Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice

by Van Allen Plexico

  “We had no quarrel with you,” Mirana was calling to Garvael.

  “Liar,” he shot back, his tone hateful. “I know why you have come here; what you want. Cevelar told me. You seek to steal the Shield. That is why I sought to stop you outside the Spire.”

  Mirana and I exchanged looks. The Shield. Well. Now we knew the prize we would be fighting for—assuming he was up for another fight.

  I scarcely should have wondered.

  “I have signaled for my mechanoid army to come here from outside,” he barked at us. “They will finish the job they started.”

  “Those robots won’t be finishing anything,” Binari told him with a little chuckle. “You will be needing to build some new ones.”

  “Liar!” the sorcerer cried again. His expression darkened with anger bordering on rage. He screamed something more, mostly unintelligible, then stepped toward us and raised his hands. A violet nimbus appeared all about them. A second later, a barrage of purple lightning bolts flared out.

  In the relatively narrow confines of the corridor, we could scarcely dodge his attack, but we all did the best we could. The five of us dove left and right, attempting to get out of the line of fire. The blasts caught me along my right leg and scorched it in a jagged line from my hip to below my knee. Clearly Garvael was formidable; he possessed reserves of power beyond what I would have expected from a mere mortal—or at least he had access to that kind of power, whatever its source. In fact, at the moment, his available power reserves appeared to far outweigh my own. I resolved to launch a frontal assault and take him down before he could harm my companions. Given his obvious advantage over me at the moment, as well as my limited access to the Power radiating out from the Fountain back in the Golden City, I knew it might well be a suicide run. Still, I couldn’t allow him to harm Mirana—nor would him harming the others currently in my care sit well with me either. Rolling over and back onto my feet in a flash, sword in hand, I started to rush him.

  As it turned out, there was no need.

  Davos stood just ahead of me and to my left, and he had the silver rifle-looking weapon up and at the ready. He fired it repeatedly as he rumbled forward, advancing relentlessly on the sorcerer. The gun shrieked as it discharged bolts of green electricity that expanded into crackling spheres as they streaked along the corridor ahead of him. One after another they struck Garvael in the chest, blasting him head over heels backwards.

  I still wasn’t sure precisely what that weapon was or what it was doing, but I was without question now impressed with it.

  Garvael fought his way back to his feet, dust and debris raining down onto him. He brushed himself off, raised his hands again—and more crackling green blobs of energy struck him, hurling him head over heels, farther down the hall.

  Over the next few moments we swarmed our opponent and overwhelmed him with force. As Davos left off with the blasts from his silver rifle, Binari hurled his own lightning bolts, knocking Garvael back to the floor. Mirana was upon him then, her sword rising and falling. From my position to her right I could see him blocking her blows with his forearm; his cloak must have been made of an extremely tough and protective material.

  “He doesn’t seem so impressive without his robot army,” Binari observed as he prepared to unleash another electrical barrage.

  “‘Keep him off balance,” I ordered, as he fought to evade our attacks and drive us back. “Don’t allow him to rise.”

  Mirana moved in again to strike at him with her curved sword, but this time he saw her coming and anticipated her attack. He reached out past the sword, managed to grasp her by the wrist, and pulled her past him, hurling her to the floor. In the same motion he got back to his feet and stood there, glaring defiantly at us. Then, with a scream of what must have been pent-up frustration, he directed both of his hands at us and blasted away with a fusillade of lightning bolts.

  The first barrage took down Davos; the second caused Binari to curl into a protective ball and pull his cloak tighter around himself. With Mirana still lying stunned a few meters away, where he had thrown her, I knew his next attack would be directed at myself. Thus I resolved in an instant to switch from defensive to offensive tactics again and go right at him.

  The first swing of my sword nearly decapitated him. Stunned, he aborted his planned attack and stumbled away, attempting to regain the initiative. I had no intention of allowing him that kind of time. I pushed after him, swinging hard, forcing him backwards until he reached the spot where Mirana had now gotten to her hands and knees. She lashed out with a boot hard to the back of his shin just as I reached in and crossed his chin with the pommel of my sword.

  Issuing a sort of muffled moan, Garvael collapsed to the floor.

  Recovering, we all stood over him, gazing down. He was indeed out, though he still breathed.

  “Like I said,” Binari reminded us, “not much without his robots.”

  Davos offered him a grim smile, then turned to Mirana and me. “Not much once these two ladies got to him,” he said.

  I had no interest in their platitudes. I ordered Mirana to use a length of cord she’d brought from the supplies in Solonis’ cargo cube to bind our foe hand and foot. And thus we left him there, unconscious and firmly secured. Would someone come along later and rescue him? One of his surviving robots or a sorcerer ally, perhaps? Or might he free himself eventually? Those all seemed to be likely scenarios, but honestly I couldn’t have cared less at that moment.

  The tracking device was flashing faster now, all the lights on its surface green. Solonis seemed sure this meant the cosmic weapon we sought was nearby. So we pushed on, deeper into the Spire’s interior, heedless of what new resistance we might encounter.

  “As we approach the item,” he said to me while we walked, “you should begin to sense it.”

  I looked at him. “Why is that?”

  “We gods are attuned to all the objects of power, to one degree or another.” He pursed his lips. “Can you not sense when your own axe is nearby?”

  I thought about this and shrugged. “Perhaps. Until recently, it was always nearby.” This thought caused me to grow angry, so I attempted to set it aside. “Perhaps I never noticed,” I added, “or had grown used to it.”

  He nodded. “Very likely. But the Shield—if that is indeed what we will find here—has been lost to our kind for millennia. Its aura is not one you are familiar with. I suspect you will become aware of its presence the second we draw near to it.”

  “Hmm,” I offered as we continued to walk.

  “What exactly are these Cosmic Weapons?” Binari asked, scurrying up to the front of our procession alongside Solonis. “No one has yet explained to me precisely what we are dealing with, or where they came from.”

  Solonis spread his hands. “They are older than humanity, older even than the gods. We do not fully know of their origins.”

  “My people held a few of them in our control, millennia ago,” Mirana noted. “Or so I am told. Later, though, some fell into the hands of the gods, like the Axe of Lady Karilyne.”

  “Yes,” Solonis said, nodding. “And they thereby became associated with the gods who wielded them.” He gestured towards me. “Karilyne’s Axe… Baranak’s Sword… Alaria’s Knife…”

  “But what are they?” Binari pressed. “Besides old, and claimed by gods.”

  Solonis shrugged. “There are stories. Rumors. Some say each of them contains a fragment of a black hole, and therefore generates an invisible connection to some vast power source, a universe or a dimension away. I suppose this is possible.”

  “It would mean they are both powerful in their own right,” Davos observed, “and also formidable due to their connection to some distant power source.”

  “Yes,” Solonis said again. “Much like our own connection to the Power radiating out from the Golden City.”

  “Not at the moment, it isn’t,” I pointed out, frowning.

  Solonis sighed. “My lady is correct.” He shook his head
in frustration. “I do not know the cause of the drastic loss in the flow of the Power to us, but I intend to discover it, sooner or later.” He met my eyes and for once looked deadly serious. “And we will correct it.”

  I nodded at this and looked away. We continued marching along, slaves to the flashing lights on Solonis’ box.

  I ignored the rest of their chattering. The others apparently were fascinated by the topic of the Cosmic Weapons and pressed Solonis for more answers. My own thoughts drifted, going mostly in circles. I was not terribly interested in any of the technical details of all this, no matter how important Solonis seemed to feel it was to explain them. I simply wanted the items so that Cevelar couldn’t have them, and couldn’t do whatever mischief with them he planned to do. More importantly, I wanted him, at my mercy, to punish him for daring to abduct and imprison me.

  And for daring to bring the name of the golden god of battle into his sordid plans, as well. For my own sake, I intended to beat him down. But for Baranak’s sake, I intended to destroy him. As long as the Fountain flowed, I could not kill him, no. But I could reduce him down to a collection of scattered cells, so utterly obliterated that even if he could recover it would be ages before he was anything like himself again.

  That was my plan in general. The rest of the details I was happy to leave to the others.

  FOURTEEN

  Not fifteen minutes later we came to the room containing the Shield of Sevenaya. Excitement filled me, and the others as well, I was sure. For once it seemed we had reached a prize before our adversaries.

  The room was extremely large. It carried and conveyed the general appearance of an ancient Earth cathedral, and in fact felt majestic in that way. It must’ve been near the top of our section of the tower because its hexagonal shape sported an arched set of openings in six directions cut into the onyx black exterior walls. Through those openings I could see at least three sections of the Mosaic City beyond, with the fuzziness and fraying around the edges having grown worse. The cityscape on the right was more modern and futuristic, the one to the left Medieval. Perhaps they were the two through which we had recently passed.

  The open space around us did have the ambiance of a massive house of worship, though probably not one dedicated to me. There had always been other gods more popular with the masses. Even so, somehow I expected to find pews filled with faithful parishioners. But the big room was entirely empty.

  No. Wait. Almost entirely empty.

  As we filed into the tremendous chamber, our weapons at the ready, we could see that other figures were already in the room. Most noticeably, a handful of III Legion soldiers in their iconic white and green plate armor, standing around in a semicircle, looking the other way, all of them massive and intimidating. And we saw who stood at the center of their formation, reaching for a golden shield.

  It was Cevelar. He had beaten us to the prize, after all. Again.

  Another thought gave me pause then: I had seen that object before. Recently. But when? …Yes. The duplicate Mirana had carried it during the battle in the atrium. But that made no sense. How could she have had it then, if it was still here now? I put it all aside and focused my attention on my foe.

  “Stop,” I called out. By doing so, I wasn’t spoiling any chance for surprise. He had to already know we were there. My goal was simply to buy some time. Because once he acquired that Cosmic Weapon, along with my axe and the Knife of Alaria, he would be halfway to the finish line—and the rest of us would be dead.

  For some reason, he actually did stop when I commanded it. He turned and looked at us and a smile—a smile!—spread across his face.

  “Ah yes,” he said, “My lady of the icy wastes. Here at last.” He gestured toward what I now assumed must be the Shield of Sevenaya, which his men were now attempting to remove from its mooring. “And here too late again, as you can see.” As he spoke, another group of various-sized individuals moved around to where I could see them. One was quite large; at least as big as Davos, and seemingly of the same species.

  I motioned for my companions to wait, as I attempted to delay Cevelar and get a better sense of the forces at his disposal.

  “You would do well to return to your ice castle,” he barked at me, “and there await the events to come amidst the desolate surroundings you favor.”

  Delaying was one thing, but I was not interested in bickering or trading petty insults with him. Still, there were things needing to be said. “Give me back my axe, Cevelar,” I commanded, “and perhaps I will not hurl you into the Fountain after I have defeated you and ruined all your schemes. Perhaps eternity in the Dungeons would be sufficient.”

  At that he laughed theatrically. “I possess the Axe, the Knife, the Hammer and now the Shield. Four of the six. You are running out of chances to interfere with my work!”

  “The Hammer?” I gave Mirana a worried look, and she returned it. This was more than we had known. When had Cevelar found the time to locate and retrieve that one?

  My suspicions were confirmed by his subsequent utterance.

  “I no longer toil in isolation,” he stated. “The Fountain yet flows, barely; Borodina will find her way back to me in good time. Meanwhile, I have used the power of the Knife and the Axe to free Myhadra and Tharandar from their unjust imprisonment among the humans on Candis.”

  This caused my heart to sink. It meant he now had at least two other gods working with him. The four of them—Cevelar, Borodina, Myhadra and Tharandar—had been trapped in stasis for centuries on Candis, accidentally buried far beneath the surface, until humans had stumbled upon them and awoken them. From what I had heard, their leader, the ruthless Kambangan, had also been present, but had fallen into a trans-dimensional vortex and become lost. The others were captured by the humans, given that they were on the one world in the galaxy where conditions prevented the gods from using their powers or opening portals to walk away. As tough as the walls of reality were in the vicinity of Candis, though, the Knife of Alaria would have been able to penetrate them. He wasn’t lying, then. He’d used the Knife to go back to their place of imprisonment there, and he’d thereby brought two more allies onto his side. I cursed.

  “If you are so close to succeeding at your nefarious scheme,” I told him, “then I must stop you here and now.”

  “You are welcome to try, Ice Queen,” he replied. He snapped a command and in response the individuals who’d filed out moments earlier rushed towards us.

  I was sick of debating him anyway. “Fight!” I cried, my sword singing as I raced forward.

  The group he had sent against us looked remarkably similar to our own team. The big gray alien advanced upon me, huge hands outstretched, but Davos moved between us and grappled with him. Mirana meanwhile dueled with two swordsmen and Binari hurled lightning bolts at a shorter human who was firing back at him with various armaments.

  I aimed straight for Cevelar, but a tall figure in shades of green moved into my way. His hair was blond, his complexion fair, and he held a blast pistol in one hand and a decent-sized sword in the other. I checked my charge and brought myself up short, ready to fight.

  Neither of us speaking, our blades crossed.

  Given his size, his strength and his quickly-apparent skill, I realized quickly this would not be a brief fight. Even so, no mortal could long stand against me with merely a blade. I therefore kept one eye on the pistol in his left hand, assuming he would feel compelled to resort to it soon enough.

  Much to my surprise, he holstered the weapon and doubled down on his swordplay. And thus we dueled, one on one, for some brief amount of time that seemed to me like hours.

  I ran through most of the standard tricks I’d learned over the centuries, and when they were exhausted I switched to more unorthodox approaches and styles. Every time he parried me and countered with something I’d not seen before. It started out surprising, then frustrating, then maddening. Who was this man who could go toe-to-toe with a god?

  Moving back a step, I regar
ded him anew, studying his face, his appearance, his colors. His…Aspect? Was there the aura of the Power about him, however faint? Was this some god I had known ages earlier in the Golden City and somehow forgotten?

  I gave ground again, stepping back, and raised my left hand to motion for a pause in our battle. Before I could speak, however, he brought his own sword up in a salute. A wicked smile crossed his thin lips and he bowed his head ever so slightly.

  “My Lady Karilyne,” he said, “I thank you for this exercise.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, the other battles around me nearly forgotten as I puzzled over this odd swordsman.

  In response he only laughed at first, then winked. “There are more of us than perhaps you know,” he said. “And your City is not the only city.”

  And with that he tossed me a jaunty little salute, shimmered like a candle flame in a strong breeze, and disappeared.

  For almost two full seconds I stood there, immobile, wondering what I had just witnessed—and who I had just encountered. Then I blinked, set it all aside, and returned my attention to the matter at hand. The path ahead of me now clear, I leapt over the nearest soldier and continued directly for Cevelar.

  Seeing me coming, and seeing that his defenders had failed to stop me, he shouted orders at the Legion soldiers still attempting to dismount the Shield. He’d been premature in his boasts, his mysterious defender had abandoned him, and consequently a frantic look moved across his pale features.

  As I attacked, one of the heavily-armored legionaries turned and directed his quad-rifle at me. A devastating weapon, it features three large barrels that can unleash different types of energy beams and a fourth barrel that fires various projectiles. I reached out, grasped the uppermost barrel in my left hand, and froze it. With a simple twist, it shattered into metal fragments that rained down before the astonished soldier.

  In a flash I was past him and closing in on Cevelar. I raised my sword high.

  At that moment the Shield finally came loose from its display stand. One of the legionaries turned and offered it to Cevelar. He snatched it away and raised it just in time to block my sword’s blow.