Beside him was the one Tor was the most worried about. Darkesh wasn’t like the others. He was on two feet, but they were demonic, black scales, long black talons. He had a slim waist, but thick thighs. His chest was monstrous, along with his shoulders, and his clawed hands. Back home they called him a draconian, a humanoid version of a dragon. His head was a smaller version of a dragon’s skull, complete with horns. He had a tail, spikes at the edges kept marking the ground as if warning those who came after him. They stopped at the foot of the walkway and stared Tor down, their lightning eyes crackling as each second ticked by.
Cassareece folded her arms across her chest. “You know why we came.” Her voice was syrupy sweet, but it made Tor sick to his stomach.
“I refuse.”
Jovaisson laughed, a gurgling sound erupting from his throat. “You cannot deny what you are forever.”
“I refuse,” Tor said, narrowing his eyes. He knew perfectly well what they wanted him to do, but he wouldn’t.
“Think of the glory—with you we will be unstoppable. Not even the dust will dictate what we do,” Darkesh said, his vocals emitting a series of clicks that despite their incoherency, Tor understood.
Tor’s eyes blazed. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Cassareece laughed and it was a terrible sound. “You cannot be serious. You would give up the Great Hall for this?”
“I’m not giving up anything I didn’t own in the first place.”
“Ahh, you are being so difficult, Toraque. Will you not use your head to see what will happen if you do not comply?” Joviasson sneered. His body twisted constantly, the tentacles looking for somewhere to settle.
Tor shook his head. “I am no king.”
Darkesh growled and the ground shook. “You are the twelfth!” he roared. “You will join us or you will pay the price.”
Cassareece looked stricken, as though the consequences Darkesh could unleash were something even she was afraid of. “Agree to our tenet, Toraque. I will make it worth your while.” A sweet smile spread across her face, which was both beautiful and dark at the same time. Her blue lightning eyes crackled. “Do it before it’s too late.”
“No.” Tor made eye contact with her, making sure his words struck her. It was more than a no to join them, for Cassareece it was no to being with her, no to being one of them, no to everything she was that he was. It was the utter denial of everything he had come to know.
A shadow crossed her face, a faint redness tickling her cheeks. She lifted her chin and Tor laughed on the inside, watching her hold back tears. “You will be sorry for this Tor, mark my words. I will make sure nobody on this land eats for an entire year.”
Tor’s eyes widened. “That will kill them!”
Cassareece sniggered. “You should not be so careless with your decisions.”
Tor glanced at Joviasson and Darkesh, but their faces were masks of glee and terror. Cassareece stepped away first, going back the way they came. Even as she became a silhouette in the dark, her laughter rose, traveling with the wind and chilling Tor’s insides. He let out a breath when he could no longer see their threatening forms and ducked into the tent. Desaunius knelt in front of the altar, rocking back and forth, holding her hands close to her chest, a rough diamond in her palms.
She glanced at him, her eyes bloodshot, and cheeks splotchy. “They cannot take you when I’ve only found you.”
Tor rushed to her side and knelt beside her, pulling her hands away from her chest and placing the diamond on the altar. He wrapped his arms around her as she pressed her forehead to his shoulder, tears thickening and streaming down her face. “They can do their worst, I won’t leave.”
Desaunius shook her head against his shoulder. “I don’t understand what they want. Why you?”
Tor held her tighter, his stomach groaning. “I’m the one that can change the way things are.”
“Will you?”
Tor smiled. “Aye.”
Tor heard the screams before he saw the fields. They began as back of the throat cries and melded, becoming blood curdling screams that startled Tor out of his floor-ridden cot. He threw on a beige tunic and didn’t bother with the sandals. Desaunius tried to stop him but his big arms pushed her aside, making her fall into a heap on the animal hide.
“It’s madness out there!” she shouted after him as he pushed open the canvas and jogged down the trail. He moved westward across the village, passing the familiar walkways, morning smudge hastily lit. He skirted around the bonfire and continued down the winding paths between the trees, bushes and tents, the yelps only gaining more agitation as more and more villagers found their way to the crest of the hill overlooking the fields.
When Tor reached it there was a crowd perched there, shoulders sagging, tears streaming down faces, hands covering eyes. He shouldered his way through them. Blackness skated across once green grass, creating track marks in the soil. Fire covered most of the fields in treachery, taking with it the leafy green leaves that housed the silver quenny fruit.
He followed the lines of fire as far as his eyes could take him, past the first squares of field and the path of trees on the south side, all the way to the gray streaked horizon, smoke making an artificial fog in the distance.
There was movement rustling behind him, a jangle of feathers, fur and beads. Tor heard a staff press into the ground, a dull thud, thud, thud across the grass. Villagers moved out of the way until Skeld stood beside Tor, a mournful expression on his face. They stayed that way for a long time, Skeld watching fire take the fields and Tor feeling nothing but agitation and anger folding into him.
“Was saying no worth this?” Skeld asked.
Tor clenched his fist. “This is nothing.”
He didn’t give Skeld a chance to respond as he pushed past the villagers and wended his way to the field with the lake. It was untouched. He quickened his pace across it and ducked into the haunted forest without thinking about the screeches. They pierced his ears, but he forced himself to withstand the sound, knowing that if Aria was safe, nothing was lost. He avoided the call of the pretty pink, purple and white petals of poisonous flowers, ducked under low hanging branches, white matter curled around it like tufts of summer clouds and hopped over the patches of slippery mud.
He found the cairn rising out of the ground like a giant eyesore in the middle of the dead forest. He knew they would come again, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. Cassareece was vindictive, but she wasn’t like the others, the things they could do were worse and he wanted to make sure his secrets stayed hidden.
He slipped through the crack between the rocks and when he turned around Aria stood. She brushed off the front of her illusory dress, sorting out imaginary wrinkles. She looked better than the other day, her skin thicker, less transparent. She had the same shimmery hair and liquid violet eyes. Today they were full of worry and sadness.
“You came back,” she said.
Tor worked his hands so they didn’t feel so stiff and archaic. “I said I would.”
“You took a long time,” Aria said.
Tor shook his head. “Time is as long as you make it.”
Aria looked at the ground. She pulled her foot up and stuck her toe face first to the mud, almost like she was trying to perch herself on it. “Time moves slowly.”
“And what did you do while I was gone?”
Aria smiled and dropped her foot flat on the ground. She pulled her hands out from behind her back, a single poisonous violet flower floating near one of them. These flowers were gaudy, pastel purple, tear drop shaped petals, a yellow pollinated center, a snaking green stem. “The forest is alive.”
“That hardly seems important.”
Aria dropped the flower and watched it float to the ground like it was a feather. “I coaxed souls into more comfortable positions in the trees. I told the wind to stop aggravating them.”
Tor shook his head and glanced behind him at the crack. What was his greatest achievement week
s ago now seemed like his biggest failure. “How exactly will that help me?”
Aria shrugged. “It won’t, unless the war you’re fighting is too big for you to fight by yourself.”
Tor gestured to the weapons that looked like they hadn’t been touched. “I have those, don’t I?”
Aria followed his gaze, a curious smile playing at the edges of her mouth. “They won’t work for you if you don’t work for them.” She skipped over the poisonous flower and pirouetted to the opening in the cairn. Now that she wasn’t standing guard, Tor stepped forward and looked them over. He tried to call the essence of himself, the dust living within him while the rest stayed in the chest. He ran his hands over the weapons, hoping to make them do what Aria did, but they remained dormant. He glanced at each of them, pouring over them with his senses, trying to work with them.
He stopped at the ruby sword and his eyes locked with the red jewel on the hilt. It wasn’t glowing, but even without the glow it emitted a pulse, a wave if one tuned into the item. He kept his eyes fixed on the hilt, and reached for it slowly, wrapping his fingers around it and lifting it off the stone. The moment it was upright, Tor worked it back and forth, attempting to get a feel for it. Red light shot through it, covering it in flames that roiled off it in anger. It stuttered and sparked, heat lighting the blade an orange color before it flared like the sun, a wisp of red flames hitting the wall square on. A crack appeared in the stone, Tor yelped at the pain it caused, as though struck by lightning. He fell back, the sword dropped on the ground. Aria crossed the floor while Tor held his hand, scarred with a large throbbing red welt.
Aria went to put the sword back in its place on the stone slab, but found she couldn’t grasp it. She turned to face him. “You will need others to fight with these weapons if you plan on winning.”
Tor pulled his knees to his chest. “I don’t need anyone,” he mumbled.
Aria sighed. “You need me.” She went to the table and went to take the seashell in her hands but that didn’t work either. She turned to Tor and pointed at the seashell. “Take this, and when you need me, sound the horn.”
Tor looked at her blazing amethyst eyes, the thing he created by accident. Feeling defeat, he brought himself to his feet and hung his head, no longer able to meet her eyes. He held the shell with both hands as he left the cairn.
The second time they came night fell across the sky, but the star cloud was replaced by a black night, stars invisible behind a shield placed over the village. Tor sat at the bonfire with the other villagers while they danced and chanted, futile attempts to make the sky show itself. He waited, watching their concerned faces as blackness grew blacker and the bonfire became the only beacon of light in their midst. After what seemed like hours a rustle through the trees followed by a high pitched scream startled them. Tor stood, fists clenched at his side, eyes scouring the bushes. Villagers huddled together on the other side of the bonfire in fear, Tor regarded them cowards. Everything they ever worked for was in jeopardy. Their crops burned, their sky taken, and yet they were like timid frightened children, cowering from monsters.
Tor wasn’t afraid.
“Show yourselves!” he cried.
The familiar sniggering from Cassareece wafted through the air. She appeared between two trees on the edge of the bonfire. Her blonde hair glittered in the light as she sauntered towards him. The other two emerged behind the villagers, surprised shrieks ringing out. Tor heard someone hit the ground hard and gritted his teeth in response. The villagers weren’t his to protect, but this wasn’t their fight. Anything that happened to them was his responsibility. He turned a fraction of an inch to see what happened, attempting not to show any emotion. Cassareece had her sparking blue eyes on him, watching and waiting for him to show his weakness. He refused to do that.
Joviasson licked his lips as he approached, sliding a thin blade out of the sleeve of his jacket.
“Consider this a formal request to join us in Avrigost, neophyte Toraque. Will you truly deny us a second time?” He had an edge to his voice, vibrating with every syllable that fell.
Tor crossed his arms. That word, neophyte. He was no neophyte, not when he knew more than any of the villagers Across the Stars combined. Not when he grew up in the place he escaped from. The moment he knew what he was to them was the moment he knew he could never live up to their expectations. He wouldn’t give them the kind of power they desired.
“I refuse.”
Darkesh growled.
Joviasson grunted.
Cassareece gasped.
“We could be so happy, Toraque,” she pleaded.
Tor tossed a glance over his shoulder at her, his gold lightning eyes crackling with anger. “You don’t own me, Cassareece.”
She snorted. “You don’t know what you’re giving up.”
Tor faced her. “You know I won’t be a pawn in your games.”
“But you already are,” Joviasson said. Tor whipped around only to find Skeld in the iron grip of the disfigured kraken. His slits for eyes narrowed at Skeld.
“Let him go.”
“Come with us,” Joviasson sneered.
“I refuse.”
“Then we will have your kin.”
Cassareece laughed again and her form disappeared from the trees. Tor left Skeld at the bonfire as he chased Cassareece back to his tent, back to Desaunius. He entered the tent but Cassareece was nowhere to be seen.
“Desaunius?” Tor moved to the cot, shaking her awake. She turned, her green eyes full of alarm. In her arms she cradled the seashell.
“I meant to bring it to you tonight. I knew you’d need it.”
Tor took it dumbfounded as he scoured the tent for signs of Cassareece. She wasn’t there. He grabbed Desaunius’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come, you need to stay by my side.”
Desaunius stayed in her nightgown as Tor pulled her to the bonfire. When he arrived, Cassareece stood exactly where she had been before, as though she hadn’t moved an inch.
“You’re such a fool, Toraque,” Joviasson sneered. Skeld was on his knees, a dagger tight against his neck. Joviasson flicked a look at Desaunius and smiled before sliding the blade across Skeld’s throat, thick burgundy blood staining his tunic.
Tor caught Desaunius as she fell, a ghastly cry erupting from her lips. She buried her face in his tunic while he stood there, the seashell in one hand, the love of his life in the other. Sickness festered in his gut but he wouldn’t let Joviasson get the best of him. This wasn’t something meant to hurt Tor, it was meant to hurt Desaunius.
“My father,” she whimpered as Tor held her upright.
He leaned to her, guilt eating him for letting this happen. “Be strong,” he grumbled, not meaning to sound so harsh.
“How can I be strong when I know they’ll destroy everything I love?” Desaunius said through wheezing breaths that racked her tiny frame.
Tor sighed and against his better judgment he closed his eyes. It was an admission of vulnerability and it was the last thing he wanted to do. When he opened them, Joviasson had a menacing look on his face.
“You will deeply regret your decision.” He let Skeld go, kicking him in the back so that the body pitched forward, landing a few feet from Tor.
Tor went to speak but they slithered through the trees. He stared at the mess Skeld had become and eased Desaunius to the ground. He knew what would happen next, but didn’t know how he could get Skeld to the shores for safe passage and he had no idea if Skeld would make it through the haunted forward without getting tangled in a tree.
He remembered the seashell in his hands and brought it to his lips blowing hard on the end. It lit up with green flames as a loud ruckus spread across the clearing sky, yellow stars emerging from their holes. He put the shell down and sat beside Desaunius. He wrapped his arms around her but she was inconsolable, her eyes focused on the carcass.
“I knew they were terrible, but I didn’t know they were like this,” she said after a long pause.
<
br /> Tor rubbed her back, the guilt lancing through him even though he tried to keep it at bay. This was precisely why he escaped, but he knew no matter where he went, there would be casualties, someone would always get hurt.
“I won’t let them hurt you.”
Fresh tears streamed down her face. “You’re too late, my love.”
Tor sighed and pressed his head to her head. He had no words to explain how he felt; nothing would make her feel better about what was happening, what he expected for centuries.
“What are you and how did you end up being one of them?”
The pain hit Tor hard. It felt like his chest had cracked and if he wasn’t careful, pieces of it would break off and fall into the ocean, making him give in, making him become everything he wasn’t prepared to be. “I’m not one of them.”
Desaunius let out a breath turned her attention to the carcass. Cotton-like substance rose out of the body like smoke as Skeld died. The cotton twisted and formed into limbs, torso, and face. Tor stood, a gasp rippling through the villagers. The ghost of Skeld stared at Tor, its mouth worked but no sound emerged. It turned to the villagers and held its hands out to them. Tor recognized the way Skeld addressed the people, a farewell. The ghost turned to Tor, worry crossing his expression.
“I’m sorry, but you must take a journey,” Tor said. He hoped Skeld would understand. This was the way things were. When others on Tempia died, they ended up the same—ghosts wandering the haunted forest, ghosts making it to the shores and traveling to the other side. Skeld glanced at Desaunius and Tor followed his gaze. The woman he loved the moment he set eyes on her wouldn’t look up. She stayed huddled on the ground, hugging herself to keep the pain and the cold away. That was the thing about ghosts, they chilled the night air and made it seem like the land would freeze over.
Villains Page 3
