by D. Fischer
“Thrice-Born,” she greets with a dip of her head, spying Eliza while doing so.
“Nice to see you, too,” I grunt, listening to Eliza’s shuffle. Teetering closer to me, challenging the rocks, she wraps her arm around my bicep.
“What do you want?” she spits.
I chuckle. I knew she’d be prickly. She doesn’t like to be summoned.
“She’s beautiful,” Eliza whispers in awe.
Beautiful is one word for it, I suppose. It’s not a word I’d use, but I can see where the large eyes and delicate features would be considered beauty.
Ferox’s scrunched and irate features soften toward Eliza. “Thank you, child.”
I roll my eyes. Of course, she’d warm instantly to Eliza. Eliza has a heart of gold. Pure. A lighthouse on a muddled bank.
“Sorry,” Eliza mumbles, and her cheeks redden with a blush. “I didn’t mean to be so forward. I’ve just –“
“Never seen a creature like me?” Ferox finishes. Her forehead wrinkles, and her tentacle hair twitches, the tips happily playing with the cool water.
“Well,” Eliza says, and then clears her throat. “Yeah.”
“The compliment still has the same effect.” Ferox angles her body to resemble a bow. She rights herself, proper and lady-like. “Why did you summon me? You know how much I despise it.”
I get straight to the point. “What’s happening on the Demon Realm?” I ask, pulling my arm from Eliza’s grasp and snaking it around her slender waist. I tug her closer at the mention of my home, at the place of my last birth.
Lifting a webbed hand, she grabs a tentacle, and it twirls lovingly around her fingers. “What you would expect. The gula creation has come to a halt,” she says, irritated. “But they’ve moved on to other things.”
“Like attacking this realm with the stealth of a street cat?”
She scowls, the expression more feline than human. “Street cat? Is that a dangerous creature?”
Eliza chuckles silently, her body gently rocking mine. “Only if it’s not curled in a box.”
“Something like that,” I mumble, wiping the wet mist from my face.
Ferox gawks back and forth between Eliza and me. “You’re happier with her. Less demonic. Less murderous.”
“Murderous?” Eliza asks, and I stiffen with a surge of rage.
“I see,” she sings. Her pure delight coils my stomach. “He hasn’t told you.”
Eliza looks up to me with a pinched expression. “That’s for another time,” I grumble. “And it sure as hell isn’t why I called you here.”
“I am not yours to beckon!” Ferox yells, abrupt in the quiet night. Eliza startles. I try to pull her closer but she resists. Damn it. Leave it to a pyren to disrupt our relationship.
“The choice was yours to come,” I say as soon as her echoes fade. “I did not force you here. You came of your own free will.”
She says nothing and, instead, sways her arms back and forth in the water, letting the pressure against her webbed hands soothe her back into a calmed state.
“They are indeed attacking this realm. I am not surprised you have seen the effects already.”
“They’re not exactly hiding it,” Eliza mumbles, her voice shaken as tiny tendrils of fear waft from her. I avert her fear from my pores, allowing it to fade into the atmosphere instead of feeding me. Knowing what I’m doing, Ferox grins like a proud mother, exposing sharply pointed teeth. Eliza shivers at the sight of them.
In a way, I’m glad her first assessment of this creature’s ‘beauty’ is no longer the judgement she passes. Pyrens are not something to adore but something everyone should fear. The last thing I need is Eliza treating them like friends. Their lure is powerful, and that’s truly the only effect Eliza is feeling. Her adoration for them is false, and I believe she’s grasping that now.
“What can we do about it?” Eliza asks, her voice shaking.
Ferox shrugs. “There’s not much you can do. You can try to fight back, to push their creatures back from this realm, but doing so may do more harm than good.”
“How so?” Eliza questions with a tip of her head.
“Because our main focus should be attacking the head of the organization,” I grumble, looking past Ferox to the flat water behind her.
“So,” Eliza drawls. “You’re suggesting we let this realm suffer while we murder the ones who sent them here? And then what? What do we do about the creatures once they’re gone?”
Ferox shrugs again as if to say this entire thing isn’t her problem.
Eliza drops her arms from my biceps and steps away, furious. “I won’t do that.”
“Then I suppose you’ll just prolong the inevitable. Perhaps get a few more people killed along the way,” Ferox says, far too chipper.
I pin her with a glare. “A suggestion would be better than wasting my time.”
Power pushes from her, the opposite of her lure, and slams into my chest. I stumble from the force, then push against it, standing my ground.
“You’re the one who called me!” Ferox yells. “I do not have all the answers here, Thrice-Born. This is your fight, not mine!”
I cross my arms and smirk. “And your freedom?” I remind her.
She snarls and looks away. The gills along her cheeks flare with each exhale. “I still suggest you kill the head of the monster instead of stabbing the body.”
“And how do you propose we get in there undetected to do that?”
Slowly, she rotates her gaze back to Eliza. “The opportunity will arise. But that’s not the only reason you called me here.”
I smirk. “No.” She blinks slowly, eerily, as she waits for me to ask what I came here for. “I want you to destroy the Oleum.”
Hissing, her tentacles twitch like tiny serpents. “What you ask could get me killed.”
“But you can do it.” I step forward. “I know you can. And, if you want to be free, you will because we can’t go forward until it’s destroyed.”
Moments tick by, several laps of water against the rock, and she finally answers. “I will try, but I make no promises. If it is protected, I won’t attempt.”
I open my mouth to give further instruction, but within a blink, she dips back into the water and disappears.
TEMBER
GUARDIAN REALM
Ica’s tribe takes us to the edge of the forest on the same boat that had taken Ica and Jaemes to the raft, which is now gone. After their challenge, and after they were ushered back to the cliffs, the calimates had destroyed the raft and fought over the remains of Ica’s body. The blood that had sprayed the wood had continued to call them, and when the raft finally sunk under the current’s pressure, they attacked and chomped at the wood until nothing was left of it.
Ica’s woman’s blessing is given to us upon departure while his eldest son roars he’ll deliver a swift revenge. There is no relief to winning that match, none whatsoever with the murderous stares stabbing our back on our way across the river, but Ica’s woman has agreed to help us in the coming days like the Yoki tribe had. That is . . . if she can get the rest to fight along with us instead of trying to destroy us. I’m more than glad to be leaving this territory of heathens, but I’ll be eternally grateful if they truly do aide in the coming days.
Once on the shore, my entourage of elf, Sandman, and dwarves begin our travel to the next tribe, but Jaemes’s limp has slowed us down as we walk the forest floor of canopying trees. We have stopped and rested a few times, including at this very moment where I grumble at his back for how idiotic his choices were today.
The dwarves munch on berries plucked from a nearby bush, and the Sandman, completely silent throughout our short journey thus far, picks a leaf apart with nimble fingers. I rest against a tree trunk, hovering over Jaemes, who massages his healing leg muscles and watch Sandy with a shrewd eye.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jaemes asks, catching my gaze.
“Emotions aren’t meant for everyone,” I mumble back.<
br />
“Then perhaps you should send him to those with the same affliction, so they may heal each other,” Jaemes suggests, looking up at me.
I shrug to my friend. “I’ve thought about it.”
“Thinking is your problem,” Jaemes grunts as a dwarf passes him a handful of orange berries. He pops them into his mouth as one, unlike the dwarves who savor each bite by plunking them against their tongue one by one.
“And arrogance is yours.”
He smiles up at me like a Cheshire cat, his teeth tinged in orange juices.
“You could have died back there,” I mumble to him, wiping the smile from his face.
“Yes,” he nods simply and straightens his back at the reminder of what he represents. “I could have. But I didn’t.”
“You’re foolish,” I grumble and clench my jaw.
“And you are still the mascot to my team of formidable warriors.”
I huff and look away. “You elves are barbaric in every single way.” The Sandman is right. There’s too much death on this realm. On all the realms. There are many wrongs to be righted, a new era to be erected, and I vow to do just that.
I see him shrug from my peripheral vision as I gaze into the forest beyond him, scanning for danger. Just like the raging river, danger lurks everywhere on this realm, often silent, stealthy. Deadly. And I haven’t forgotten Ica’s son’s promise despite the distance.
“It’s how we’ve survived this long,” Jaemes states. “We’re in constant war – between the creatures of this realm and the angels who fly the sky and steal our food. We have to survive, and the only way to do that would be to become like the animals we kill to feed our numbers.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I hood my eyes. “No one will be stealing anyone’s food.”
“Is that your first decree?” Jaemes chuckles. “Have we moved from mascot to god? That’s a mighty leap in status, one surely fit for a legend.”
I rub my face and run my hand over my scalp to untangle the knots. “You’re insufferable.”
“My oh my,” he whistles. “I get a status jump as well. Not only am I an arrogant fool, I’m insufferable. An insufferable arrogant fool. I like the sound of that.” He leans toward me and whispers his next words. “I can’t wait to tell the others.”
The ‘others’ he mentions confuses me until I remember it is the Kaju tribe we seek. The Kaju tribe and Jaemes’s Inga tribe are closer than the others. They trade more often because they work and live on the beds of this realm. But that is where their similarities end. The Kaju tribe is known for being inflexible and sharp-tongued. I suppose that’s where Jaemes sees the humor in this – the blank stares they’ll surely give him if he tells this joke swapped between friends. But it’s not a joke. None of this is. He almost died. My friend, another friend, almost died. I don’t know how many more deaths I can take, and as much as I hate to admit it, I need him.
I falsely grin to provide his awaiting stare some comfort. A heavy weight has fallen over both our shoulders, and this is his way of blowing off the steam. I refuse to smother his attempts at smoothing over the situation. This is something I can grant my friend even while our future remains completely uncertain.
With a sigh, Jaemes rubs his thighs and stands. “We should get moving. Do we want to continue to make a ruckus through the trees or do we want to use your god status and travel by portal?”
At the mention of portal, the dwarves swivel toward me and stare with bright happy grins. They don’t speak much to us, only to themselves, but they aren’t shy by expression. Sandy, however, acts like he didn’t hear a word.
I look in the direction of the Kaju tribe, willing the trees to part and lead us down a direct path to the snarky village of gatherers, but they don’t and I won’t expend the power to do so. I won’t abuse the magic entrusted upon me. However, the thought of traveling the elements sounds exhausting, and I don’t think Sandy would be able to take it. The further into the forest we go, the more the temperature will dip, or the more vegetation we’ll have to endure. He’s barely tolerating breathing, it seems. I should just send him back, allow him to be among friends. He was supposed to travel with us to help smooth over with each encounter, but so far, the only thing he’s done is point out our flaws in tradition.
“Portal is probably best,” I mutter and glance up at a chirping whipplemonk dangling from a low branch.
The six-legged creature resembles an animal that is part monkey and part frog. It’s as adorable as I remember, but it’s a painful reminder of Erma and the simpler times when Kat shoved me back to my realm to be rid of me. Erma was the first being I stumbled across, wading through the trees, and Jaemes was soon after before he attempted to kill me.
Times have changed so much. Everything has changed. And no matter how hard I try to grasp for stable ground, I can’t control any of it. Did Erma feel this lost when she was alive to rule over realms? It makes me wonder how the balance of the realms didn’t fall sooner considering how rocky things were before Kat came into the picture. I didn’t realize just how much until Erma died.
It makes me wish I still had Fate’s council. He has yet to return and spread his words of wisdom. Perhaps he’s dropped me on my feet and forced me to deal with this on my own. Perhaps he can’t return. I’m not sure of the cause for his absence, but I also shouldn’t need to call on him and seek his insight. I’m determined to figure this out on my own, the way Erma did.
My job. My responsibility.
The whipplemonk stops chirping and skitters back to the tree’s safety. The dwarves, who had begun sketching the creature, turn wide eyes to Sandy, and Sandy’s head whips to theirs. The atmosphere changes, a pressure inside my gut that pushes like the blowing of a balloon.
Someone’s on the realm, I think to myself, instinctually knowing what this sensation means.
“Jaemes,” I warn, but he’s already slowly raising his bow and arrow, poised to strike whatever is stirring the air.
“What is it?” he mumbles.
The words are almost carried away when a gust travels through the forest. A cloud of sparkling white pushes through the trees. I move away, wary. I’ve never seen anything like it on my realm.
“Jaemes,” I warn again, hissing through my teeth.
Sandy stands with a sense of calm, and as he does so, the cloud envelopes us. Panic bubbles inside my chest, and I bat at the cloud and try to blink past it to see the others whose muffled shouts carry my way. I push through the thick substance and bump into Jaemes, and together, we try to reach the passive creatures while calling out their name. But just as quickly as the otherworldly sparkling cloud tucked us into its fold, it retreats and settles in a puff at Sandy’s back.
Jaemes and I stop moving. Stop breathing. Our spines snap to attention.
A woman’s head and torso appear within this billow of magic. A woman who curdles my insides with rage and hatred, and she holds one of Jaemes’s arrows to Sandy’s chest with a hand made of cloud.
“Sureen,” I spit at her half corporeal body. She seems to have one foot in this realm and one foot in whichever dank hole she crawled out of. She’s much shorter than the sandman about the same height as her dwarves, and her smooth, dark features are distorted with loathing. Malice twinkles in her black eyes.
“Tember,” she says in kind, her top lip sneering in a behavior fit for a spoiled child. She sniffs the air and gapes openly, jealously. “The Divine made you a fee?”
I tilt my head to the side. “Did you expect them to let this realm fall and all those inside it?”
“Sorry to spoil your plans,” Jaemes grunts.
Her rapid blinking tells me she did believe so. “The Divine haven’t been seen for many, many years, child,” she spits, justifying her ignorance. I find a bit of glee that they had no idea I’d risen to power. I had assumed a supernatural sense of some sort would have dinged on their radar. The glee quickly fades, though. This could have been used as an element of surprise, and now that option is
gone.
I shrug and cautiously skate toward Sandy. His eyes are wide and wild, pleading with me while he angles his head to avoid the arrow’s tip. Palms flexing at his side, he mouths something to me, but I can’t make it out. He’s scared, frightened she’ll rip him from my realm, perhaps even terrified of what she’ll do to him later. He is, after all, a traitor in Serene’s sick little mind.
I tuck my arms behind my back, acting at ease. Power subtly blooms inside me, and light puddles in my palms. “Maybe not for you,” I say gently, deadly.
The wood of Jaemes’s bow creaks as he pulls the string a little tighter, one eye’s gaze as sharp and pointed as the tip of his arrow.
“It’s of little consequence,” she lies. Her tone is shaky. “I’ll be taking what’s mine.”
“Like hell you will,” Jaemes growls. He releases his arrow the same moment I fling my hands forward, poised with the balls of light Erma once used in the Angel’s Ground.
But we’re not quick enough.
Time slows while Sureen remains at normal speed. Jaemes’s arrow decelerates midair. My orbs of light are directly next to it, a sluggish race aimed for the woman’s head. Though our weapons are slothful, her cloud isn’t, and it billows around them in a vortex. And when our weapons reach the cloud, the vapors of shimmering white suck in on itself, leaving nothing, and no one, behind. At the last wink of light, sparkles shoot from where she once stood. The tiny specks coat Jaemes, the dwarves, and myself, traveling up our nostrils no matter how hard we work to bat them away or wipe them from our faces.
Jaemes’s bow drops to the ground at the same time all of our knees buckle. A sort of heavy grit pockets in my sockets and I blink sleepily to it as if sleep is being forced against our will. But guardians don’t sleep. Sleep dust affect us in other ways, and instead of a deep slumber, our world shifts to a great hallucination.
