by M. R. Forbes
Eryn felt guilty for the tinge of anxious excitement she felt at the words. Her parents, her brother. All of the friends she had lost. It had all come down to this. She should have been pushing every word he spoke away as little more than lies, and yet she found that she couldn't. It was this place that had done it, she knew. The deadness, the decay, the sorrow. It wasn't what she had expected, and it had opened her mind in ways mere words never could.
It wasn't something anyone could be told. It was something that had to be seen.
Now she had seen, and she hated herself because she was ready to believe.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Him
I wasn't there when General Talon Rast, First of Nine, shifted into the time distortion and put a blade into the heart of the Shifter Master General. I was in Genesia. The last wizard living in Genesia, to be truthful. The only one from the place that hadn't gone to fight in what we all knew would be the final battle in the war.
I could see it all from the tower, however. These farspeak stones and scrying stones are a crude replacement for the refined versions we used to be able to produce.
Words can't describe the moments after when Talon reappeared on the field with the Shifter's limp corpse in his hand. When the entire Shifter army stopped as though it had lost its beating heart, and then turned and retreated towards the core, vanishing from the grounds outside en masse. The cheers, the shouts of victory, the elation of the hearts and souls of our people echoing across this land. The pride and joy in my own heart to see our people victorious, our civilization brought to the brink of annihilation and saved by a man who was known more for his creative mind, skill with metal, and gentle, loving heart than any would have ever thought he would be for his sword.
This land was still alive then. People still lived around Area North, and the celebrations they held carried on uninterrupted in the weeks that followed.
The world was saved.
Or so they believed.
They didn't know what I came to know only hours after the war was supposed to be over. They didn't know that victory would never be won through a single sword-stroke. That the Shifter horde hadn't fled but had merely retreated to regroup.
I tried to tell them. I sent message after message to the surviving members of the council, most of whom had gone to fight. I begged them to be wary. I begged them to shut down the reactors. I told them that the war was not over.
Most didn't believe me. There was no sign of the Shifters, not then. The subroutes were clean, the prozoa levels were dropping steadily. They were drunk on our victory, drunk on our power.
They hadn't learned anything.
A few rallied to my call. Jeremiah, most of all. He was the one who helped create the resonance of the reactors, and after what had happened he was eager to heed my words. We doubled our efforts to bring the others to believe. They chose not to.
The Nine returned to Genesia. They were never the same after the procedure as they had been before. Thornn was the most unchanged, but that was because he was a dangerous scoundrel with a fractured mind before the procedure and had little left to lose. Talon was hit the hardest. He became withdrawn and depressed, spending hours poring over designs for his juggernauts, seeking a way to perfect them, seeking out his friend Jeremiah to help bring them to life. He believed me when I told him the Shifters were not gone, and he stopped sleeping in order to build the perfect warrior to protect those who remained.
Spyne was angry. So very angry. He hated that Talon had won the war and was hailed as a hero, while he was almost forgotten. He couldn't find it in his heart to return to the plants he once tended with such care. He treated his wife and child as a receptacle for his anger. He berated his little girl and attacked his once loving wife, forcing her to become little more than a tool for his vengeful lust. She was a wizard, she didn't have to take it, but she did because she felt guilty for her part in creating the reactors, and by extension creating him.
The others had their own varying degrees of illness. The ebocite in their hearts affected each in different ways.
Weeks passed. The arguments continued. Jeremiah and I managed to have some of the reactors shut down, but it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. Arguments became more impassioned and bitter. There was talk of having Jeremiah and me removed from the council.
Then Thornn killed Jeremiah. Or at least he tried to. He was working for the council. I know he was. They promised him something to remove my strongest ally. Only Jeremiah didn't die. Talon saved him. He helped him escape into the body and mind of one of his creations. A juggernaut. There was so little time, he was transferred to an older model. He lost so much of who he was. We hid him away to prevent Thornn or the council from learning he had survived the attack.
That was only days before the world changed again.
None of the Nine remembers. I wish that I didn't.
Gerard was a wizard. He was the President of the council, and also in charge of Area North after the war. I knew he had been sick ever since the battle there. I heard his condition had worsened. I expected he would die.
He didn't.
He was the first of us to change.
The Shifters returned. They overran Area North in days, and led by Gerard they began to spread through the subroutes to each of the other reactors. I had guessed the war wasn't over, but I never suspected that it would turn the way it did. Within a week, all of the other wizards were either dead or changed as well, having been to Area North and expending great amounts of magic in the battle while I remained safe at home.
Jeremiah and I had spoken of what might need to be done should the Shifters return. We thought we would have other wizards to help us, and now I found myself alone. No, not completely alone. I still had the Nine.
I made choices then. Difficult choices that tortured every nerve and threatened my sanity with every step. The prozoa levels were spiking, the reactors were being overrun, and there was so little I could do. I took the Nine. I sent them through the subroutes. One by one they destroyed the reactors and all of the Shifters they found in them. With every victory, with every shift into the time distortion, they became more bloodthirsty and unstable, more unpredictable. Thornn began murdering people in their sleep. Spyne attacked women who weren't his wife, and Talon's creations became things of violence and darkness. I did the only thing I could think to do because I needed them so desperately.
I stole their memories. I stole everything about them that made them human and turned them into my slaves. I never wanted to. I wish I never had to. The situation was desperate. Beyond desperate.
I needed a place for them to be healed because they would be injured in their fights. I knew Genesia had to remain and to remain I knew it had to be protected. We made juggernauts, Talon and I. Hundreds of juggernauts. Then I set Spyne loose with them, to slaughter all who survived. I couldn't risk that they would spread the prozoa. I couldn't risk that the truth would escape. The surface of the world was trying to heal while it was crumbling beneath, and I was the only one who could stop it.
The war with the Shifters had begun the breaking of the world. I knew the only way to save it was to finish what had been started. The Nine went out into the world and began the killing. Anyone with exposure to the reactors, anyone who displayed signs of the prozoa. Those with immunity were allowed to survive, to carry on our civilization. I thought it would be enough.
It wasn't.
While all of this was happening, I returned to Area North to confront Gerard with Talon at my side. He was a Shifter General, but not like the others before him. He was smarter than they were. He knew how we fought. The world around Area North became what it is you see today, a result of the war we waged there. In the end, Talon was victorious once more, but once more the cost was more than I thought that I could bear. For Talon's part, he was no longer responding to the memory loss, becoming more and more unstable. He needed his wife, his children to keep him sane, and so it was provided for him. Over and over
in a fifty-year cycle. Each time it was Alyssa and Aren and Teran.
As for myself, I made the hardest decisions of them all.
Aren was not only immune to the effects of the prozoa, but his blood was immune to infection of any kind. No matter how much he ingested through the water, through the air, not a single one ever pierced his body. His blood was pure and perfect. So pure in fact that it could be transfused with an infected wizard's, and that wizard would regain their health. It was a magic of a different kind, and one we needed if we were going to save the world.
We defeated Gerard in Area North, but to keep the Shifters away from the rest of the Empire, the reactor was left running. There was only one way to keep them from breaking free and infecting the world, and that was to create a barrier, to hold them at bay inside. They claw at it daily, throwing their dragons and their orcs against it, tearing and ripping. In the beginning, it was all I could do to hold them back with my magic, and I took Aren's blood almost daily to keep my power strong.
As their numbers grew, I needed to use more and more of the magic, so much that in time I would die, and the world would die with me. Talon helped me devise a wall, an ircidium wall. To make an ircidium wall, we needed ircidium, and so the mines were formed. To mine the ore, we needed workers, and so the army was founded, and the mines populated with the very citizens we were trying to save. Even now, down below, the Shifters scream and claw at the barrier, their numbers stronger, the barrier weaker thanks to the loss of the Washfall production.
The Nine were sent out to watch for Shifters and to protect what we had created. The provinces were named, the palaces built, and over the course of hundreds of years all of this history was forgotten by everyone except for me. The people lived. A difficult life under what they saw as a harsh master, but they survived. They had the chance to live, to love, to laugh, to cry. For every soul that suffered when their child was Cursed, there were a hundred more who were allowed to be because of it.
That is the promise. That is what the Nine agreed to, all of those years ago. To give up who they were and what they were, to sacrifice themselves and murder the few in order to protect the many. To protect the very survival of our people.
Every decision has gnawed at my conscience and tortured my soul. Every night I cry and beg for release. For a moment of sleep. There is no sleep for me. Not one night in a thousand years. There was one more thing we created before I saw Talon for the very last time. A room, a special room, lined with ircidium and veins of Aren's blood. In it, I am safe from the prozoa and the change. In it, I can use all the magic at my disposal without end, amplified by the power of the reactor. In it, I am a slave, surviving only to protect the people that I can from the damage I helped create.
I'm a thousand years old, Eryn.
My magic is failing.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Eryn
Eryn couldn't breathe. His words had left her breathless though her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might faint. If any of what he had said was true? She couldn't imagine what it was like. She couldn't imagine how much pain Talon had felt or how much pain he had felt.
She took a few moments to gather herself. She had listened to all he had said, but there were things that she didn't understand, holes in the story that made her question.
"How can you say you killed all of those who weren't immune? The prozoa are still out there, and they're spreading."
"I know. I didn't understand how they multiplied. It's the ebocite, Eryn. When we brought their world in juxtaposition with ours, we opened a pathway between them tied to the ebocite. Anywhere there is a vein of the stone, the prozoa can leak into our world. All it takes is one Cursed who runs to escape and get infected, and the prozoa are able to spread."
Eryn's thoughts turned to Malik. He had been in the middle of a change when he had captured her. She didn't know what had happened to him then. She shuddered at what she knew now.
"And Aren? You're saying he is the cure for magic? Aren is supposed to be my father."
"Aren is your father. No, not Talon's birth-son, Aren. A substitute. It was arranged to keep him under control. Except his Aren became bold by his lineage and was trying very hard to discover the secrets that we have tried so hard to bury. We have been working for years to create a cure for the curse, a real cure that doesn't depend on Aren's blood. We failed in that, but we did succeed in an injection that could give someone the Curse. I knew it was the only way Talon would turn on his son, to make him Cursed. I didn't know what would happen because of it. I could never have guessed that the side effect would be you. You are the most powerful wizard I have ever seen, more powerful than me by orders of magnitude."
"That is why you brought me here. Because I'm powerful."
"And because I'm dying, Eryn."
Eryn was silent for a moment, the words still sinking in.
"You want me to take your place," she said softly, not quite believing it. "You want me to become the Queen of the Empire."
"I have tried to find another. I have tested them, and they have failed. There is no one else, Eryn. You are the only one who can save the world from complete destruction."
"No," Eryn said, tears running down her cheeks. "No. I came here to kill you, not become you."
"Do you still not believe me?" he asked. "Let me show you."
The farspeak stone spun even faster, beginning to wobble as it did. The motion threw light against the wall of the chamber, and the light created a picture. In it, Eryn could see a contraption of spinning gears and steam. It poured molten ircidium down into a hole, where it splashed on top of the already cooled metal. Juggernauts ringed the edge of the hole, swords in hand, the last line of defense against the Shifter horde that waited below.
"I can't show you beneath because of the ircidium. I beg you to believe me, Eryn."
She stared at the machine, a constant stream of ircidium being poured in. At the same time, the level of it never seemed to rise. In fact, it looked as though it were sinking.
She did believe him.
It was the scariest thought she had ever had.
"We can stop them," she said. "If my magic is as strong as you say, together we can defeat them. We can shut down the reactor."
"And then what?" he replied. "The ebocite will continue to draw the prozoa, the prozoa will infect the Cursed, the Cursed will change into Shifters. The Shifters will spread across the world."
"Only if they are exposed to the ebocite."
"What?"
"The Cursed only change if they are exposed to ebocite." She paused, suddenly unsure. "Don't they?"
"No. All Cursed will become Shifters if they are allowed to live to let the prozoa change them."
Eryn felt her heart jump again. All of them?
She tried to make sense of it. To understand. She felt like she believed him, but she wasn't sure she trusted her feelings. He had manipulated so many people. He was able to make them think what he wanted them to. How did she know he wasn't manipulating her?
"I can't do it. I'm sorry. I promised my mother I would survive. I didn't promise I would become the very thing we've always hated. I didn't promise I would spent a thousand years in Heden."
"As I said, that choice is yours, Eryn. I know this is a lot to take in, and difficult to hear. All I ask is that you take some time to think about-"
He paused suddenly, his voice raising in surprise.
"He's here," he said.
"Who?" Eryn asked.
"Talon."
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Talon
The subroute was in a room by itself. A windowless room of smooth stone and lit only by the portal. The moment Talon stepped out of it, he felt the heaviness of magic on his flesh and in his ancient heart. There were no Shifters here. No creatures trying to use the open portal to escape from wherever they were hiding. The magic had to be the reason.
"It is this way," Jeremiah said, entering behind him and reaching over his shoulder
to point. There was only one door out. It had to be that way.
Talon held his sword ready as he moved cautiously to the door, taking the handle and pulling it open slowly. He had no idea what kind of defenses he might have. Juggernauts, at least. He still held the control stone in his hand. Would he be able to use it on the metal men here? He didn't know. He would rather sneak around them than fight them.
Sneak around them to where?
"It is close," Jeremiah said. "It is pleased."
His voice was scratchy and barely audible. His movements were growing more pronounced.
He's dying.
Talon felt a pang of sadness. Jeremiah had remained hidden for all of those years, only to die now? He hoped he could make this right before his old friend took his last step. He wanted him to be there. To see it.
The corridor was empty. It was long and dim, with luminescent moss clinging to the ceiling and providing the barest of light. He recognized the general structure as part of a reactor.
Area North. It had to be.
"It is this way," Jeremiah said. He pointed to the north. Talon stayed ahead of him, ready to defend. He noticed a faint clanging noise echoing somewhere below them, like chains running through gears. It wasn't a noise he recognized from any of the other reactors, and yet it seemed so familiar to him.
"What's down there?" he asked, hoping Jeremiah knew.
"It protects it," he said. "It is this way."
Talon stopped walking, listening. There was another sound, more gear works and grumbling. It wasn't unlike the inner-workings of the juggernauts, except on a larger scale. He closed his eyes. He knew he had heard the sound before. He had been to Area North since the war had ended. He was sure of it.
They reached the end of the corridor. It split to the east and west. Talon looked in both directions, drawing back when he saw a pair of golden eyes to the east. He peered around the corner towards the juggernaut.
