by Vi Voxley
He was going in blind to the most important battle of his life, but Kol-Eresh wasn't afraid.
Jackie had decided to keep on fighting and whether she knew it or not, it meant everything to the harbinger. Her pain was visible as clear as day and the loss of hope beating her down almost as much. All of that was just on top of the fact that she was on Luminos, a planet she had been brought to by force. By him.
After all that, she had still gathered up the strength to keep on fighting.
It made her love for him real. It made her will to live, with him, real.
The Eternals had nothing to counter that.
The harbinger was beginning to think he'd missed the cave system when he saw a light ahead, so hard to see he would have missed it if he'd walked two steps to the right.
"Kol," Jackie called to him.
Her voice was very weak.
"Kol, I don't think I have much time."
The harbinger picked up his pace. He had been planning to take it slow, find out the positions of the Eternals and the Abominations, but fate had plans for him.
Their one chance was ticking and it was running out, fast.
Twenty-Three
Kol-Eresh
Kol-Eresh put Jackie down at the mouth of the cave.
The female was very pale and her purple eyes were fluttering shut every few moments. The diadon that was supposed to be glowing on her chest was flickering in and out of existence.
The signs were unmistakable.
"Fight, my love," Kol-Eresh said, pressing his hand against her cheek. "Don't let go."
"Yes," Jackie whispered in response, nodding her head slowly. "Yes."
She didn't say more. Couldn't, more likely.
Kol-Eresh listened to the caves below them. The voices were indistinguishable, but he was certain. There could be no one else out there with them but the Eternals and the tracks of the Abominations led him right there.
The only problem he had was that if he could hear them, could they hear him?
Caution wasn't going to save Jackie.
"Don't move," he told her. "I will be back."
Jackie couldn't even nod, but her eyes opened and closed, signaling that she'd heard him.
Kol-Eresh didn't waste another second. He stood and marched down the pathway. It was hard to leave Jackie behind with just the two Fermanoli coats to shield her from the growing storm, but he had to put everything on line.
As he headed down the path, the voices grew louder, which was to be expected.
Then Kol-Eresh froze in his tracks.
There were too many voices. Way more than three for sure and the last he'd checked, the Abominations didn't have voices. The mechanical gargles couldn't be mistaken for the voices of the warriors who commanded them.
The voices were raised, he heard that as well. The Eternals were arguing.
It served to mask his steps, but the situation had gone from dire to impossible in the course of seconds.
Three Eternals with their pets were horrible odds, but within the realm of possibility. More, much more, were the job for an army.
Kol-Eresh regretted now that he hadn't had the time to do some reconnaissance first. When he'd managed to track down the warriors he was searching for, he'd headed back right away. It was madness, but his options were incredibly limited.
The truth was dawning on the harbinger with each passing second.
What he'd found wasn't a small refuge for the small group of Eternals. The cave was the entrance to the true lair, the heart of their entire operation. It was so easy to miss and the heat signatures were so miniscule every search party had ruled them out as a possible life form. He had only been able to distinguish them because he'd traced the group from the beginning.
In addition to that, when Kol-Eresh got deeper into the system, he noticed that he was walking inside some vast, grand machinery. Just like the fortresses, the cave system was only a facade of the real bunker that laid far below the ground. In half a minute, he was walking down steeled walkways.
There were traces of explosives on the walls and the harbinger thought he had the Eternals finally figured out.
It wasn't reassuring to know just how much luck they'd had.
The Eternals had somehow figured out how to survive in the cave system, building a lost, hidden fortress there. The cave mouth he'd entered through was blown up during the storm and possibly when they were close to being discovered.
It was genius, in a way. All the fortresses were built into cliff sides, but the others showed their true colors. There were vast gates and pillars, stairs and outdoor halls to show where the fortress was. They weren't underground, exactly, just built into the planet itself deep enough to be safe from the storm.
Now he'd found the secret one.
Kol-Eresh had no idea why the mouth of the cave hadn't been blown up yet or why the Eternals were suddenly fighting among themselves, but all that worked in his favor.
The harbinger crept ahead, hiding his footsteps in the sounds of arguing and clashes of blades against blades.
He refused to believe they'd get so lucky as to have the Eternals wipe themselves out of existence.
Finally the pathway started to open up and Kol-Eresh saw that he'd been correct.
Up ahead, there was a large hall. Nothing like the stony interior of his fortress. No, this was the hideout of the Eternals.
It was lined from bottom to top with machinery he couldn't even begin to comprehend. Vast Abominations hung from the walls like lifeless corpses, strapped into harnesses, just waiting to come to life. There were pumps drilling into the ground in the distance, Kol-Eresh could hear them growling and caught a glimpse of things that looked like miniature versions of the Gechs.
Before him, the harbinger saw about thirty Eternals standing in the midst of the large hall, arguing sharply.
The words escaped him when Kol-Eresh contemplated the idea that that was it. If he was incredibly lucky, again, those were the only Eternals that remained on Luminos.
Thirty ancient, highly trained and brilliant warriors, but not hundreds like his brother harbingers had imagined. Not thousands, like it sometimes seemed.
"The female was right," he heard one of the Eternals bellow at the others.
It was hard to recognize faces, but Kol-Eresh was almost certain that it was the same one who'd caught Jackie.
"You have lost your mind, Jhaon," another Eternal growled back. "She might be right about the suggestion, but it is blasphemous! We will not start tampering with our own species! Nayanor physiology is perfect, we are the living proof of that! We are the tools of the gods!"
The warrior called Jhaon glared back at the speaker.
"You would rather have us go extinct than take harsh measures, Immeck?" he asked. "There is nothing great about a dying species. Who knows that better than us? We did this, don't you remember? We made the Nayanor females die out when we tried to make us invincible! We have already tampered enough! You had no problem with it when we were trying to make ourselves better, but now that we're trying to correct our terrible mistake, you shun away from what must be done!"
For a moment, angry voices buried the rest of the conversation.
Kol-Eresh was seething with rage. Some Nayanors, with healers like Forack, had suspected for a while that the loss of Nayanor females wasn't a natural event. Now he had the proof. Not only were the Eternals guilty of crimes against the females brought to Luminos, they were also to blame for everything else that had befallen on their species.
The harbinger wondered what the odds were that some Eternals had had a hand in setting off the first long night.
At that moment, he wouldn't have put it past them.
"Jhaon is right!" another Eternal yelled. "We have been trying to force the change upon the Terran females, but rebuilding their entire system to fix our faulty genes is impossible. They keep dying and our own people are turning against us. They don't even know we're doing it for them!
"I
t would be easier to fix us."
"Easier!?" Immeck roared. "The soul of our species is at stake!"
"The future of our species is at stake," Jhaon yelled back. "You want us all to die out, our pride intact and our species wiped out from the galaxy. I will not let that happen."
The warrior marched away, ignoring the calls of the others for him to return. The rest of the Eternals stayed behind, the fight continuing.
Kol-Eresh had everything that he needed.
All the answers, all the pieces of the puzzle. He ran back to Jackie before the Eternals decided to seal the hidden fortress.
When the harbinger reached her, Jackie was cold to touch. She opened her eyes when he kissed her, desperate to feel some warmth from her mouth.
"Kol," she whispered. "What's happening?"
"I know what I must do," he said. "I have to take you with me. Do you trust me?"
Jackie nodded, too weak to reply.
The life of his fated was in his hands. Kol-Eresh lifted her into his arms, holding her frail body tightly against his chest. His heart was beating a furious rhythm as he headed back to the fortress, thinking of how he was going to get past the Eternals without triggering any of the alarms they had to have in place.
It was a miracle they hadn't discovered him yet.
"Are you looking for me?" a voice asked behind him.
Kol-Eresh turned, Jackie looking up from his arms.
Jhaon stood in the middle of the pathway, his sword drawn and the deep dark eyes filled with cruel malice.
"You have chosen the wrong time to die," the Eternal said.
Twenty-Four
Jackie
There was an Eternal in front of her.
Jackie recognized him without fault. It was the bastard who had tried to kill her.
"You," she whispered. "Kol, put me down. I can stand."
"No, you can't," the harbinger replied, not taking his eyes off the enemy.
"I can in front of him," Jackie shot back, finding some strength to make her words heard despite the fact that she felt like all the air was let out of her lungs.
Kol-Eresh seemed to consider, his eyes flickering between her and the Eternal, who stood unmoving, observing them with a deep look of distaste.
Then Jackie was moving and her feet touched the ground. It was like she was trying to learn how to stand all over again. Grasping the wall, she somehow managed, glaring at the Eternal.
Kol-Eresh was now free to draw his own blade. There were sounds of arguing coming from ahead of them, but Jackie couldn't figure out what they were saying.
"I have no intention of dying today," the harbinger told the Eternal. "And I'm not letting her die either. You were the one who gave her that damned serum. You are the one who's going to save her."
The Eternal's thin lips curled into a smile.
"It's too late for that," he said. "Look at her. She is minutes away."
Minutes, the word echoed in Jackie's head. Minutes.
Kol-Eresh winced. The harbinger took a step forward, grasping the sword tighter in his hands.
"You better hurry, then," Kol-Eresh said. "Because if she dies, I will make sure you live long enough to suffer a minute for every minute you've lived so far."
The Eternal humphed.
"Your petty threats don't concern me," he said in a deep voice that sounded old, impossibly old.
"They should," Kol-Eresh said, the snarl of his voice so feral Jackie worried he was going to tear the Eternal to pieces before he could help her. "I mean every word. This is my fated."
"I know," the Eternal said. "I can see that."
There was an odd note in his voice.
"I heard you before, Jhaon," the harbinger went on. "You told the others that she was right. You know she doesn't have to die. You can see that she will. Help her.
"You are the most powerful Nayanors who have ever lived. I refuse to believe for a second you wouldn't have a cure for the serum."
The Eternal's eyes were nailed to her. For a second, Jackie thought that the warrior wasn't really seeing her. Was there someone she reminded him of?
"No," the Eternal said then.
"Why?" Jackie asked, the fury surging forth in her like she was fueled by it. "If you can help me, if you know the serum isn't fixing me, why not?"
"There is no cure," the Eternal said.
"I don't believe you," Kol-Eresh cut in, the sword in his hand raising to aim at the Eternal's heart. "You don't do things without a safeguard. All the things you've built – the fortresses, their defenses, the Gechs... there has to be one."
"Maybe," Jhaon said dismissively. "The serums are all experimental. Counter-serums haven't been needed so far. The females die too fast to save them before we've concluded the tests."
Jackie wished she could move. She had never wanted anything more than to just slap the warrior across the face as hard as she could. It wouldn't do the eight-foot-tall hunk any harm, but it would make her feel better for sure.
"Then make one," Jackie said. "You have to know how. You made this."
She pulled the coat away far enough so that Jhaon could see the diadon in her chest.
The Eternal's eyes went wide.
"You're a female," he said. "That's not possible."
"It's clearly not," Jackie panted. "Apparently even you guys don't know everything. The Nayanor healers are better at something, then. This damn thing saved me once and now it's killing me. You know the serum, you know the device. There is no one else!"
The Eternal hesitated.
"If you succeed, you could be a step closer to figuring something out," Jackie offered, but she was quickly running out of air.
She slumped to the ground. Kol-Eresh moved to help her, but seeing her like that made the anger in his eyes explode in a fiery storm.
He turned to the Eternal.
"Last chance," he said. "Help her, or I will deliver you in pieces to the next warrior, who will."
Jhaon met his hard gaze with an equally hateful one.
"None of them will help you," he said. "If you heard us before, you know this."
"And if you haven't sounded the alarm yet, you are going to help," Kol-Eresh shot back. "Stop delaying. You saw me kill one of you before. I can do it again and I will prove it to you more than gladly."
Jhaon was silent for a long moment.
"The others will not let me do this," he said. "They will attack as a force and they will kill you both and me with you. Our secret fortress must not be discovered."
"It's already too late," Kol-Eresh said. "I will have my brothers raze this place clean of all life and all of your experiments."
"You?" the Eternal asked, laughing. "You, alone? If I sounded the alarm now, do you think you're going to make it out of here alive?"
"If you let my fated die, watch and see," Kol-Eresh said, raising the blade of his sword higher.
The look in his eyes was pure steel now, all the rage forged into an iron will.
Jhaon looked at Jackie.
"Come," he said then. "I will take her. You have to deal with my brothers. If you really treasure her so much, you will have a chance to prove it soon enough.
"I will warn you. If one of them breaks through, she won't live long enough to say a word."
Jackie met Kol-Eresh's gaze and this time, the smile on her face was a completely voluntary reaction.
"I trust you," she said. "I will take those odds."
Minutes, the word echoed in her mind as the harbinger pulled her up and kissed her deeply. Minutes.
Twenty-Five
Kol-Eresh
Jhaon was leading them through a series of tight tunnels that served as backdoors to the laboratory he needed.
The harbinger hated everything about the set-up of the situation they were in. There was no other way for it to work, but he loathed the fact that he had to leave Jackie alone with that monster.
No matter what the Eternal thought the end game was going to be, Kol-Eresh's mind was
made up. No Eternal would survive the night.
"You are in luck," Jhaon said, slowing down. "I can shut this path down from the inside and on the other side, the corridor leading to the laboratory is very narrow. It will help you and against my brothers, you need all the help you can get."
Kol-Eresh snarled an unintelligible answer, but the Eternal didn't seem to care. He was holding on to Jackie, measuring her pulse as she stumbled down the path. The harbinger ached to help her, carry her, but that would have meant sheathing his sword and he didn't trust Jhaon one bit.
Now he had to trust him with what was most important to him in the world.
"They will know we're in there as soon as I begin," Jhaon said. "Expect no mercy or quarter."
"None will be given either," Kol-Eresh replied. "As for you –"
"Stop threatening me," Jhaon answered coldly. "I feel like I owe the female for the truth she imposed on me, and some of my brothers have lived too long to change and see the truth. When this is over, consider yourself my enemy again.
"Nayanors have squandered all the gifts we gave you. Even your own females think you're unworthy, although I see you have gotten lucky."
"Gifts?" Kol-Eresh barked a laugh. "You destroyed our planet, our genes and you've spent years trying to kill our fateds. You are not the saviors of this world, you are the plague."
Jhaon stopped in the middle of the hallway and Kol-Eresh considered his words. He knew he should have kept them for a time when Jackie wasn't in mortal danger, but he hadn't been able to hold back.
Despite all the true gifts like the Gechs and the diadons, the Eternals really were the enemies.
"If you survive the battle with my brothers," Jhaon said quietly, with a good measure of vicious glee. "You will make a great test subject for the new serum, one that works on Nayanors instead of the females."
"What makes you think that after I've killed all of them, I can't kill you?" Kol-Eresh asked darkly.
