“Go to your rest now, Admiral Kemet, child of Inura. Your work is done.” Patra’s tone was tender. Sincere. I didn’t know the hatchling on the floor, but apparently he’d sacrificed something on our behalf. Patra rose and turned to me. “Well done, Sek. But we still have work to do.”
As she spoke, Admiral Kemet’s scaled face went slack, and his slitted eyes went unfocused...then his breast stopped rising. I’d seen enough death to recognize it when it came.
“Mistress.” I nodded at his body. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Not to save his body, no.” She shook her head. “He used too much magic all at once. But I can save his soul.”
She deftly removed a crystal vial from a pocket in her robes and popped the stopper with one thumb. A cloud of dense golden smoke rose from Kemet’s mouth, and she waved it into the vial, then replaced the stopper.
“Self-destruct initiated,” echoed through the bridge, and the rest of the ship. “All crew, evacuate immediately. You have nine minutes until detonation. All escape pods have been enabled and can carry any crew to the surface of a habitable world in this system.”
In this system? Last I’d checked, we’d been in the Umbral Depths, but I had no idea for how long. If we’d exited, I wouldn’t be able to see it, so I guess that made sense.
“Mistress?” I asked, more than a little alarmed by the sudden impending self-destruct sequence.
“We have one last task to be about before we can depart this vessel.” She rose to her feet and adopted a stoic expression. “Paladin Carlyn, I have a mission for you as well, one delivered by the admiral just prior to his death.”
Paladin Carlyn stepped forward with her hand on the hilt of her blade, her helmet tucked under her other arm. Her long blond hair had been combed into a single ponytail, easily tucked into her armor. “Of course, Soulcatcher. What were his final instructions? I will see them carried out.”
“The self-destruct is a ruse,” she explained simply, blinking up at the paladin with those childlike eyes. “Kemet found a way to trick everyone. It will appear the fleet has been destroyed. The great ships will be required to burn off much of their magic to effect this ruse, which was the final ritual that Kemet conducted. He sacrificed his life to create one of the single greatest pieces of spellwork I have ever witnessed.”
Carlyn licked her lips, then cocked her head. She seemed to be questing for words, words that remained elusive. Her grip tightened on her blade, and her posture straightened. “I will do whatever you require, but I do not understand. The self-destruct will force all crew to make for escape pods. Presumably we’ve arrived in a system with a habitable world.”
“Presumably.” Patra nodded. She rubbed at her arms as if suddenly chilled, and her gaze fixed on Kemet’s corpse, just a few meters away. “I don’t understand all that he was doing. The staff is important. I don’t know how or why. Only that he asked that I deposit this weapon in the core, along with his soul. There is magic there I do not understand.”
“And...our role?” Carlyn’s eyes shone, but her composure held, if barely.
“The fleet must be preserved,” Patra explained, “and you must help. Take your paladins to the Inura’s Grace. Find other survivors. Other paladins and soulcatchers. Explain to them what has happened, that Kemet has sacrificed himself to hide the fleet’s survival. All paladins, all soulcatchers...we must come together and keep that fleet functioning. The Maker and the rest of the pantheon will return. When they do, these vessels must be ready.”
Carlyn nodded, her resolve strengthened by the call to action, as it was for all paladins, myself included. “It will be so. We will pass the word and see that no one knows the ships survive. We will keep them flying, and keep them secret. I swear it is so, and will raise my children to do the same.”
“Go then,” Patra instructed. She pointed back the way they’d come. “Along the aft side you’ll find a ship. A corvette called the Remora. I’ll give you her command codes and get you set up. You can use her to reach the other vessels in the fleet.”
“What about my fighter?” I choked out. The idea of losing it...well, it was like losing a limb.
Carlyn nodded in my direction. “Fear not, Paladin. I will park your fighter in the same hangar where I find the Remora, so you two can escape once you’ve finished whatever business remains.” Carlyn snapped her hand over her heart, then started for the corridor as her brethren fell into step behind her.
“Come, Sek, we have work to be about,” Patra prompted. She nodded at the staff still clutched in Kemet’s hand. “Gather the eldimagus. It is needed. We are needed. One task remains.”
* * * * *
Chapter 7
I moved to the pale corpse of a dragon whose legend would likely outlive us all. I hoped so, at least. I knelt reverently next to the life hatchling and pried the staff from his cold, scaly hand.
His fingers reluctantly released the silver haft, and I took up the staff. I didn’t often carry one outside ceremonial occasions, though I’d been trained in their use, as all paladins and most mages were. This one had a dragon in flight at the top, which I studied more closely now.
Was that Inura? Or just a remarkably similar Wyrm? I suppose some scholar could answer that. As for me? I just needed to get the weapon where Patra told me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I carried the weapon over to her. She made no move to take it, so I held it as I awaited my answer. I didn’t like holding the staff, simply because of the enormous power it represented.
“To the reactor,” she explained absently. “We’re going to somehow merge Kemet’s soul with the Word of Xal itself. Apparently his consciousness can be bonded to the vessel, and if my vision is accurate, this is why I was drawn here in the first place. We must do this. If Kemet is not bonded to the vessel, then many thousands of years from now, our entire people will pay a price for it.”
A klaxon rang through the ship, the echoes so loud I winced. I waited for it to fade before replying.
“There’s a good likelihood that the Inuran traitors will make for the escape pods,” I reasoned as I limped slowly toward the doorway leading back the way we’d come. “The void hatchlings probably can’t, though. The system will recognize them as hostile. That means they’ll be trapped here, and they know it. We’ll have to be on our guard, especially with no backup.”
I already missed Carlyn and her paladins, but they had their duty, and we ours.
The staff proved quite useful as a walking stick, though the irony of using a god-forged relic for such a simple purpose defied understanding. Patra walked silently in my wake, her hand tucked inside her robes where she’d deposited the vial.
“More and more,” she whispered suddenly as we came to a T-intersection, “I begin to piece together what is happening. What Kemet’s plan was.”
I glanced down both corridors, then paused to listen. Nothing. I wished I had an intact helmet, as the armor’s sensors were much more reliable than my own battered ears. I heard nothing.
“Come on,” I whispered back as I limped up the corridor to the right. That seemed more likely to link up to the core. Patra followed, and after a few steps I continued the conversation. “What do you think is happening? I still have no idea where we even are, much less why. The Vagrant Fleet is the pinnacle of our culture. It is our legacy. And what I’m hearing is that that all ends today.”
Patra snorted a derisive laugh, and I stiffened until I realized it wasn’t directed at me. She shook her head as she drew even with me. “I believed the same, as do our enemies. It is that fact that Admiral Kemet is counting on. They think the fleet is done. Destroyed. But the thing is...there has always been a Vagrant Fleet, stretching back for hundreds of thousands of years, across countless species before us. Someday these ships will be discovered, and when they are, our descendants, or someone else’s, will take up the call to the stars just as we did. They will rediscover our pantheon, or perhaps create their own. They will live and
die and war and build, and they will do it all from these hallways...as countless generations did before us. These ships are old, Paladin. Very old.”
I peered at the darkened walls around me with new eyes. How old was this ship? How many battles had it seen? For me, the planet I’d just lost was everything, but for this ship, for the Maker, and the other gods who’d built their own vessels, was this galactic betrayal just another event in an endless cycle?
It was maddening, especially as I was still reeling from the loss of my world. Only my duty kept me putting one foot in front of the other, but duty is a hollow purpose, and I knew it.
Every thirty seconds another klaxon sounded, followed by the computer’s voice counting down to the self-destruct. Shouts and spellfire sounded in the distance, but it sounded like it was coming from the part of the T-intersection we didn’t take.
I redoubled my pace and leaned heavily on the silver staff. That got me thinking, and I voiced my question aloud. “Patra, what is this staff, and why is it important? There must be hundreds of relics on this ship, all incredibly powerful. What makes this one so special?”
“The Maker recently invented a new ship. A special ship,” Patra explained. I noticed that she’d slowed her pace...for me. I couldn’t even keep up with a drifter. I must really be in bad shape. Patra cleared her throat, and I snapped my attention back to her. “He called it the Spellship, as in the one ship that embodies the perfect unification of magic and technology. The ultimate magitech vessel. That vessel requires a key to operate.” She nodded at the staff in my hand. “You’re looking at one of two that the Maker constructed. I do not know where the other is, but Ardaki is to be safely hidden until the day when it is needed.”
I nodded and focused on walking. My whole body ached, and the faint breeze from the air scrubbers was painful on my raw wounds, both those on my face and neck.
We continued on for many minutes, and through it all, I heard spellfire and shouting in the distance. The countdown continued, though we weren’t bothered by it, as we knew it for the ruse it was. Nine minutes became five, became one...and the final ten seconds began.
Ten, nine, eight...you get the idea. When the computer reached zero, I don’t know what I expected. Nothing. A flash of light.
A river of void thicker than my waist shot down the corridor past me. I shrank back against the wall as the pure magic thickened to encompass most of the wall.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Patra shrieked, as close to panicked as I’d yet seen her. She’d been trapped on the other side of the hall, and I quickly lost sight of her through the thick beam of undulating magic as it hummed past us.
Draconic screeches sounded in the distance. Dozens of them. Hundreds. More, maybe. The cries became more frantic, and then began to die away. Finally the magic beam flickered and died. We were left in relative darkness and total silence.
“What just happened?” I finally whispered.
“I don’t know,” Patra hissed back. “It sounds like the hatchlings are gone. Let’s get to the core. Now. While we can.”
Adrenaline surged through me, and my hobble became an awkward, lurching run. We hurried down the corridor, and I wished the ship wasn’t so massive. The reactor was, relatively speaking, right next to the bridge. Yet long minutes later, we still hadn’t reached it.
Finally I saw light in the corridor ahead, a faint pulsing purple that rose and fell like a heartbeat. Patra and I hurried up the corridor, which spilled us onto a catwalk overlooking the most beautiful, terrible thing I have ever seen.
A sliver of a god, all dark pulsing magic, the void itself, hovered high above us in the middle of a coliseum-sized chamber. The walls were identical to the bridge...a shiny black covered in purple runes. They seemed to contain the void magic, but also to draw upon it.
The engineering required to create this staggered me. I was looking at the handiwork of a god, perhaps the finest work that god had ever produced.
“Now what?” I rasped as I struggled to catch my breath. I badly needed sleep, both to recharge my magic, and to let my body begin to heal.
“Now I fulfill my promise.” Patra reached into her robes and withdrew the golden phylactery. “Please stand back.”
I did as she asked and moved to the back of the catwalk, next to the corridor leading back the way we’d come. The magic here made me uncomfortable. Void always does, but this quantity of it...it reminded me just how small mortals are.
Patra stepped forward to the very edge of the catwalk and raised the vial over her head. She crushed it in one hand, and then began whispering under her breath in a language I didn’t even recognize, much less speak.
It wasn’t part of the spell. She was speaking to someone. To the cloud of golden smoke that billowed out of the vial’s remains.
That cloud coalesced into a hazy version of Kemet, the admiral’s slitted eyes blinking at us as a fanged smile grew across his reptilian face. “You have succeeded. You have brought me to the reactor, where I can finally take up the mantle I was always meant to wear.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, though it probably wasn’t my place.
“Ahh, Paladin.” Kemet beamed a smile at me. “Your sacrifice enabled me to complete my ritual and to safeguard the future. You have done well.”
“The mantle you were meant to wear?” I prompted. I leaned back against the wall and wrapped both hands around the staff. My kingdom for a bed.
“I will show you.” Kemet’s ethereal laugh faded as the cloud of golden motes zipped up into the void energy undulating above us.
The instant the golden energy touched the reactor, the entire ship rumbled, and the emergency lights flickered. Then they returned, and the dark magic above us seemed unchanged.
A tendril extended from the main body and began arranging itself into a bipedal form. Over several seconds a perfect replica of Kemet was sculpted from the void, but the familiar slitted eyes blinked with the golden light we’d seen in the vial.
“I have become the guardian of this ship,” Kemet explained. “All Catalysts possess a guardian, a being designed to watch over it. This one has lacked a guardian for countless generations, but the time has come for that to change. I have bonded with the ship, and can keep it, and the other Great Ships, safe until they are needed once more. Only one task remains, Paladin. One more thing you must do.”
I rose from the wall and limped to the edge of the catwalk. Kemet had inspired me. My world was gone. My people shattered. But something remained, some distant future where our descendants would rise again. That would have to be enough, I supposed.
“What do you need me to do?” I hefted the staff, as I assumed he was going to ask me to throw it into the reactor.
“I need you to live,” Kemet explained. The Guardian turned to Patra. “You know what to do, Soulcatcher.”
She nodded, then smiled up at me. “Many thousands of years from now, a remnant of our people will remain. They will forget our ways and their own past. Kemet has ensured that they have a way to remember. You. You will teach them.”
I blinked down at her in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“You will live on, Paladin Seket. The staff is not the only charge we are hiding within the reactor. For you, no time will pass, but when you next wake, you will be among our descendants. It falls to you to wake the Great Ships and help our people resurrect the Vagrant Fleet.”
I stood straighter. Duty was hollow, but this—this was purpose. A purpose I could accept. I nodded.
“Send me to this future, then,” I said as resolve filled every fiber. “Our people will know of the maker, and of Kemet’s sacrifice. I swear it.”
There was a flash of light, and then the comforting embrace of sleep…
* * * * *
Chris Fox Bio
Chris has published over 20 novels, and has a series of non-fiction books that teach writers how to duplicate his success. He’s far better known for the Write Faster, Write Smarter series, and
has spoken all over the country about writing to market, making your writing a habit, and quitting your day job to become an author.
His true love though is science fiction and fantasy. He loves worldbuilding and storytelling, and he’s been playing D&D since he was six. They'll have to pry his d20 from his cold, dead hands.
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Kill The King by Christopher Ruocchio
Chapter One
The Man Who Would Be King
The monarch’s city sprawled like a cancer—ugly and unplanned—across the low hills and polluted waterways that formed the mouth of Latarra’s mightiest river. Syme had seen many such hasty constructions across the Veil and the worlds of the outer provinces. With the destruction of the regional capital at Nessus, the Cielcin had dealt the Imperium a vicious blow. Dozens more worlds had fallen to the inhuman invaders in the last century alone. The war was going badly, and had been going badly since the rout at Perfugium—since Sir Hadrian Marlowe disappeared. The Sollan Empire’s hold over these remote regions had all but evaporated, and into that vacuum had crept warlords and criminals like this so-called Monarch of Latarra, this Calen Harendotes.
Legion Intelligence estimated that some twenty million people lived in the Maze below. The Maze was no city. To call it such was an insult to cities from fallen Marinus to Jadd. It was a warren of stinking canals and sweating alleyways crushed beneath the haphazard mass of grounded freighters and rocketry that played the part of office buildings and apartment blocks.
To look at it, Syme suspected the twenty million figure was a little on the low side. Half the sector—or so it seemed—had drained into the Latarran Maze: refugees, yes, but not only refugees. Not only families from the shattered freeholds and burned Imperial colonies. Men like Harendotes attracted mercenaries and thieves, and worse creatures. Far worse: the self-styled Monarch had gathered an army of sub-human homunculi and post-human chimeras to himself, Extrasolarians who knew no law or lord.
The Dogs of God Page 51
