Either way, he seemed peaceful enough. Jone watched as he straightened, keeping his tall trio of fractured black horns inclined respectfully toward Rote, who hovered, hesitant. His hidden heart pulsed once, brightly, a firelight reflected deep in his eyes.
Then he started vibrating. Extendedly.
Puzzled, Jone felt Rote twitch. First with surprise, then, with what felt like a tremor of embarrassment. The large, aged ifrit gestured broadly, carefully, then put his burning palms together in front of his chest. He bowed his head. After a hesitant moment, Rote mirrored the gesture, then pointed at him with an onyx claw and began to vibrate as well. First slowly, then faster and faster as Jone felt her confidence redouble.
“Rote...what’s going on?”
“I knew I recognized him!” The spirit’s thoughts shot back, almost too rapid for Jone to keep up with and decipher. “He’s one of the ones that sent me here, so long ago! One of the very ones that served my family and later bound me to you in the first place.”
“So some sort of sage, or arcanist? But I didn’t hear him say anything…” She trailed off as she suddenly realized the truth. “Wait. Your people don’t speak, do they?”
“Not like you and I are doing, no. It’s been so long, I’d almost forgotten...” Jone felt her host’s vibrations slow as the spirit split her attention between conversations. “I only speak like you do because I learned as you learned. From your parents.”
“I...Wait.” A pang of forgotten loss splintered her sense of wonder. “You never told me you remembered that far back.”
“You sure you want me to open that can of eels for you? I don’t think you do.” Rote’s vibrations slowed and stilled, and the ifrit tilted his head. “Besides, shhhhhh. I haven’t had a conversation like this in a very long time, and you’re distracting me.”
Jone bit her imaginary tongue and waited, trying to repress her irritation. Now more than ever, she understood just how different she and Rote were. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely fair to hold the spirit to the same standards as she would hold another human. On the other hand, she felt like the creature would take any such excuse she gave her and fly with it as far as possible.
But ever since she’d come back to life, she’d been uneasy about those closest to her hiding things, concealing things that they knew she wanted to know. And the one person that she felt should understand that the most—the one that had shared her body as they’d both been betrayed—was often the worst offender. And the whole idea that Rote thought she knew what she needed better than she herself did...well, that didn’t make any of it any better.
“I’m right!” Rote’s glee cut through Jone’s scattered thoughts and doubts. “He remembers me, too. Remembers the council finding me where I hid, remembers sending me up to you. Remembers scrying the future with the Old Magic, binding us both together.” She paused, vibrating, as if listening. “He’s…” Her emotions fell, the excitement washed away in an instant. “The others. They’re all gone. He’s the only one left, waiting for my return all this time.”
After a moment, Jone swallowed her own feelings and reached out. “I’m sorry, Rote. I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish...I hadn’t gotten us killed all those years ago. Then things would have been different.” Perhaps it was a good reminder, that Rote wasn’t the only one of them that had failed or made poor decisions.
In fact, Jone felt the worst of those sat squarely upon her own shoulders.
Rote just shook her head; the motion seemed to briefly confuse the ifrit sage. “That’s not helpful at the moment,” she thought back. “He says there’s more trouble, here and now.”
“Trouble? What kind?”
“He says it’s easier to show us.” Rote stilled as the ifrit vibrated gravely. “Besides, I think you’ll want to see this for yourself.”
- - -
Rain fell in torrents far above, but even as high up as they were, little of it reached them. Most of it vaporized long before then, gusting back upward toward the other world in thick billows and jets of steam.
Together, they gazed down at the massive Elizabethian drop ship, spirit and human analyzing it through the same eyes.
“What do you think?” Rote asked first. “You’re the soldier here, not me.”
Jone frowned. Or rather, she wanted to. Far below them, beneath the sheer cliff edge they watched from, smaller ships came and went from the enormous transport, and heavily armored goliath golems moved about, tiny like ants.
“I think I’m sorry,” she finally replied.
“Uhhhh…” Rote churned in confusion. “That’s probably the worst assault tactic I’ve ever heard. And I don’t usually pay attention.”
“No,” the disembodied Arcadian clarified. “Not that. It’s just...before we undertake something this dangerous, I wanted to apologize. For everything. Like right now. If these ships and soldiers hadn’t followed me here to confirm my death, your people wouldn’t be in such dire straits. You could even stay, at least for a little while. This is your home, after all.”
The spirit was silent. And still. “You’re such an idiot,” she finally sighed softly. “Not to mention that overdeveloped sense of guilt.”
Jone waited patiently for her to continue.
“Besides, what would staying do for me? Look around.” Rote turned her head, taking in the flame and smoke, the ravaged, empty landscape, the wreckage of the Queen’s Revenge far below. “There is nothing left here. For anyone.”
“But...it’s still your home. These are still your people.”
“My people are mostly gone. The few that remain wait expectantly for me to return to the world above and emerge victorious. What would staying do except condemn the survivors?” She shook her head. “No, Jone. There’s nothing to apologize for. Because there’s nothing left for any of us here.” Rote scraped claws against claws. “Not unless I create it.” She took another look around, and her honeyed voice fell. “Some savior I turned out to be, hmmm?”
Jone felt the creature’s feelings wash over her, become part of her as she shared them. “I guess your sages really knew their stuff.”
“Oh?”
“Because it looks like we were cut from the same cloth.” Here, trapped in Rote’s mind, it was all too easy to fall back into the past, to almost relive it. “My betrayal. Drake’s tricks and traps. The battles I lost, the people I failed.” She chuckled, grimly and without any trace of humor. “Some savior I turned out to be, hmmmm?”
Rote chucked too, a curl of smoke on the wind. “I guess so. We really were supposed to end up together. Stuck with each other. In the beginning, I wanted nothing more than to hate you, to resent you for what you were. But now…” Her voice went quiet, a flow of molten honey like a gentle caress. “Now all we have is each other.”
Jone was silent for a moment as she thought of Bellamy, of Esme, of Adie. Of Louie and Aubrey and everyone else, her friends and lovers and supporters.
And realized that Rote had none of those.
Except for Jone, the spirit was truly alone. And had been for a very, very long time.
In that moment, all of her lingering anger and doubts about the spirit dissipated, as if borne away on the ash-flecked air. It was as if a curtain parted, and she suddenly, finally, understood her ever-present companion. “I suppose it’s fair to say that no one else understands us the way we do each other.”
“Or shared what we have.” She settled onto the edge of the cliff, her honeyed voice equal parts somber and intimate. “Death, rebirth, revolution. Growth, change...failure. Watching our people and our cause look to us for answers and pass away.”
Jone thought about her own forgotten past, of the body she now rode along in. “Losing everything we once were and starting over. Again and again.”
They stared at the ships below as the wind whipped and tugged at them ineffectually. Rote sighed. “I don’t know if I could ever really go back, you know. I’m not like my own people anymore. I’ve lived among you—inside you—for t
oo long. I think it’s ruined me. Warped me. I barely remember my own language.”
“Maybe...maybe that’s for the best? Without each other, neither of us would understand the full picture. We’d still be missing some of the pieces.” She hesitated. “Maybe in the end, there’s no going back for either of us. Not really. What we once were, and once had, is gone.” Verdant Arcadian green and azure blue flashed through her memories, but when was it from? “Centuries gone.”
The spirit sniffed softly. “Far too late to go back. Only forward. Our people’s fates are tied together…” She lifted a smoky hand and caressed her face with gentle claws. Jone felt the gesture as if it were her own face, her own flesh. “...Just like you and me.”
Jone settled into her host’s head, as if leaning against the spirit inside her own mind. “...Just like us.”
“So we’ll just have to learn to live with each other.”
“And support each other.”
“And maybe…”
“Even like each other?”
“Maybe.”
“Because we have a job to do. Together.”
“Yeah. First, we save your world. Then we save mine.”
“I promise.”
“And I’ll hold you to it. But first…” Rote gazed at the ships and golems below, a buzz of anxiety emanating from her core. Elizabeth and Drake had spared no expense to confirm their fate; the mammoth dropship below dwarfed even the broken shell of the fallen Queen’s Revenge by an order of magnitude, golems and smaller vessels always thickly in motion around its blocky shadow. “We gotta make it through that. Any ideas, miss leader?”
Jone hmmm’d thoughtfully to her partner. “Yes. But you’re not going to like it.”
3
Invasion
Rote struck like obsidian lightning, a flash from the shadows that left one golem after another maimed, broken, or dead.
Riding along in the spirit’s body, Jone had never felt such raw, savage might before. Not at the height of her own power, not even when she’d fought against Sir Francis Drake. As her friend finally stopped holding back, even hardened layers of tritanium plating and centuries of Elizabethian engineering were no match for simple onyx claws and pure vengeance.
Another pilot managed a scream as the unforgiving atmosphere incinerated him. Sirens wailed as the alarm finally went up, backed by the trail of bodies and wrecked machinery left in their wake. Spotlights blared, breaking up the darkness with pools of blinding white as they searched the smoke and shadows.
“That way!” Jone directed her companion toward the shadow of the massive dropship that loomed over the broken remains of the Queen’s Revenge, an even greater vessel than the grand warship she’d nearly given her life to sabotage.
“Seriously?” The spirit’s thoughts flickered like lightning as well, sharp and fast, as she tore a pair of golems nearly in half before they realized she was there. Then, at Jone’s direction, she was gone again as a searchlight scoured the location an instant later. “The dropship? The one place they’ll protect the hardest? Where they’re already going to be gathering? With us leaving a carpet of bodies pointing directly toward it?”
“Yes! Just do it!” Jone pushed her intent insistently at the spirit, who thankfully launched herself toward the oversized vessel.
Toward the heaviest concentration of enemy forces. Toward whoever it was behind this invasion, whoever it was that led the search for them.
Toward their only ticket out of this Abyss.
Meanwhile, Jone did her part as best she could. She pushed her senses free of Rote’s body, straining to look everywhere at once, and caught the airship directly overhead before it could target them with spotlights and weaponry. “Above!”
“Hah!” White beams stabbed down and ordinance shook the earth, but Rote skirted it all. An upraised hand summoned tendrils from nothing, ribbons of darkness that wound around the vessel like a ship-eater’s tentacles, broke it in half, and slammed the shattered vessel to the packed, blackened dirt. “Have to do better than that!”
Like a black wind, Rote tore the arms off a pair of golems as she broke apart and swept past. Another set caught sight of them and blared a warning, only for ropes of pure shadow to slam and bind them together, then slowly cut them both in half. An even larger, stockier golem stepped in the way to block their path, and Rote flowed around it like smoke and sand, then congealed behind it and jammed her arm through the tritanium and into the pilot’s spine, deep inside.
“They can’t stop me!” The spirit crowed gleefully, her honey tone tainted with bloodthirst. “Not like this! They’re too slow, too weak.”
“That’ll change if you just float here and gloat! Move!”
Together, they tore across the burnt landscape, now far beyond the enemy perimeter. Instead of aiming them directly at the massive dropship, Jone pushed them first around the outer edge of the Elizabethian landing zone until she found the cluster of smaller vessels that had accompanied it. They rose into the air as the search rapidly closed in behind them; Jone ignored the threat for a moment, instead concentrating on the ships below. She cast her disembodied senses out, feeling out the rumble of the ships’ engines, the steady warmth of their lights, the energy that ran along conduits hidden just under their metal skin.
“It’s time. Do it.”
Rote’s hidden heart blazed hot with rage as she reached out, seized the spirit-powered engines and containers below, along with all the crates and barrels of gemstones already stored on board—
—and shattered every last one.
A brilliant, multicolored shockwave lit up the broken landscape, brighter than the spotlights and seething orange rivers could ever hope to be. The hulls of the ships below ruptured from the inside out, exposing any human survivor within to the alien atmosphere as the harvested spirits’ energy burst outward. As the blinding light below swelled and faded, many of the trapped spirits faded away, their existence extinguished with the explosion.
But many, many more shot free, thousands of sylphs and mephits and sprites of all sizes and colors fleeing into the perpetual night of their home.
“Yes!” Rote spun in place, defying gravity with a grin. “I did it! I finally did something—”
Bright light cut across their position and cut her words short. Artillery, both golem-based and even heavier, sliced through the air and burst near them. Rote hissed as shrapnel ripped through her shoulder, re-forming her body and flitting away as pain rippled through them.
“Now! To the drop ship!”
After a moment’s hesitation Rote burst into smoke and darted downward, curling and careening around the bullets and explosives that sought her. The oversized vessel consumed their field of view as they closed in, bristling with heavy turrets and automated cannons that turned to track their approach.
And the dozens and dozens of golem goliaths already assembled to defend it.
Rote stopped in her tracks, and an oversized ball of lead tore through the side of her throat.
“No! Don’t stop!” Jone pushed through the pain and shoved her message at the spirit. “Trust me!”
Rote re-formed her neck and darted to the side, momentarily losing the seeking spotlights.
“They’re never going to stop. You know that. As long as they think I might be here...that we might be here...they’ll keep coming. Keep killing and enslaving your people.” Jone could feel the spirit’s ire rise at her words, pushing aside some of the tremor of fear. “We have to end this and escape. Before there’s nothing left to save in either of our homes.”
Her companion’s only answer was action. Rote fell to earth like a meteor, sending golems toppling to the ground. Claws shredded tritanium in a surge of fury and a burst of motion. Shadows cloaked her movement and tore at metal joints. Massive bodies collapsed, inert, as the spirit pressed through the crowd.
Then the human pilots caught up to what was going on, and her progress ground to a halt. Jone’s expanded senses caught the rumble as m
ore and more reinforcements closed in from all sides; pure white steam billowed as gunfire, grasping fists, and hydraulic weaponry sought to pin the spirit down among the crowd.
Rote burst into smoke, a dark cloud that raced through the dense forest of golem legs toward the dropship.
Once there, she pressed herself against the vessel’s oversized, reinforced double doors, squeezed through the cracks, and was gone.
“We’re inside!” The spirit paused and re-formed, a tremor of fatigue and fear emanating from her burning core. “What now—”
A piston-powered punch slammed into them from out of nowhere and crushed them against the unyielding wall. One of Rote’s horns hit the metal hard—and cracked, sending a shudder of agony through them both. Disoriented, the edges of the spirit’s form rippled with tension, her heart aching from the relentless pressure.
Jone pushed her awareness through Rote’s body and took control, just for an instant. Together, they shifted to the side and let the golem’s fist thump against the hull.
Rote tore the oversized arm free of its owner and used it to crush the war machine's cockpit.
The golem crumpled to the floor, its broken chestplate leaking crimson. Rote leaned against the dented section of hull near the door, feeling at her cracked horn and wincing. “Not good.” Behind them, a rush of air heralded the double doors sliding slowly open, a host of golems visible through the crack. “Very not good. Plan, please?”
“Yeah. Keep moving.”
“Awesome. That’s the detailed Jone I know and love.” The spirit complained, but she followed the instructions, anyway.
Not like we have any choice.
Further inside, the ship was a mismatched set of sizes—corridors and rooms sized for golems, but machinery sized for people. The walls and floors were pristine, textured metal: panels and armored conduits, metallic gray and soulless, lightly etched with arcane sigils. Jone saw no signs of crew quarters; those were probably somewhere securely far away, well insulated from the hostile environment of Rote’s homeland. In fact—
Hero of Arcadia Page 4
