by Compulsio
***
Death was as easy as kneeling under a tree, waiting for a mountain. Easy as taking the hand rage offered and allowing it to guide Ladon into his future.
A low grumble washed from Dragon.
Mira’s brow crunched. Her ability sounded through the grove, raining like chimes onto Ladon’s skin as much as his mind. She peered into the space Dragon’s invisible body occupied, but she still did not back down.
Long ago, Ladon awoke under this tree, his blood boiling for a fight. This Fate’s father awoke not far from where she now stood. At that moment centuries before, when five humans and two dragons blinked into existence, this Fate’s father had branded onto Ladon’s soul a look of pure hatred. That look, flung from eyes narrowed to slits and a face more vicious than Ladon’s own, had shaped his centuries. His command.
His family’s pain.
What was he, in all this? The Fates acted—passively, yes, but still acted—and he reacted. They triggered. He and the beast exploded. They blew into the wind and he became the gale sweeping in off the Mediterranean.
The Empire teemed with the murder of the small and insignificant, the rich and powerful. Dead slaves, dead leaders, dead Emperors littered its streets. Dead fishmongers and traders from the far-flung corners of the Empire piled up in its corners. Whores and gladiators floated face down in its rivers. Soldiers and senators mortared its walls. And the spilled blood of dead children and dead Fates painted all the gates of all its villas with the fresh markings of war.
Death crawled in Ladon’s muscles and made him dance. It tarnished iron and stole even the strongest will.
Ladon exhaled. He remembered much death. Much hate.
The present-seer said nothing, only dropped her gaze to the mud as she shuffled away from the beast. Dragon tossed his head and the remaining hardened ash slid from his back, but it smeared his hide with a shadow. He mimicked the night and became a shade haunting the dying grove.
Ismene wheezed in Andreas’s grip. “My boys.”
***
The past-seer stared, her eyes glossy and malevolent. Now they spoke of death. Because only death filled their minds. Hers. Ladon’s. Andreas’s own.
His commander had missed the folly of his decision. Letting her go would serve nothing.
Andreas held the woman firm.
This place had once been holy. He’d seen it with his own eyes, the brilliance. He’d walked behind a godling for two centuries. But the true gods—the ones above who looked down on him and Ladon, Human and Dragon, on his legatus’s sister and her dragon, on Andreas’s wildling goddess mother who’d given him a gift too vile to use, on these two Fates and their Hades-bound father, on their sour and twisted future-seeing brother, on all the normals rubbing against each other in the streets of Rome, on the scents of slaughter and the grating shrillness of a land determined to kill and destroy and end it all—those gods in the heavens, they rained death on this place. On this tree. On Andreas.
Where was the balance here? Ladon had allowed the mountain to mortar him into his place under the corpse of a sacred tree. He’d allowed his beast to become nothing more than a boulder. The beast stirred from his sleep, forcing the cracking of the ash, yet they did not leave. Ladon tempted the gods by refusing to step out of the way of their descending god-foot. He called death. His own, his dragon’s, and that of these two shrill Fates whose only purpose seemed to be to reinforce Ladon’s dour inaction.
And under the haze of dirty ash clinging to the beast’s hide, Andreas saw the truth—this decision was not the unfolding of what should unfold. This decision sent out ripples.
Somewhere else out in the world created by the gods, something else responded, because all changes must be balanced.
But it wasn’t somewhere else. No. The scales altered in his chest, pressed on his bones, threatened to rip his insides into bleeding pulp. What happened was not a gain, though a grain needed sacrifice to calm the eddy. A slice had to happen and a sliver pressed into his eye.
Andreas’s throat tightened. Deep inside, down in his neck, below his voice but above his breastbone. In the place which birthed his calling scents.
He’d long ago tamed it, cinching tight its wiggles and spasms. He’d gained control and proven to the dragons that he alone had the strength to be trusted. He carried his gift-curse with purpose and reason.
But Ladon could not die.
“No,” he said. ‘Refusal’ wafted from his mouth with his words. He would not set the past-seer down. He would not let these Fates go. He’d sacrifice his soul and all he knew as family, to bring his body—and the bodies of his commander, man and dragon—out of the ash.
***
The present-seer looked over her shoulder at Andreas and her head tipped the same way it had when her ability washed over Ladon. “He uses his—” She shook violently and her seer suddenly ceasing its chiming.
‘Indignation’ hit Ladon’s nose in full, clawing glory. He squinted and his body wiggled as it mirrored what Andreas’s calling scents told him what to do. He wasn’t going to let these little whining whores lead him to his death under the mountain. He was better than that. He was a godling.
Human! The beast staggered and a bright flame screamed from his open mouth into the ash-filled air. Bits of the volcano popped and fizzled, fusing together, and dropped into the hot mud now more glass than pumice. Right your mind!
The ‘indignation’ flipped over to ‘fear’ and just as quickly yanked on Ladon’s muscles. Vesuvius wasn’t done. It rose impossibly high, spit impossible quantities of death and shadow. He’d dropped into a pit and the mountain stood at the lip, silhouetted by a dying sun, and sneered down at him. It pissed on his head.
He wanted to take Dragon and run, to leave these three behind, and get to the coast before the mountain exploded again.
Ismene gasped under the scarf around her face. She yelled, her hands gripping Andreas’s arm. “Run… we have to run. I can’t see. What did you do, you vile Mutatae? Your kind is more dangerous than all of mine combined. It’s fated. You shift the world to evil. Evil born of your Progenitor…”
Andreas tossed the past-seer. She flew up, her arms flailing, and landed hard next to Dragon’s forelimbs. Her arm snapped.
She screamed.
The beast pranced back, his talons digging into the ground. The need to hunt, to kill, flashed to Ladon across their connection like the lightning flashing through the clouds around the mountain’s crest. She deserved to die. All her kind deserved to die.
“Andreas!” Ladon bellowed. Ash clung to his lips, filling his eyes and ears. But it did not filter what he smelled. His tribunus had unleashed his curse.
The big man looked up and he pointed at Ladon’s chest. “My charge is to protect you and your sister.” His finger whipped toward Dragon. “To protect the beast and his sister!”
His foot met the past-seer’s side. “Not to protect Fates! Never Fates.”
She screamed again.
Mira’s own fear must have broken through the ‘fear’ Andreas pumped to her. She screamed as harsh and shrill as her sister and ran at Andreas. Her fists hit, her teeth gnashed. She tried, in vain, to move a man twice her size away from her fallen family.
Ismene curled into a ball. Tears mixed into the ash.
“You murdered the only descendant of the Dracae and you think your petty outrage is justified?” Andreas pulled back his foot to kick again. “You lead one—probably both—of the dragons to want their own death? I will not allow you to kill those I serve and protect!”
If his foot came down on her body—anywhere on her body—he’d kill her. The past-seer of the Jani Prime would become another corpse left to be encased by Vesuvius.
“Andreas! You will not hurt them!” No more death. It stopped, now.
Ladon’s tribunus bellowed, his voice raw as much from his anger as
the ash, and another blast of ‘refusal’ filled the grove. Ladon staggered back. What had Andreas become?
A dragon claw-hand cupped Andreas’s chest. And a dragon claw-hand pushed him toward Ladon.
Andreas hit the trunk of the grand olive tree with a bone-rattling thump. His head bounced, his breath forced from his body. The ‘calling scents’ vanished.
Ladon unsheathed his gladius and pushed its point into his tribunus’s shoulder.
Neither spoke.
In the ash, at Dragon’s forelimbs, Ismene whimpered. Mira hovered over her, her body an insignificant wall between her sister and the beast.
Dragon sniffed her hair, then twisted his head back toward Ladon. I do not desire more death, Human. His great tail whipped, and he moved back. Neither do you.
No, he did not.
This cycle of revenge—this inciting to violence he’d allowed—would never happen again. He’d never again be driven to murder by the manipulation of Fates.
Or the enthralling of a Shifter.
“Get up.” He lowered his gladius.
Andreas blinked. He slumped against the tree, stunned.
Dragon blew out a flame and stepped between the woman and Ladon’s tribunus.
Mira’s ability chimed through the grove. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for allowing us to live.”
“I should not.” Ladon pointed his gladius at the Fate. “He is right. You should die.” But he no longer had the will to take the life of another child, even this adult child of his fellow Progenitor.
Ladon walked toward the women, sheathing his gladius. The satchel he carried over his shoulder shifted. He stopped within arm’s reach. Mira stood and a new wave of indignation rolled from her, but this time he saw it in her posture, not smelled it in the air. Her sister whimpered, but did not move.
What had these two women lost? One, her children. The other, Ladon suspected, what little joy her family offered. “What were their names?” He’d never learned the children’s names. Not when they walked the halls of the Emperor’s estates and not when he caused their deaths.
Mira’s eyes, the color the sky should be, looked at him through the folds of the cloth wrapping her face. “Junonius. Jupiter.” She glanced at her sister, then back to him. “Minerva.” A pause. “Her name was Minerva. She was nothing like her father.” Mira looked down at her hands.
No. Ladon saw that now. Only one Fate would push such pain into the world and it wasn’t the woman in front of him. Or the girl she so obviously cared for.
The girl named Minerva.
“Why did he allow this?” Ladon asked.
Mira’s chest rose and fell, a silent sigh under the scarf wrapped so tight around her face. “Ismene asked the same question. On the mountain.” She pointed at Vesuvius. “We’d gone to help Father. Why he called us, I could not see. We did nothing when we were there. Only climbed. We followed and did not interfere.” Her eyes narrowed. “Followed the chafing fate tied tight around our necks.”
The girls—his niece, the one named Minerva, and the two boys, Junonius and Jupiter—were nothing more than knots in Janus’s coiled hate. Knots he’d thrown around all their necks.
Mira’s entire body shook as her seer’s chiming filled the grove. “This stops with you. It has to stop with you, Dracos, man and beast.”
She is correct. Dragon twisted and shook, an attempt to dislodge more ash. I do not like Fates, but she speaks the truth, Human.
Mira blinked, looking between Ladon and the beast. “The Great Sir understands, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.” Of course Dragon understood. Of all of them, he saw the world with the greatest clarity.
Ladon bowed his head once, quickly, toward the Fate. “As do I, present-seer.”
Mira returned the gesture. “This new path you choose will be difficult.”
All paths but death were difficult.
They must leave. The mountain makes more ash. Dragon pointed his snout inland, toward Vesuvius.
“He’s telling me it is time for you to take your sister and go.” Ladon reached into the satchel. “Take this.” He offered an olive. “Go north along the coast. You will find a captain. The Carthaginian. Give him the fruit and tell him his son Andreas wishes him to tend your sister’s arm.” He nodded to the present-seer. “He will take you as far as you need to go.”
She stared at his palm. Her hand snaked out. She snatched the olive, nodding once. “Thank you.”
The ground rocked, a wave from the distant mountain, and she grasped his arm, her hand cupping his elbow—an unconscious gesture to keep herself from dropping to the mud. He steadied her as best he could.
“What of him?” She let go, her fingers releasing slowly, as she nodded toward Andreas.
Ladon looked over his shoulder at his Second. He didn’t know what the future held. He never dared to believe he understood—or could comprehend what-will-be. “Legio business does not concern you, present-seer.”
She blinked and backed away, her gaze low, and carefully pulled her sister to standing.
Ismene babbled and refused her sister’s help, much like a small child.
She will not learn. Dragon rubbed against the olive’s trunk to dislodge the mud-ash on his back, but it only smeared across his hide. I do not like her.
Andreas stared at the beast, still silent.
The two Fates argued, their heads together, doing their best to hide their words from him. But Ladon heard Mira as clearly as if she spoke into his ear: “I am the present, and I want to live, sister.” Mira glanced at him one last time as she vanished into the ash, her sister in tow.
They’d survive. How they would face their future, though, Ladon did not know.
Dragon knocked against his side and he patted the beast’s neck. Then he hauled his tribunus to his feet. “Come,” he said. “We go to the coast.”
Games of Fate
Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon
Book 1
Sample Chapters
1
Rysa’s meds weren’t in her backpack. She fished through the lint under her laptop, catching only a pen and the corner of her wallet. Wads of paper and a few stray coins filled the bag’s recesses, but her pills were nowhere to be found.
At lunch, she’d emptied all the pockets and stacked her stuff on one of the ugly lounge chairs in the student center. No pill bottle then, either.
Not that she trusted herself to be thorough. No meds equaled a super-sized portion of “flighty” and a bottomless cup of “hyperactive.” She dug her hand into her stupid pack again.
Gavin sat across from her with his palms flush against the coffee shop table. She slapped down a notebook and the table wobbled, a loud clunk popping from its uneven feet. His hands jerked up and he leaned back, frowning.
Do you want help with your chemistry or not? he signed, his hands moving through the American Sign Language with quick precision.
“Yes.” She looked directly at him so he could see her lips clearly, knowing full well she’d also narrowed her eyes, even though she didn’t mean to. Tonight, patience wasn’t one of his virtues and his behavior wasn’t helping her make sense of her attention deficit world.
She needed his help, too. This close to finals, if she didn’t figure out her assignments, she’d fail another class. The University would kick her out. She knew it.
Gavin’s shoulders slumped and he crossed his arms—his way of giving her the silent treatment. He’d frowned about twenty minutes into the first problem when it became clear that helping her would take all night. He didn’t have to remind her by shifting around in his chair and tapping his finger on his elbow when her mind strayed. How was she supposed to focus on homework without her attention meds? Rysa pulled a crumpled five dollar bill out of her bag and dropped it next to her notebooks.
He scowled thi
s time, his gaze following her hand as it dipped into the bag again. She could tell by the way his neck tensed that he wanted to sigh, but sighing made guys look pathetic and Gavin wasn’t one to diminish his manliness.
Her lips bunched up. He had no right to act like a jerk because she’d lost her meds and wasn’t tracking her homework. It’s not like he always understood his class work. She’d helped him with Human and Environmental Policies last semester. He’d been a chore, no matter how much she tried. For a guy who was pre-med, he sure had issues understanding the bigger picture.
Did I mess up your evening? she signed, her hands working as fast as his through the ASL. A flick of the bag’s straps and it plopped onto the floor next to her feet. “Were you sexting with that sophomore again?” This time she didn’t look at him. His hearing aids worked just fine.
He stared, his expression flat. Gavin usually had the laidback calm of someone who’d just finished a good workout. Women found it charming. The boy had more contacts in his phone than the University had numbers in its database.
She slapped the table when he groaned and her calculator slipped off a book, jarring her chai. A splash plopped onto her Chemistry Principles syllabus. Steam rose off the course description as if she’d dropped acid on it, not hot tea.
Gavin’s pointer finger twitched. Isn’t it a little late to be popping stim meds?
A yellow stain spread across the syllabus and her attention snapped to the paper. The liquid ate away the words and they bled onto the tabletop, destroyed by her impulsiveness. She blotted at them, blinking.
“Rysa?” Annoyance worked across his features in little tics.
He signed something. She didn’t catch it.
He sniffed and the titanium in his ears flickered with the light from the television behind her head. She’d sat with her back to the little café’s screen for a reason. News crawls and no meds didn’t mix well.
