same time they fell out of Jace’s possession.”
“You picked his pockets.”
I shrugged.
“You cheated.”
“Did I? Where do the rules state I cannot take the item from another team?” I asked.
He stewed that over in silence for a few moments. “It’s implied.”
“No, it’s not. It’s just your interpretation of the rules. What gives you the right to interpret the will of the gods?”
His face turned bright red. He looked like he was going to pop a blood vessel.
I merely smiled at him.
He took a step forward, but he froze at the sound of a godly knock on our door.
“Hide the glasses.” His words were a growled, rasped whisper. “We can still return them before anyone notices your disgraceful behavior.”
“Disgraceful behavior? I think you mean my winning strategy.”
“Are you going to steal the item from every team in every challenge?” he snarled between his teeth.
“No, of course not. I’m depending on your battlefield prowess to win us at least one artifact the good old fashioned way,” I said sweetly.
“You are absurd.”
“I’m touched, Colonel. That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Another knock thumped against the door, more impatient this time. More godly.
“Stop fooling around and hide the damn thing,” Colonel Fireswift hissed at me.
“Where should I hide it? Under my pillow? Thanks to you, I don’t even have one.”
His hand reached for his sword.
“Fine,” I sighed, stuffing the opera glasses into my underwear drawer.
Colonel Fireswift was already at the door. He bowed deeply to Faris.
“What took so long?” demanded the God of Heaven’s Army. The hallway behind him was empty. None of his warriors were with him this time.
“The Colonel was just trying to burn me to ashes,” I said flippantly. “But that can wait.”
Faris’s nose twitched, probably out of disgust. He liked me even less than Colonel Fireswift did, if that was even possible.
“Aleris’s opera glasses were stolen,” Faris declared, walking into our apartment like he owned the place.
“Yes, we know. We were there on Aleris’s tower when Jace and Leila stole them.” I smiled at him. “Try talking to them.”
If looks could kill, Colonel Fireswift would have murdered me in twenty different ways by now.
Faris’s expression didn’t flicker; it remained as cold as it had been since he’d arrived. “They were stolen again.”
“That’s unfortunate,” I said.
“I know you did it.” Faris’s words were as smooth as silk, and his eyes as hard as granite. “Show me the glasses.”
I went over to my dresser and pulled out the glasses. I handed them to Faris without a word.
His nose twitched again. “They smell like lavender.”
“That’s my potpourri,” I told him helpfully.
“Your what?”
“Potpourri.” I just kept smiling. “The scented little bundles that girls keep in their underwear drawers to make their lingerie smell nice.”
“I know what potpourri is.”
“You do? I didn’t know gods used potpourri.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you always so irreverent?”
“Yes,” Colonel Fireswift declared, glaring at me. He bowed to Faris. “I humbly request a new teammate.”
I was surprised the word humble was even in Colonel Fireswift’s vocabulary. I wasn’t at all surprised, however, that he wanted a new teammate.
“Why do you want a new partner when your current one put your team in the lead?” Faris asked him.
“What?”
“You have Aleris’s artifact. You’re winning,” Faris told him.
“But she cheated.”
“The rules of this challenge as I laid them out do not explicitly forbid taking the item from another team,” Faris replied.
Ha! The look on Colonel Fireswift’s face was priceless. I was sorely tempted to pull out my phone and snap a photo.
“In fact, there will be a lot more of that before this is done,” Faris continued. “All teams must keep their acquired artifacts on them at all times.”
“So the other teams have a chance at stealing them?” I asked.
“Or reclaiming them. That should keep you on your toes.”
And make it interesting for the gods to watch.
“Now get some sleep,” Faris ordered us. “You will report to the audience chamber tomorrow morning at five for your next challenge.” Then he left our apartment.
“See?” I grinned at Colonel Fireswift. “I told you that we’re winning.”
“This training is so…undignified. So chaotic.”
“Then it’s a good thing you ended up with the Misfit of Chaos on your team,” I laughed, slapping him hard on the back. “Now, how about some dinner? I’m starving. Do you think room service delivers pizza?”
9
Shadow Dreams
It tu
rned out that room service, which consisted of two godly soldiers wearing gold armor and steely expressions, did not deliver pizza. Apparently, pizza wasn’t highbrow enough for heaven. Instead, I was offered the choice of various bizarre dead creatures that looked an awful like monsters but were supposedly gourmet dishes.
My other option was a protein shake made of pureed meat and raw vegetables. When I pointed out that it looked like sludge, the soldiers informed me it was a nutritious meal replacement designed to optimize my performance. Yeah, there was nothing more delicious than optimizing my performance. I ended up eating some bread, cheese, and fruit from the snack platter sitting on the table in the apartment’s living room.
After eating, I fell asleep on the sofa. It was much prettier than it was comfortable, but it sure beat sleeping on the hard ground in the woods. At least there were no roots or branches poking me in the back. Or bugs crawling all over my skin.
In my dreams, soldiers chased me through the dark halls of a nightmare castle. My lungs burning, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. It wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t fast enough. They surrounded me. I couldn’t see their faces; their whole bodies were cloaked in shadow. They raised their swords and—
I jolted awake, heaving in air. My body was bathed in sweat, my pounding heart rattling my chest. Colonel Fireswift’s hands were on my arms, shaking me awake.
“Get up,” he said in a gruff, impatient tone. “We are due in the audience chamber in five minutes. And I will not allow you to make me late for a meeting with the gods.”
I tucked Aleris’s glasses inside my jacket. My hands shook as I pulled on my battle gear. The dream had felt so real. I’d really thought I was in grave danger.
And I was in danger. My mind sure had a fun way of processing the perilous game of gods I was trapped in.
My tummy rumbled. I would have suggested a bite of breakfast, but Colonel Fireswift’s searing glare was somewhat of a deterrent. And besides, there probably wasn’t anything more appetizing than performance-optimizing shakes on the menu.
We hurried to the audience chamber, where the gods waited, poised regally on their thrones. The other teams were already there, all except for Jace and Leila. Valora’s team. That meant we were going after the Queen Goddess’s item this time. And Jace and Leila would try to stop us.
Fairy’s Touch: Legion of Angels: Book 7 Page 8
