Awakenings

by C. D. Espeseth

  John Stonebridge spun a silver circle in the air above her. “Get behind me,” he ordered Adel.

  “Can’t move,” Adel tried to yell from behind clenched teeth, but as she did, she saw the stone bracelet on her wrist glow with orange light. Yet she felt no relief from the paralysis.

  “I’ll have to kill you this time, John,” Thannis said almost disappointedly as he rubbed the spot on his chest where the weighted end of the meteor hammer had hit him. “You are pretty good with that ancient thing. Where did you find it, a museum?”

  “We old things need to stick together, and it was a gift if you must know,” John said grimly. Adel saw his jaw working, and the way the senior prefect favoured his left leg. No doubt Thannis saw the weakness as well.

  “Regardless, I can’t have you chasing me anymore. I’d ask you to walk away, but I already know the answer to that. Unfortunate, know that I am not killing you out of malice but rather necessity,” Thannis said circling to Stonebridge’s left and sizing him up.

  “I’m touched. You going to dance around like a fairy all day or are we finally going to try to kill each other like normal people?” Stonebridge growled. The whizzing mass of one of the metal spheres whipped across the dirt where Thannis’s foot had been, and shards of rock cracked off the floor where it had narrowly missed.

  Thannis lunged forward, and the second end of the meteor hammer snapped through the air. Thannis flinched back as the weighted sphere snapped through the space where Thannis’s head had been.

  “Woo!” Thannis whistled. “Fast, old man.” Thannis laughed almost admiringly.

  “Why don’t you come a little closer and speak into my good ear.” Stonebridge bared his teeth from beneath his walrus moustache.

  Thannis smirked and dived forward.

  The meteor hammer snapped out once more clipping Thannis on the knee and halting him.

  “A good weapon for keeping distance,” Thannis observed as he retreated back once more. “Though, ultimately, not good enough.” Thannis smiled.

  The senior prefect whirled, and the meteor hammer snapped straight at Thannis’s head. Thannis twirled, faster than could be believed and let the weighted head fly just over his shoulder. He grabbed the trailing rope and slashed his knife through it, cutting away the weighted end leaving Stonebridge holding a long line of limp rope.

  “I always thought those weapons were a bit stupid.” Thannis smirked. “John, just let me go, and you don’t have to die. I respect you enough to give you one last chance. Just go home, retire and leave me be.”

  The senior prefect huffed his annoyance and dropped the rope. “Can you get up, girl? Wouldn’t mind two against one.” Stonebridge drew the twin sai from his belt, not taking his eyes off Thannis for a moment.

  But Adel could do nothing but gasp for breath. As the glow on her bracelet had continued to increase, she had begun to feel the tingle of siphoned energy, but this time there was nowhere to push the energy, it continued to build and build. Fire and pain began to consume her, pushing away the numbness of the poison coursing through her now, but not the sickening burn and the horrible sensation that her entire body was an exposed nerve-ending being raked across the sand.

  Her world was blazing agony, and the glow of the bracelet only grew brighter and brighter.

  “I’m not going anywhere, you arrogant prick,” Stonebridge hissed.

  Thannis shrugged. “So be it.”

  Stonebridge growled and lunged.

  Thannis blocked the senior prefect’s twin sai attacks with a look of disdain, but as Thannis locked up both of the senior prefect’s weapons, Stonebridge yelled and smashed his forehead up into Thannis’s face.

  Thannis staggered back, blood streaming from his nose.

  “Not so bloody smug now, are you?” John laughed and barrelled into Thannis, driving his shoulder into the tall man’s gut and lifting his legs out from under him. John roared, picking Thannis up and slamming him first against the cave wall, then down onto the ground. “Die!” John roared and reared back to drive his sai into Thannis’s chest.

  Knives flashed up like twin snakes. Both drove up into John’s armpits, and the senior prefect’s arms fell limply to his sides.

  Thannis bucked upwards beneath John and threw the older man’s weight off him as he rolled up onto his feet. Before John hit the ground, Thannis drove a knee into the side of his head.

  John crumpled, and Thannis drove his blades into points along John’s legs so he could not rise again.

  Thannis stepped away from the dazed and bleeding senior prefect, who now could do nothing but stare blearily up at his attacker.

  “No!” Adel tried to scream through her tears and pain, but it only came out as a garbled moan.

  “You should be dead,” John mumbled in a stupor as he looked up at Thannis. “Miranda killed you when she stabbed you in the guts. I saw the blood trail. You should be dead.”

  “Very nearly,” Thannis said, holding up a finger, “but not quite. Science once again proved my saviour, and like so many discoveries over the years, it is sometimes the serendipitous discoveries which prove the most important.” Thannis pulled open his shirt to reveal a throbbing gelatinous mass perched upon his chest like some sort of semi-translucent leech. “I made myself a new friend, one who is now part of me and understands my mission. We share similar appetites, and when we feed, we also heal. True symbiosis. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  John stared horrified at the leech-like creature wriggling on Thannis’s chest.

  Thannis stood, turned away from John and walked back to Adel, placing a hand over her heart as she screamed for her body to release her from the crippling spasms, but her muscles betrayed her and wouldn’t respond.

  “Now, John. You always wondered about the eyes, didn’t you?” Thannis smiled, and Adel felt the air cool around his hand as he began to siphon. “Let me show you how I make them.”

  Fire and energy raged through her locked muscles. She screamed. The veins in her neck felt like they would burst out of her skin as she felt the torrent flowing through her and into Thannis’s hand. White light flashed, then pulsed on Thannis’s chest as the horrible creature attached to him drank in the energy with its host.

  She could do nothing as she watched the look of joy on Thannis’s face as he drained her of her very soul. His eyes had rolled back to show there whites as his body began to shake in ecstasy atop her.

  Yet as he pulled upon her very soul, it broke a barrier within her mind. Awaken! Remember yourself, Raidho. Awaken! The words hissed into Adel’s mind like a ghost, and with those words, memories began to unlock.

  She felt as if she were waking from a dream. Burning was replaced by cool clarity, and Adel could feel the great energy around her, which she had been blind to until that moment.

  “Wha–” Thannis groggily shook himself from the throes of his passion. “What are you doing?”

  Awaken! Raidho, awaken!

  Control returned to Adel. She ordered her muscles to respond, and they did. She cut the flow of her energy into Thannis as suddenly as it had begun.

  “How ...” Thannis began, coming out of his confusion.

  Adel felt the warmth on her wrist and saw the stone bracelet glowing like a small sun. She knew then that it had not been the barrier she thought it was. No, the bracelet had simply slowed the flow of the energy around her. She had been the barrier, she had been the one holding it all back. Her fear of losing control, fear of the pain that would follow had restricted a flow which was not meant to be restricted.

  Memories flashed through her in rapid succession.

  Her father’s words, “You are not like other girls, Adel. You are stronger, one of Halom’ s chosen. Be like Anastasia and use that strength.” Adel knew what he meant now, not simply to believe she was different from other people, but to know it, and use it. In those same bedtime stories, which she had thought were all meant to brainwash her into believing she was some sort of holy idol, were lessons of how Anast
asia Quinn could do miraculous things, of how she could use a power that came from within.

  More memories flashed by. Memories of training with her father, and a lesson which always came after he had beaten her. He would teach her a new style, make her train for months straight until she had mastered the forms, and then they would spar. He would beat her, using the same style, and would keep repeating the same litany at the end of every lesson. “You will not conquer yourself until you let go. Let go and trust yourself.”

  Over and over that same damned lesson had been drummed into her. She remembered the words but had never really understood what he had meant, until now.

  He had known. Somehow, he had known she would face this challenge within herself.

  He was never training her to be an assassin or some religious figurehead. No. He had been training her for this very moment. You will not conquer yourself until you let go.

  Her fear had caused all of the pain, her own mental blocks had caused her to fail, like a baby bird hurtling towards the ground too scared to open its wings.

  So, she let go.

  She let go of the fear, trusting in herself fully for the first time in her life. And in her mind, Adel opened her wings.

  Her wrist slammed into the rocky ground, and the bracelet shattered.

  Energy – pure, cool, unfettered, and unrestricted - surged into her.

  Adel grabbed Thannis’s wrist as her eyes shot open. She saw the confusion on Thannis’s face as she began to siphon, but not just siphon, she began to drink in the very flow of the world around her, focusing it within herself into a tight ball of brilliant white light and fizzling energy.

  Thannis’s confusion turned to panic as he tried to pull his wrist away, but Adel held him in place as if he were a child. She met his gaze and spoke through gritted teeth, “My turn.”

  The ball of spinning light exploded forth into Thannis like a giant’s hammer as she struck him with her palm.

  He flew backwards, airborne, to land with a heavy thump on the rocky floor nearly ten paces away. He lay gasping and bathed in the light spilling through the cave-mouth.

  She pulled in the world around her and charged forward. The rock beneath her feet cracked with the force of her lunge.

  Thannis had only just got to his knees, but he was not fast enough this time. Adel spun, and her back foot snapped forward. Another ball of pure white energy exploded forth as the heel of her boot whipped across Thannis’s face a split second before Adel’s knee drove into his guts.

  Thannis staggered, gasping for air as he skidded right up to the edge of the open hole in the cave wall.

  “What are you –” Thannis started.

  Adel didn’t let him finish. She let the torrent of energy flow through her as she jumped, spun, and threw all of her weight into a thrust kick. The energy exploded in another flash of light as her foot crushed Thannis’s chest and sent him, screaming, out into the open air.

  Adel stepped to the edge of the hole in the cave and heard Thannis’s choked cry as he disappeared into the mist and spray far below.

  She waited, watching for a moment, but all she heard was some sort of bird squawking it’s disapproval somewhere out among the cliffs. Then there was nothing but the sound of pounding surf against the rocks.

  Adel let go of the power, and with its release, she gasped in exhaustion and her legs buckled beneath her.

  “You got him,” John coughed from the other side of the cave.

  Adel crawled over to him.

  John Stonebridge looked up at her with a sad smile on his face as she placed a hand on his chest.

  “Don’t speak sir, save your breath. Help is on its way,” Adel said as she tried to open herself up to the energy again.

  But her body was numb, not from the poison Thannis had tried to use, no, that had been purged once she had unblocked the dam holding back the energy around her. No, she was numb from overuse of energy. She could feel the tell-tale signs of nerve-burn.

  Adel held out a hand, trying to hold it steady, but watched it jump about as if she were afflicted by palsy. She needed to rest.

  “It’s all right, young Corbin. You did fine. You got him.”

  “But your injuries, sir,” Adel tried to say but found it hard to string more than a few words together.

  “Yes, about that.” John groaned as he tried to move. “You’ll need to cauterise the wounds. The sick bastard will have made sure to miss my major arteries. I don’t know if he’s permanently damaged my nerve clusters or just temporarily paralysed me. I’m hoping it’s only a little of both, but I wouldn’t mind sticking around to find out.” John looked at Adel seriously. “I have flint and some tinder in my pockets, and ...” he hesitated before looking down at his breast pocket and sighing, “and a notebook that’ll burn.” John shook his head in sad frustration. “Ah, can’t be helped.”

  Adel couldn’t speak, her mouth tingled just as badly as the rest of her did. So, she just nodded.

  John smiled, attempting to be encouraging but wanting nothing more than to swear bloody murder at the pain as her hands pressed into his pockets. “Bastard had to use blue witch-root extract, I can feel it tingling. My whole body will go numb in a minute, so it’ll be the best time to cauterise the wounds. I might black out, but there are dog teams on their way, they should find us pretty soon.”

  Adel had lit a quick fire with John’s supplies and had a part of her sword red hot.

  “Do it,” John said, and Adel pushed the red-hot edge onto the first of John’s stab wounds.

  John cursed as Adel methodically sealed the rest of the senior prefect’s wounds, the horrible smell of burning flesh thick in her nostrils.

  The dog-teams and constables arrived not long after and Adel felt in a daze as she was wrapped in a blanket and walked out of the caves with the senior prefect carried upon on a canvas stretcher beside her.

  It was only when she was back out of the labyrinth of tunnels and caves that her thoughts came back to her dead friend, back to Naira, and it was only then that she finally allowed herself to cry.

  45 - The Weight of History

  I don’t have much time. They are on to me and know that Wunjo is missing.

  Yet even I don’t trust my mind any more.

  I shall make a copy of myself first. Well, not a copy, something better and I must hide it, but where.

  Ha! It’s so obvious, which is why it will work.

  Hide it in plain sight, it is always the way! Catch me if you can, you red-eyed bastards!

  - Journal of Robert Mannford, Day 175 Year 69

  Wayran

  New Toeron, Bauffin

  Wayran gasped as the roc’s talons released him. He fell only about the height of a man, but the jolt as he hit the ground sent pain from his wounds lancing through him just the same.

  The huge wings of the roc beat the air hard above him as the massive bird settled itself on the ground behind him. The red-eyed man leapt down from the roc’s back with strange agility that did not look human in the slightest.

  Wayran pushed himself up from the long grass he had landed in and tried to take in his surroundings.

  They had flown to the edge of the city and were now outside the outer city wall, and he saw what looked like the old ruin of what was once a church of some kind sandwiched between the city wall and the cliff face of the mountain which loomed over the north-west edge of New Toeron. There was a great tree growing right out of the roof of the old ruin. Wayran doubted you could even see the church from atop the city wall in the summer, the foliage of the great tree would cover the structure entirely.

  “We are near the base of Mount Falcao,” Wayran said aloud. “Named after the falcons patrolling its many cliff faces.” He looked around the grass at his feet and saw it was, in fact, a cemetery. Headstones engraved in what he assumed was an old form of Bauffish lay all around him. “What was this place? What denomination?”

  “You would not know it, it was before the modern New Toeron wa
s named or founded. The people who built it lived beneath the place you know as New Toeron, this was well before the Singer Faith rose to prominence, even before the Nine Nations was even a concept. This place was built to worship the spirit of the mountain. The people who lived here were great tunnelers, and they ventured deep into the earth during a time it was not safe to live on the surface for many years. Their culture has been forgotten over the ages just as many others before it.” Wunjo spoke aloud this time, its metallic rasping voice sounded very alien in such an earthy and human place.

  Wayran could see the ruin was old, very old, yet if it predated the Singer Faith ... “Are you telling me this ruin was here just after the Ciwix? After the great fall?”

  “No,” Wunjo said. “I am telling you this was here before the Ciwix.”

  “But that’s not possible.” Wayran’s mind reeled. “It was the Jendar who brought about the Ciwix, and this does not look anything like the Jendar ruins I’ve seen before.”

  “It is not Jendar, either,” Wunjo confirmed. The metal man’s body twitched, its head cocked to the side in a way which would break a normal person’s neck. Another of the horrible laughs came out, “Har, har, tee-hee, hee. History is subjective, tee-hee. What you think you know and what is true are often very different things. Har, har, har, tee-hee!”

  A horrible high-pitched squeal came from inside Wunjo, and the metal body jerked again. “Apologies, there are some redundant systems which fire up now and again within my consciousness matrices. Old programming which has been difficult to purge entirely.” Wunjo tried to explain.

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Wayran answered. His finger went to his nose and came away with blood on his fingertip. “Let’s get this over with then. My head is really pounding now.”

  They walked forward into the walls which had been broken by time, passing gravestones now little more than lumps beneath moss and grass. A tree grew straight up through the roof of a great decaying dome.