Stormfront

by John Goode

  He said nothing and pressed the attack.

  What is this? Ferra thought, taking a half step back and forming a shield around her arm. Oberon was fighting with skill, with little variation. Which was insane; a swordsman as experienced as Oberon would vary his thrusts, test her speed and reaction times, all the while positioning for a killing blow. However, this… what he was doing… was no more than an all-out attack, single dimensional and easy to fight. Oberon would never have earned his reputation as a swordsman behaving like a brash lad fresh from the farm.

  She maneuvered around him to take advantage of his monotonous swings, but the moment she moved, his angle of attack changed and she was forced to defend herself again. He wasn’t going to get through her guard, but she would need to use overwhelming force to take him down.

  “This is the only time I will offer quarter. If you persist, I will kill you.”

  His answer was a roar and another flurry of strikes.

  “So be it,” she said, sighing, and mentally prepared herself.

  I PULLED my hand back and tried not to lose my shit over my mother’s plan.

  Before anyone could ask, I looked over at Kor and Ater and said in perfect Elvish, “La jeune fille est le roi; préparez-vous à l’arrêter.”

  Kor looked like he was about to choke, but Ater just nodded.

  Hawk was about to ask me what I saw when he read my thoughts and paused.

  “Don’t,” I thought at him. “Don’t react. Ask me the question you normally would.”

  “What did you see?” he asked out loud, his entire mind screaming at him to turn around to see what Ater and Kor were doing.

  “I know what I have to do,” I said to everyone assembled.

  Demain asked, “And that is?”

  “Plant the seed and then pour my power into it. It will take about five minutes for the roots to take hold. That will connect Earth back with the realms, and then everything will start to shift back to where it’s supposed to be.”

  “And my realm?” Demain asked, real emotion filling her voice for the first time since I had met her.

  “Everything wrong with it has happened because the realms are misaligned. This will fix the flips and the breakdown of the laws of physics.” She just stared at me. “Yes, Your Majesty, planting the seed will fix it.” Demain exhaled and swallowed back a sob of relief; the rest of us gave her what privacy we could.

  “Then let’s get this started,” Olim said as her sister composed herself.

  I reached into my shirt, and the seed appeared in my hand as I pulled the chain holding it out and over my head. I dangled the chain for a few seconds. The seed looked as it had when I had first seen it on Hawk: a golden acorn with an inner light.

  Kneeling between two of the tree’s largest roots, I pulled away the grass that grew there, stopping when I had a clear patch of soil. Then, using my fingers, I dug out a chunk of dirt and then more and more until I had created a hole large enough to cover the seed with dirt.

  “Here we go,” I said, dropping the seed in….

  FERRA’S SHIELD exploded with spikes, throwing Oberon off balance for no more than one second. In that second she won the battle.

  She melted the ice beneath him, and he stumbled back into the water. Just as quickly she froze the water, pinning him down, his arms locked under the ice. “I warned you,” she grated, bringing her spear up to strike.

  I COVERED the seed with the dirt, patting it into place. My eyes began to glow when I rested my hand on the ground above the seed. Light flashed all around us, and both queens took a step back as they waited for me to finish. I grunted and shook as the light intensified around me….

  And then I collapsed, letting out a huge sigh.

  “It’s done,” I said in a weak voice.

  Which was when everything happened all at the same time.

  Jewel took a half step toward me and Ater’s knife was at her throat. “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  “I-I’m…. Kane, help me!” she called out.

  Her parents just stood there staring vacantly at their feet, not even aware their daughter had a knife at her throat.

  After standing up, I brushed the dirt off my jeans before I stared at Jewel. “You lost control of them,” I explained. She looked confused for a moment, and then her expression contorted into anger.

  Ater was ready for anything except for the speed at which Jewel grew an additional two feet and turned into Oberon clad in full armor. Ater tried to keep hold of him, but Oberon flipped him over his shoulder, throwing him at Kor, who had drawn his bow to fire. Both elves went down and sprawled on the ground, stunned.

  Hawk was not in any way stunned by the transformation. He summoned Promise and charged his father. Thanthos flashed into existence, barely blocking Promise’s sharp edge.

  “The game is up, Father,” he snarled through gritted teeth.

  “Not yet,” Oberon barked, taking a half step back to throw Hawk off balance.

  Hawk stumbled forward and swung Promise wildly, the edge of the blade glancing off Oberon’s hip.

  “You missed.” The king leered.

  “No, he didn’t,” I countered. The Gnome King’s belt fell to the ground, cut clean through by Hawk’s swing. Oberon had half a second to realize he no longer had protection from me before I struck.

  “You put your powers into the seed!” he exclaimed, managing to sound betrayed.

  “I lied.”

  With a wave of my hand, I made the air around him solid, cementing him in place. “The things you’ve done, the pain you’ve caused.” Just a faint echo of the vast amount of misery Oberon had inflicted was enough to strangle my breath.

  “Spare me the lecture. Kill me already,” he snapped, all the while trying to free himself from his prison.

  “I don’t kill people,” I said quietly. For a second I wondered where the boy I used to be had gone; I felt a century old. In a slightly lighter voice, I continued, “But I have no problem with letting you feel every single iota of strife, of pain, of grief you’ve caused people.” I placed my hand on his forehead. “Every single person.”

  My power stretched out to Faerth, touching every person who had been affected by Oberon’s insane quest for power. Every member of the Dark, every noble, everyone he had wronged. In that second I took a copy of their pain and sorrow and shoved it into Oberon’s head in one great push.

  His eyes widened, and then one tear rolled down his cheek as he fell to the ground unmoving.

  “Is he dead?” Ater asked.

  “Oh, he wishes he was dead,” I answered, looking over at Hawk, who was just staring down at his father with a deadly glare. The thought and action happened at the same time and at the speed of lightning; I had no chance to stop him. He took Promise and plunged it into Oberon’s chest.

  And nothing happened.

  The blade passed right through the king, cutting the ground beneath him.

  Hawk pulled it out and tried again, but the sword remained intangible to Oberon.

  “What?” Hawk snapped, staring at the blade.

  “I don’t kill,” I said again, realizing the truth. He glanced at me, and I understood how badly he was hurting. “I don’t kill, and neither does that sword.”

  “What good is a sword that doesn’t kill?” he asked, looking like he was going to cry.

  I walked close to him and pulled him into a hug. “To protect the things we love, but never to do harm. Never to be cruel.”

  He began to cry, and the sword slipped from his hand and vanished back into our souls.

  Kor looked down at Oberon. “But he’s no changeling. How did he change his form?”

  “The belt,” Olim explained. She walked to it and retrieved it from the dirt. “He turned himself into a skinwalker.” Both elves looked puzzled. Their language had no reference to skinwalkers….

  “Skinwalkers can trade forms with someone else, at the same time stealing a portion of their thoughts and memories.” Abruptly, her ex
pression changed to one of total alarm. “Kane! That means your friend was the Oberon we saw at the school!”

  “And Ferra and Molly are going to kill her,” I added, knowing I was already too late and Jewel was about to die if she hadn’t already.

  PEOPLE HAVE a misconception about battle.

  Some have described it as chaos, a melee of actions that confuse the mind and forces its participants to focus on only what is in front of them. This was not true for Ferra. If anything, in combat her senses sharpened, taking in the whole landscape in one glance. For example, she could see the glow under the ice that meant Molly was using her heating elements to break out of the icy prison Ferra had encased the school in. Ferra paused for a moment to see exactly which Molly emerged from the ice.

  “Don’t do it!” the clockwork girl called out even before she was free of the ice. “Don’t kill her!” Eyes still red, she raced toward Ferra.

  Ferra had been about to ask herself who “her” was when she turned to make sure Oberon hadn’t figured out a way to escape. The elven king no longer lay in the trap Ferra had set. In his place huddled a human girl. A thousand thoughts passed through Ferra’s mind, all of them coming to the same conclusion.

  “It’s a trick,” she exclaimed, raising her spear above the prone girl, who looked dazed and unaware of her surroundings.

  “No!” Molly cried out again, throwing herself between Ferra and the girl.

  “Molly, this is just another one of Oberon’s tricks! Get away from him!” Ferra held out her free hand and waited for Molly to take it so she could pull her away from danger.

  “I won’t let you do it.”

  “What? It could be Oberon!”

  “Think! For just one second. Think! This is a child! Look at her! If you kill her, you’ll never forgive yourself!” Molly’s voice dropped, and she added, “Because if you kill her, you’ll have had to kill me to get to her.”

  Ferra paused. “That’s a risk I am willing to take.” She raised the spear again.

  “I won’t let you hurt her.”

  Ferra could see the determination in the clockwork girl’s eyes.

  “Why?” the barbarian asked.

  “Because we don’t kill innocent people! It’s wrong and you know it.”

  “What does one life matter?”

  Molly gaped at her in shock. “Because all life matters, because every single person has a right to be safe and to live. Even if that is Oberon, he needs to be brought to justice, not executed bound on the floor.”

  “And if I try to kill her?”

  “I’ll stop you. What is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?”

  Ferra’s eyes widened just a bit, but she never lost focus on the silent girl cowering away from her on the ground. “This is Oberon.”

  “She isn’t Oberon! And even if she is, we have no right to kill her or him.”

  “Molly, I understand all that, but this is going to be war, and in war innocents die—”

  “That’s not an argument! It’s an excuse! If you try to harm this child, I’ll stop you. If this is Oberon, I will still stop you!” Molly cocked her head to one side and asked, “You’re not acting like yourself! Why are you doing this?”

  Ferra trained a stare at Molly and then let her spear melt. “I needed to know what you’d do….”

  Looking affronted, Molly waited stonily for Ferra to continue. Much more quietly, Ferra added, “Molly, you were in fight mode. You had to be to get clear of the ice. But the instant you thought I was going to kill an innocent… you… you are still in fight mode, but you overruled the programming to protect this being.”

  “Of course I did! That’s what my programming….”

  “You are still in fight mode, but you cared enough about this innocent to fight for her life. And you cared enough about me to protect me from making a mistake I’d never forgive myself for making. Molly, you’ve been afraid that you are just programming, just a machine and nothing else. You are not a machine… there is so much more to you than you or I know. I don’t understand it, but you’re….” Ferra shook her head and smiled a bit. “You have… you hear Logos, whether you know it or not. In some ways, you are more a follower of Logos than I am, and you are much more a follower of Logos than the old men in my village.”

  “I don’t understand,” Molly responded. The red lenses disappeared, and she looked up at Ferra. “You believe in me?”

  “I have faith in you,” Ferra corrected gently.

  I SIGHED in relief. “She’s okay.”

  Olim glanced at him. “How can you tell?”

  “I astral projected to the school and looked around. Jewel is fine.”

  “Wait!” Demain said, sounding upset. “What just happened here? Did you bury the seed or not?”

  I pulled the seed out from under my shirt. “I didn’t, but I needed everyone to think I did. I needed to see what people would do once I was vulnerable.”

  Demain scowled. “You mean me.”

  I shrugged. “If the bitch fits.” She did not look amused. “Up until now, you haven’t measured high on my trustworthy scale, but that’s changing.”

  “I’m so pleased,” Demain huffed.

  “Because when you thought I was vulnerable and could grab the seed for yourself, you didn’t. You see, I think you act like a bitch because you don’t have enough power to fix everyone in your world when they flip, so you make up some insane set of rules so at least some of them get to live normal lives. But you know some people are going to suffer no matter what, so you project this aura of bitchiness to hide your feelings.”

  “You’re wrong,” Olim said. “She is honestly an unpleasant person.”

  The two sisters shared a smile.

  “We are running out of time,” Ruber reminded me.

  “Can you and Caerus take Jewel’s parents home? They aren’t going to remember much since the second Oberon charmed them. I’d like them somewhere familiar when they wake up.”

  “We can do that,” he said as both gems grabbed the dazed parents.

  “Dad, can you go with them?”

  I saw the worried look on his face, and I shook my head. “You can’t protect me from this. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  He walked over and pulled me into a fierce hug. “I will always want to protect you.”

  I smiled and hugged him as well, knowing he meant every word.

  I pulled back. “Okay, seriously, I can’t do this if I’m worried about you.”

  He nodded and looked over at the gems. “Lead the way.”

  I watched them walk away, wishing like hell I was going with them. Once they were gone, I looked at everyone else. “No more tricks,” I said. “This time we’re going to do it for real.”

  Ater’s eyes began to scan the park and Kor moved to the other side of the tree while Olim and Demain looked around for any threat. I knelt down and Hawk joined me.

  “You ready for this?” he asked in my head, already knowing the answer.

  “I think so.”

  He just stared at me for a second intensely. “What aren’t you sharing?”

  “Trust me.”

  He scowled, and I leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I got this one.”

  I turned away from him and released the seed from the chain before I lost my nerve. It hovered in midair, patiently waiting for what came next. Closing my eyes, I let my mental grasp of it go, and it dove straight down into the earth. I could feel it pass right through the grass and dirt and stop about a mile beneath us. Phasing back into reality, it bonded with the soil and roots and slowly began to open.

  Placing both hands on the ground, I felt all of the power it had given me surge. The air around me crackled and sparked as I pulled every last iota of it out and then sent it downward as hard as I could.

  The power flowed down and out…. The seed tensed up, confused, but with my last moment of mental connection, I told it everything was all right. This was according to plan. Everything hap
pened in accordance to The Plan.

  Which was when the air around me exploded and threw everyone out and away from me.

  Both sisters were unconscious; the force of the blow seemed centered on them. Hawk was dazed across the park, and both elves with their hollow bones had been thrown across the street. I, weirdly, felt fine and looked up to see a woman who was obviously related to Demain and Olim.

  “You must be Inmediares,” I said, standing up.

  “Please,” she said, smiling, “call me Glinda.”

  “Fine. Glinda. Get the hell out of my town.”

  She seemed infinitely amused by my threat. “Or what? You’ll yell at me some more? Your power is in the ground, dear boy. While I”—she raised her hand, and blue fire ignited around it—“have all of mine.”

  I didn’t move.

  “So get out of my way, or I will destroy you and your friends.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  Her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

  “See, I think you meant to knock me out with that little blast, but you failed. I think the seed is still protecting me because it expects me to protect it.”

  Instead of killing me, she said, “You’re fighting the wrong fight, Kane.”

  “I’m stopping a raging bitch from getting her hands on the most powerful thing in the Nine Realms. That feels a lot like the right fight.”

  “I don’t want the seed! Is that what you think this is all about?”

  I gave her a mean case of side-eye. “Oh please, like this hasn’t been all about power.”

  “No, it’s about control,” she emphasized the last word intentionally. “I persuaded Titania to move The World Tree the first time to seal off the higher realms so they wouldn’t meddle in mortals’ affairs. If you step aside and let me destroy that seed before it can take hold, the Nine Realms will be separated forever. Trust me when I tell you, that’s a good thing for you.”

  She sounded sincere, which was worrisome. “Good thing how?” I asked, stalling for time.

  “Do you think your world is ready for magic again? At the heart of every human is a selfish, violent beast that always wants more and you want to give them magic back? How long before there are wars between people with magic? Plagues? How long before one of your people learns to summon demons? How long until a human decides to cross the realms and take a piece of one for himself? Can you imagine the horror your people would suffer through? I just want things to stay the same! Can you disagree with me?”