Powered by the shaladen and the marvelous form designed for her by Mercedes, Sarai was doing more than holding her own against the powerful Kriar. The hurricane speed that had so easily toppled Kalindinai was barely quick enough to keep with her as they demolished the room.
The Kriar’s blade gouged out hunks of wall, sections of floor and ceiling as his silvery-haired mate literally bounced off the barriers and obstacles in the chamber in a blur, her shaladen crashing against the Daergon’s defenses.
One thing was abundantly clear, while she had greater speed than her opponent, Sarai simply didn’t have sufficient skill to do anything more than occupy the intruder. The ancient Kriar was too experienced and too well armed to overcome even if Sarai were twice as fast.
He didn’t question, but leaped for Bertrand’s unconscious form.
The nameless Daergon must have seen him from the corner of her eye because she drove Sarai back with a thrust of her weapon and was in front of the elf’s body swinging her weapon before he even finished his jump. How could something move so fast?
A brilliant flash of light illuminated the room even as he brought his axes down to guard. A roar of thunder rocked the chamber as multiple bolts of lightning jagged underneath him from Kalindinai’s staff.
A reddish bubble around the Daergon flared red and went black as the powerful blast picked her up and flung her across the room. The power mauled the Kriar as it smashed her backward through the hearth, punched through the side of the building, and hit the reflection pond outside in a detonation of vaporized water.
Bannor shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears. He looked down at his boots which were smoking. Kalindinai had almost caught him in that blast! Small fires still flickered in a blackened crease that streaked across the wooden floor, through the exploded hearth, through a split and smoldering divan and out through a hole torn in the mansion’s thick stone and wood wall. Ash and debris continued to plunk down from the ceiling, and splintered spars of wood still on fire swung back and forth.
Whoa.
Sarai rolled to her feet, and leaned on her knees breathing hard. Her garments were burned and shredded from close misses of the Kriar’s weapon. She held up a fist to indicate she was okay.
He slid one of his axes through his belt and scooped up Bertrand’s limp form, wincing at the sight of his melted and blackened face. The elf quivered, limbs twitching; alive—at least for the moment. Bannor draped him over his shoulder, and headed back toward Kalindinai. “Let’s—”
Bannor was interrupted by a yell as the Kriar woman launched from the pond in an eruption of water. She thudded to the ground. Eyes glowing like embers, she flicked the wet hair out of her face with a toss of her head. She made a growling sound, clenched her fist and a blade of light rasped into being. The woman’s white clothing was tattered and burned, her gold skin a dark orange color where the tendrils of magical force had clamped down.
Uh oh. He felt a fist knot in his stomach. Now was a really bad time not to have his nola. This creature was going to get serious and start using all of her powers.
She started forward. Kalindinai didn’t wait to find out what the Daergon could do, she spun her staff and launched another devastating barrage of magic. Bolts of light, blasts of fire, and shrieks of lightning seared out from her staff in rapid succession.
A scowl on her face, the gold woman batted aside a few of the blasts and simply seemed to sway through the hail of energy with that incredible speed. Nothing hit her.
Bannor reached down into himself where he normally found the garmtur. The symbol of his self was a shredded and mangled parody of its former shape, a wounded butterfly that was doing well simply to be alive. His nola power would not be rescuing them this time.
Sarai leaped into her path, sword at the ready.
The Daergon woman stopped. “Get out of my way, Child, I am tired of playing with you.”
The third princess of Malan called upon the power of the shaladen, the weapon crackled and her limbs glowed and thickened. She surged forward, the shaladen weapon creating a hurricane of fire as whipped it into the alien fighter.
The gold woman turned inside the path of the sword. She slammed Sarai’s wrist to stop, and in the same motion, spun and swept her feet out from under her.
His wife-to-be landed with a crash that made him cry out. Damn, and he was stuck with this useless elf lord on his shoulder when Sarai needed him.
The Daergon kept her glowing blade trained on Sarai. She shook her head and raised her weapon.
“NO!” Bannor screamed.
Kalindinai thrust her staff forward and another shaft of lightning roared out.
The Kriar aborted her killing stroke, using her weapon to deflect Kalindinai’s attack. The blast shattered another wall, causing servants who were apparently cowering in the nearby room to shriek in terror as the magic blasted through.
Sarai used the reprieve to scramble back on heels and hands.
The Daergon lunged forward, yanking a battle knife from her boot and plunging it through Sarai’s calf into the floor. The agonized scream Sarai let out made his whole body shake. His wife-to-be groaned and clutched her leg, tears streaming down her face.
“You witch!” he yelled.
He let Bertrand’s body slide to the floor, and pulled out his other axe, and moved toward her.
“Now now,” the Daergon chided. Her burning blade pointed at Sarai’s chest she stepped on the knife embedded in her leg.
Sarai’s head tilted back and she bit down on a scream.
“Sarai!” Kalindinai growled.
“Obviously, you care more about this one, than that sack of tubers over there,” she nodded to Bertrand. “That’s fine, as long as we have our priorities straight.” She leaned forward, putting her weight on the knife hilt.
Sarai let out a yelp, clutching her leg, tears streaming down her face.
Bannor’s heart was pounding in his ears. The muscles in his arms throbbed, and the wrapped leather on the hafts of his axes squeaked under the pressure of his grip.
“Your friends in the Shael Dal can stop trying to summon her, I have her etherlocked.” She reached to the sidearm in its holster on her side, cranked it to full, pulled it out and leveled it at Sarai’s chest. “If I feel even one iota of ether disturbed from mattershift, I will splash her all over this room.” She sniffed. “Now, about some cooperation or shall I start trimming off flesh?” She lowered the lightblade to Sarai’s foot.
“No,” Kalindinai growled. She transformed her staff back to an armband and placed it on her arm. “All right, you want me to give you Marna. Supposing I want to—how do I do that? This is my kingdom but I don’t tell her what to do.”
“Tell her she comes here, or I start filleting your daughter. I know her signature, and if she brings anyone else with her, this child goes and you’re next.”
“Mother,” Sarai groaned. “I—”
“Mimi, just hold on,” Kalindinai said. She raised her chin. “Marna acknowledges. She will come to our location in one hundred beats.”
The Kriar frowned. “Tell her to make it half that.” She leaned on the knife again making Sarai cry out.
“Damn you! Stop hurting her!” Bannor went to his knees in the floor. He wanted to go to her. To get that evil witch off his wife-to-be. His powers were gone. He had nothing. He was an ordinary man in a durable body. He reached down into his savant senses and found nothing. All this time of wishing he’d never been born a savant, and now it was his most fervent wish. He would take that Daergon’s threads and pull them so tight her eyes would bulge from their sockets.
The Daergon sneered at him.
“Ten beats gone,” the Daergon said. “I will take a piece out of this girl for every beat over fifty I have to wait.” She paused. “Twenty beats.”
Bannor felt a tingling as if something had brushed against him. He forced himself to keep his eyes f
ocused on the Daergon. “If you hurt her anymore, I swear…”
The blue-eyed Kriar snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Thirty.” She brought the blade of her weapon down toward Sarai’s side, making her moan and writhe.
The Daergon female lurched as if sensing something but she moved too late as a light weapon appeared, slicing her sidearm in half and coming up under the sword she had poised on Sarai. Forced up and back, her own light blade came hissing at her head. She twisted away, her weapon winking out so that she didn’t lop her own skull in half.
Bannor saw her hair yanked back and saw dust on the floor flurry as she was hurled out through the hole in the wall and into the pond with a splash.
Eclipse shimmered into view. The big Kriar laced his fingers and crackled his knuckles, moving his head from side to side.
The Kriar woman was already launching back at him, her blade rasping and crackling as it cut a flaming path through the air.
The male didn’t use his light weapon, he merely patterned with his hands, leaned between her cuts, grabbed her wrist and sent a round kick whistling into her midriff with a sound like snapping wood.
The Daergon gasped, her eyes nearly bulging from her skull as she folded around the powerful strike. Gripping her middle, she dropped to her knees keeping her weapon trained on Eclipse. Eyes blazing, she snarled at him.
The Kriar varkath cross-stepped around her, fists turned out, face set and glowing blue eyes narrowed.
Bannor scrambled forward to Sarai’s side. “Hold on, let me get this thing out.”
Sarai closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Bannor gripped the handle and yanked the weapon free in one swift pull. Sarai groaned and writhed as blood spurted from her injured leg. Bannor whipped the cloak off his shoulders, tore off a section and bound her leg.
Eclipse glanced over toward them. He looked back to the Daergon and sniffed.
This gesture seemed to enrage the female, she charged, plunging the weapon at his heart.
Eclipse stepped in, pivoting so the blade kissed his armored chest. He grabbed her wrist and double struck, hammer-fisting her arm with a crack and smashing his armored elbow against her cheek.
The female tumbled backward, body quivering in the dirt yard.
The warrior rubbed the crescent tattoo on his cheek and sighed.
The Daergon rolled back to her feet favoring her broken arm, pasty white blood dribbled from her split cheek and lip. She spat the fluid out of her mouth and glared at him, body heaving as she took heavy gasps of air.
He tilted his head, still not having said a word aloud.
A pained grimace on her face, Sarai stared at the Kriar warrior, no doubt amazed at how easily he dealt with the monster that moments ago had handled them as though they were children.
Bannor helped her up, taking the weight so she wouldn’t further injure her damaged leg. He pulled her back toward Kalindinai who met them half way and put her shoulder under Sarai.
He released his wife-to-be and went to Bertrand and checked him. Still alive. It was really more than he deserved.
He picked the elf man up and slung him over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Bannor said.
“If you leave, I swear I will kill every living thing in this building,” the Daergon female growled.
Eclipse narrowed his eyes. “Vratague, you disappoint me. Those without honor, receive no mercy.” The burning red lance of his light-blade appeared in his hand.
“Hah, you won’t—uck!”
Even as she spoke he drove the blade through her left shoulder in a rasp of movement and a blur of speed. She let out a scream clutching the scorched and cooked hole in her body.
“Vratague, you must have me confused with someone else,” Eclipse said. He sighed and shook his head. “Do not mistake my merciful past for a lack of resolve. For the sake of the Vatraena and the Kriar people, I can poke holes in you all night. Is that how it will be? I would much rather you told me where your allies are, and where the Jyril device you acquired is being kept.”
Greenish tears rolled down her marred face. “Dark take you.” She pushed to her feet, and stood on wavering legs. “The Daergons are the only true patriots—you would have us be bleating simps, kowtowing to lesser races. Treating them as equals. Fah!” She spit in the dirt again.
Eclipse let out a breath, seeming drained. “This lesser race erased the ruination of the Kriar by the Jyril. A curse fetched on us by your wrong headed thinking. You are not patriots—you are seditious fools who are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. You ally with the very creatures that destroyed the Karanganoi. Are you insane? You take their weapon and try to use it. They will turn on you and us, the instant they can wrest control from you.”
Vratague grimaced and scrubbed at her face. She staggered a step. With what looked like a struggle she made her light weapon appear in rasp. Its white light reflected on her gold skin. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Desperate? What is so desperate? Homeworld is seeing the first prosperity it has had for eons!”
“It is not prosperity—” Vratague coughed and groaned. “It is decadence—it is complacence. As a warrior, you of all people should know that.” The female warrior stared at him. “Why do you help her? You were cast off like the others.”
“I was not cast off—I walked away. It was not Marna who drove me out, but the mewing empty-headed followers of Daergon Surr. They represented nothing but selfish arrogance and raw greed. I joined the legion to protect our way of life—the way set down by the first star-reach. I will not serve honorless thugs. If by some far stretch, your miscreant uprising succeeds, I will be there to make war until each one of you is eating the dirt you deserve.”
“Varkath, you live in a dream. You support an idealist who coddles and beds the lessers. She is a perversion—a travesty—she must be—” She wavered, apparently drawing on some inner resolve. “Annihilated!” Screaming, the wounded warrior leaped at him.
Eclipse seemed taken aback for only a heartbeat, he fended aside her weapon and plunged his blade through her chest. The Kriar female shrieked as a pace long shaft of burning light erupted from her back in a gout of pasty white blood.
Vratague’s body twitched and quivered as Eclipse extinguished his weapon and caught her quivering form. Lying her on the ground, he pulled something from his belt and clipped it around her neck. He then shackled her wrists and ankles. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.
Eclipse turned to them. “We should go. Her peers may gain enough courage to confront us.”
“What do you want her for? Isn’t she dead?” Kalindinai asked.
“It was a heart stroke, but Kriar have two hearts,” he said. “She merely succumbed to her injuries. If I leave her behind, they’ll just heal her and use her against us again.”
The Queen nodded. “Thank you, Eclipse.”
The Kriar bowed his head to her. “Please, gather close.”
Bannor stepped up, and almost before he’d finished taking the step the six of them were surrounded in darkness. His heart didn’t get a chance to take a beat before they were standing again in the council chambers at Kul’Amaron, the light of Eclipse’s transport ability fading from around them.
Bannor laid the shuddering form of Bertrand down on the floor, and glanced to the bleeding mess of Vratague slung over Eclipse’s shoulder. If they were all as determined as she was, how would they ever defeat them?
He swallowed. He had been all but useless and Sarai nearly died because of it. Gaea said it might be scoredays before she could help him. What was he going to do? This was only going to get worse, and matters weren’t going to wait for him to be healed.
“Bannor,” Kalindinai gripped his shoulder. The Queen focused amber eyes on him. “I’m glad you were there.” She gestured and he felt a twisting as magic swirled and hummed inside him. It felt as if he grew, his limbs getting heavier and thicker until he was looking down at Kalindinai again
. “My thanks for your protection.”
Bannor knelt down and took her hand. He looked up at Sarai who was leaning against her mother perched on one leg like a swamp bird. “My thanks for letting me love your daughter.”
The Queen smiled and put a hand on his head. “Bannor, my son-to-be, thank you for making my commitment so easy…”
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* * *
Chapter Nine
Learning our limits is sometimes a hard
lesson to swallow. To gain so much power,
then be handled like neophyte—that stings
no matter how mature your perspective is.
In retrospect, I suppose it was good to
experience such a sound defeat and live
through it. It is a strong reminder of the
folly of false confidence…
—Sarai T’Evagduran,
3rd Princess of Malan
Heart thumping, Bannor winced as Sarai hit the padded floor with a thud, flipped, and stumbled and thudded into the wall cushions inverted. She slid down and landed in a sprawl. The elf princess righted herself with a snarl, yanking the leather dueling jerkin straight, and brushing at a few stray strands of silvery-blonde hair. Chest heaving, she glared at Senalloy across the chamber floor.
Dressed in the loose-fitting charcoal-colored uniform of the Malanian Nightslash Elite, silver-haired Senalloy stood in the middle of the dueling floor with one hand behind her back. It was in situations like this that Senalloy’s power was truly evident. Sarai was using every bit of her strength and speed. On the other hand, Senalloy seemed to exert little effort. Using only one hand for defense, the tall woman avoided or warded off every one of the princess’ attacks.
The ancient hexagonally shaped training area was one Bannor had not seen until a few days ago, but they had been here in this ornate iron-wood chamber every day since coming back from the encounter with Vratague. Wysteri healed Sarai’s leg, but nothing could salve her wounded pride; not him, not her parents nor her sisters.
Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator Page 12
