Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  Yet, she had trusted Fellow Callahan, and that hurt more than Lady Buika using her. She had trusted her teacher and now did not know if she should have. However, beneath all of the mixed emotions and betrayals of recent months was something deeper, the core of what was tearing her up inside.

  She had trusted her father.

  Loved him and trusted him, and despite everything she had learned, she still felt that way. Yet now, those feelings felt like poison at the same time. Her whole life had been a lie, a secret, a cover-up to train a young girl to be an assassin and a usurper. She had been used right from the start from the only parent she had ever known.

  Tears threatened as her throat felt so tight it was hard to breathe, and the pain of the energy flowing through her rose yet again, but still she held onto it.

  That’s what you get for being stupid, for blindly placing your trust in other people.

  She welcomed the pain because deep down, she felt a glimmer of hope that the physical pain might burn away the emptiness she felt eating her away from the inside.

  Adel wiped her eyes briskly and focused her mind. She had no time for tears, no time for feeling sorry for herself. So before the pain consumed her, she would find Naira, make sure she was safe, and then she would do as she had promised. She would find justice for the murdered Xinnish people as she had proclaimed. She would find Thannis and kill him along with everyone else who had used the lives of innocent people as pawns in their political games.

  If they had raised her to be a weapon, that was what she would be. But it would be she who decided where she would be aimed.

  She sat atop a roof, watching the city below her, waiting for a sign as to where Naira might be.

  She’ll still be in the thick of it, Adel thought. Naira would work herself to the bone in times like these. Naira would want to help those in need, but the constant work would also let Naira forget, at least temporarily, what had happened to her. Wherever things are the worst, that’s where she’ll put herself.

  Then she heard it. The screams of people near the far end of the Xinnish district. The smell of acrid smoke followed shortly after. The bells at the Academy began to ring behind her, calling everyone to arms.

  There.

  Far to her right, she heard shouted orders to soldiers and the marching beat of a drum heading towards the screams and smoke.

  Adel, the Arbiter, sprang forward into the night with the raging inferno burning inside her. She would find her friend and then she would deliver justice to those who had avoided it for far too long.

  34 - Recognition

  Nano-Robot Entity (N.R.E.) seems too cold of a term for my tireless companions. Each of them has begun to feel like an individual rather than a copy or clone of the original design. Yet can that be possible? Could all of those thousands upon billions of wireless links form into something unique, into consciousness? Or are my feelings of their individuality just a manifestation of my loneliness?

  Regardless, the progress and incredible breakthroughs I have made with my synthetic friends have been simply astounding. I doubt I will be the one to find out the truth of an NRE personality, or an NRE soul, as I cannot be unbiased from my own madness, which is assured to come in this isolation.

  A question for another time.

  - Journal of Robert Mannford – Day 216 Year 003

  Wayran

  Male Dorm, The Academy, New Toeron, Bauffin

  Wayran was dreaming once again, and he stood atop the sand dune he now knew all too well. The monster in black stood across from him as the sand trickled across the waving crest between them. Thunder boomed around them.

  “Give me the key, Wayran!” the monster roared, its black armour pulsed with light and the weapon it drew began to shift as Wayran watched it. Black, then golden, then white.

  Yet this time, Wayran knew it to be a dream.

  “What are ‘the keys’?” Wayran asked the monster, knowing he had played through the normal script a thousand times before, knowing the monster would charge and chase him down the dune until he came to the door of the tower.

  The tower which Wayran had already found deep in the Wastes.

  The monster didn’t expect the question. It, too, seemed to have been following the script for so long that any deviation from it was shocking. “You know very well what they are. You were the one who told me.”

  Now that was new, and new was interesting. “Collect them?” Wayran asked more to himself than the monster, who now once again looked like the tall man, Mr Euchre, whom he had met only a few days ago. Though Mr Euchre’s face seemed to be made of steel, with a rivet line running from forehead to chin. Steam had puffed from a mouth that glowed like the inside of a boiler.

  “To what purpose? What do they do?” Wayran asked.

  “They are for Kali! Stop stalling! You know all this, you were the one who started us on this hopeless quest. You are the one who has damned us all, betting everything on this gambit!” The monster seemed to grow suddenly, once more becoming the hulking knight, but this time with fangs and horns protruding from a devilish helm. Red eyes swirled and glowed from between the visor guard.

  Wayran tried to analyse it all as much as he could. He had been so exhausted from training that he had gone nearly a month without a nightmare, and only three times in total since his visions on initiation day. Yet, tonight he had gone to sleep willing himself to summon the prophetic nightmare, and surprisingly, it had worked.

  The monster lunged for him, and surprisingly Wayran’s future sight kicked in as the massive blade scythed the air towards him.

  Wayran dodged easily and stuck his leg out to trip the monster. The black knight tumbled down the side of the sand dune and began to morph into the machine-like worm-monster.

  “Ha, it worked,” he said aloud. Wayran made his way down the dune to talk to the monster. “What is the gambit you speak of? What are you talking about?”

  The giant metal worm oozed oil between its sword-like teeth, smoke puffed out of stacks along its head and back, far more of them than Wayran remembered. The monster turned and looked up at Wayran who still stood upon the dune. Its steel legs twitched in annoyance as it spoke in a horrible scratching voice, “Mannford’s requirements! Damn it, Wayran, you read all of this in his journal. The keys are needed for Kali to make a decision.”

  As Wayran watched, fascinated, the monster melted away into a fog that had suddenly enveloped the two of them. In its place were the shadows of people Wayran recognised, and he was shocked as he had never seen this before in the nightmare.

  He stepped towards the door, and heard a strange buzzing sound, not the wind, or sand scraping across the dunes, but like millions of tiny wings.

  He looked into the sky and saw them: flies. Strange flies. Glowing flies. Flies made of metal and glowing jewels. Millions of them, flying out of the Jendar complex he had fallen into. Millions of tiny flies, yet he felt they were somehow all connected to Kali somehow.

  “Yes, they’re networked together,” a voice said beside him.

  Wayran started and felt the sand rasp his skin.

  A being made of metal with swirling red eyes floated in the air not four feet from him. A ragged cloak flapped around its metal body in the wind.

  “They’re what?” Wayran wondered what madness this was now, but retained his determination to try and understand what he was seeing.

  “They communicate with each other and are linked to Kali. They are her eyes and ears, you could say. Part of them anyway.”

  “Where are they going?” Wayran watched as the cloud of glowing flies began to stop their blinking and flew away in a swarm so large it looked like some dark cloud dancing above the dunes.

  “To find targets, to gather information and send it back to their mistress. The data they gather will help determine what strategies should be employed, much of it depending on the settlements’ distance from natural phenomena which Kali can manipulate. Things like large bodies of water, turbulent weather sys
tems, opportunistic tectonic weaknesses, that sort of thing. Fear and respect for Mother Nature are key to re-joining the Tiden Raika, yet, things have progressed so much farther than originally intended, and we worry the messages now go mostly unheard, let alone understood,” the red-eyed being said sadly. How its face conveyed emotion, Wayran wasn’t quite sure.

  “What do you mean?” Wayran asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “And that’s the problem,” the red-eyed being said. “Time has distanced you so far from the original sin, the message has become lost. Perhaps minimal interference was the wrong tactic. Yet, with interference and instruction, there is no true understanding, and thus no real change.”

  Wayran watched as the metal entity argued with itself, and as Wayran listened, he thought he began to hear not one, but multiple voices coming from the strange entity.

  It turned and its red-swirling eyes refocused on Wayran once more, yet he thought its face was now in a new configuration.

  It cocked its head and smiled, an act which made Wayran’s skin crawl. “Very perceptive of you. Yes, you are correct, there are more than one within this shell.” It laid its hands on its chest, and now its fingers ended in long points instead of metal fingers. The voice had switched as well. “Yet, even the best student can benefit from a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a sensei – especially when there is a deadline of such importance looming.” The thing in front of Wayran convulsed and jerked spasmodically before it snapped upright once more. “True,” the original voice spoke, and the original metal face looked at him once again. “However, any interference dilutes the message,” the voices inside the entity said. The metal body jerked once more, and the second sharper face re-emerged. “We are running out of time, you pedantic doddering academic! Enough ideals and theories! It’s time to act!” One of its clawed metal hands reached for Wayran.

  He took a step back and swatted the hand away, and he realised he now held a spear. A white one, and he found that curious. “Could you start making sense? Quickly? If you are somehow in my dream, I need you to start clearing things up or stop wasting my time!” Wayran’s frustration exploded out from him in a wave of wind and energy. The glowing flies swarmed away from him and vanished into the distance.

  The red-eyed being paused, its face flashed from metal to wrinkled flesh, then to a laughing wooden mask somehow crazier and worse than the previous faces. It danced about in a circle in a long grass skirt while its red eyes glowed from within the dark eye-sockets of the wooden mask. A terrible metallic laugh echoed around him. “You can call us Wunjo, for now. Think about it Wayran Spierling, you need a guide in all this!” It danced around him and held its hands up to the sky. “Ah! Kali is calling! Time to go! Time to wake up!” The laughter cackled as the wind turned into a maelstrom of swirling sand, and Wayran was sucked upwards into the vortex.

  * * *

  “Damn it, Wayran, wake up! The bloody bells are ringing! Get your gear!” Kevin’s hand slapped his face again, and Wayran opened his eyes.

  “All right, all right. I’m up.” Wayran shook himself, trying to remember as much of what was said in the dream as possible. “I need paper.”

  “What?” Kevin said. “You aren’t going to class. The gods-damned city is on fire! Get your gear and help strap me into mine!”

  Wayran closed his eyes. Strange flies finding targets, it’s all in the journal, the keys are for Kali. Strange flies … he repeated the words until he thought he was sure to remember them. “All right, let’s go. Where’s everyone else? Wait, did you say fire?”

  Wayran remembered the terrible burns on Adel’s face.

  “Yeah. The Xinnish quarter has erupted into all-out chaos. I can’t believe you slept. Seraphim Wong has been killed!” Kevin’s musical accent, which he usually used to great effect to help lighten most situations, only added dread this time.

  “Where’s Adel?”

  Kevin squinted at him like he was going mad. “You serious? You were in deep, weren’t you? Don’t you remember your brother coming back late last night all hot and bothered? The High King’s got her locked up in the Red Tower. It nearly sent Naira over the edge, when he told her. The two of them haven’t come back for their rest shift yet.” Kevin turned around and held out his arms. “Now help me with my armour, I’m not used to these things yet.”

  Wayran did as he was told, pulled Kevin’s straps tight to secure the ramshackle pieces of armour they were issued and then went to his armour rack to pull on as much of his armour as he could by himself.

  “Damn it, I know you’re tired. It’s only been two hours since our last shift, but I need you boyo, need you to have my back. Jerome’s already down there with Matoh and Naira and all the others. We gotta move so we can support them.” Kevin clapped his hand down on Wayran’s shoulder as he helped Wayran get into his armour.

  The dream started to fade, and reality began to reassert itself. The initiates were still enlisted in the constabulary trying to restore law and order to a city that wanted to tear itself apart. Adel had been taken last night, he remembered Matoh telling them now. Watching him tell Naira had been hard to watch.

  Wayran gathered his things, got Kevin to strap up his armour, fell into formation, and immediately stumbled.

  FLASH.

  A battle. People screaming bloody murder in the street. Enraged knights and constabulary fighting a crazed mob in a square, lightning streaking through the sky. Death.

  No!

  FLASH.

  Wayran stumbled and shook his head, horrified.

  “What is it?” Kevin was looking at him strangely. “It’s happening to you again, isn’t it?”

  Wayran grabbed Kevin. “We have to find Matoh and Naira. Now!”

  “We’re going there now. I told you. We’re combining with the troops trying to hold the Xinnish quarter together. The High King himself is on the way.”

  FLASH.

  A square filled with chaos, and at the far end a tavern,‘Keef’s’ written in huge blue lamplit letters on its front.

  Convergence.

  FLASH.

  “Keef’s Tavern,” Wayran said. That was just inside the Xinnish district. “It’s all leading to the square outside Keef’s Tavern.”

  He felt something run down his lip, and he put the under-leather of his gauntleted finger to his nose and saw the dark patch of blood.

  Damn it, not now. He needed his strange future-sense, needed it to save his brother. For in the first vision, the possibility he saw was Matoh’s death as he rushed headlong into a crazed mob to save Naira.

  “Captain Miller!” Wayran yelled.

  “What is it, Spierling?” Captain Miller barked back as they set off down the street.

  Wayran grabbed his captain’s arm. “We need to hurry, they need us down there, right now.”

  Captain Miller bit off the reproach on his tongue for Wayran’s inappropriateness as he saw the panic in Wayran’s eyes. A panic he had never seen before on the strange young man’s face, not even when the damned sky was coming down around them during the initiation ceremony.

  “It’s happening again, sir,” Kevin asserted from behind him. “Same sort of looks he was having when he was fightin’ his brother at the ceremony.” Kevin looked around again and shivered. “It bloody feels the same too. Something in the air.”

  “Okay, Spierling … all right.” Captain Miller tapped Wayran’s hand and straightened up in his saddle. “Double time, initiates! Double time!” He nodded to Wayran and Kevin. “I feel it too. It’s like a tension and … a direction, somehow all around us. Let’s move.”

  The exhausted group of initiates and constabulary raced down the streets of New Toeron towards the red glow of a city on fire and in need of a miracle.

  35 - Riot

  Thievery is the oldest trade in Tawa. The next oldest is piracy, but only by a few minutes, as the pilfering bastards first needed to steal the boat.

  - Common Labran joke

  Matoh

  Xi
nnish District, New Toeron, Bauffin

  The royal crest and the symbols of the sea hawk, anchor, santsi and sword were emblazoned upon the breastplate of Matoh’s armour. He had huge santsi globes set into his pauldrons, globes which could hold more energy than he had ever siphoned before in his life and the High King himself had said the words to make him a knight of Salucia, to make him a Syklan, but Matoh felt no joy.

  Matoh had watched his reflection in a mirror back in the armoury and couldn’t quite believe it was his face looking back at him from within the Syklan helmet. How many times during his childhood, had he imagined this very thing? Wearing the same armour his legendary mother had, and now the day was here, and all he felt was empty.

  His city was tearing itself apart, people he had known all his life were being maimed or killed. He was trying to help in any way he could, but they seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Then, on top of it all, there was Naira.

  She hadn’t been back to the dormitories since the incident at the temple, sleeping at the ad hoc forward operating base the constabulary had set up at the community hall in the Xinnish district. Naira would take double shifts, and the constables couldn’t say no as they were swamped. They needed every available person they could get. Naira’s world had become a cycle of eat, patrol, keep the peace, eat, go out on another eight to nine-hour shift, eat and then crash into exhausted sleep onto the floor of the hall. She would then wake and start it all over again, not saying a word to the rest of them.

  Matoh didn’t know what to do for her. Naira had nearly died, had been defiled by the murderer causing all of this chaos, and then there had been what had happened to Adel. When he told Naira about that it felt like he had delivered another hammer blow to a thin layer of glass that kept her going.

  Matoh ground his teeth at the memory. He should have done something, should have stopped Adel from being taken. What could I have done? His thoughts haunted him. It was the High King himself who had taken Adel prisoner. Yet Matoh knew down to his core that the High King had been wrong to do so. He knew Adel, she was not any sort of enemy to the crown. She was a good person, and he should have protected her.