by Casey Eanes
“Stop playing games with me, Nyx! It’s time we finally settle this!” he screamed. The distance separating Nyx and Seam evaporated as he dispatched the morels with vicious slashes, crippling their crude advance. He skewered three morels with his shifted hand, and the creatures flailed wildly in their last moments. “Don’t make me break all of your toys.”
Nyx said nothing as twenty morels locked arms, forming a human wall around their master. Twenty became thirty, then forty, a thick human bastion of protection. A blood-red explosion ripped through the bodies and sent them hurtling through the field. The first was followed by a second, no more than fifteen meters from Seam, knocking him from his feet.
The barrage intensified as Seam caught a glimpse of a Lottian armored carrier equipped with a mortar firing from the distant edge of the field.
Seam glared at the new threat, calculating his next move, but before he could turn his attention back to Nyx he could feel her presence slipping away. And then like that, she was gone. Lotte’s army had bought her the distraction she needed. Seam cursed and his blood boiled with rage.
“Your Highness! It is him!” A breathless soldier slumped to a knee before Aleigha, panting for air. The young soldier’s uniform was soaked in sweat from the battlefield, his body shaking uncontrollably from standing in the queen’s presence. The young man dropped his eyes, refusing to lift his gaze to her, but his voice was strong and unwavering. “Forgive me, your highness.” The young man took a deep breath. “Your son...your son has returned to Lotte.”
Aleigha stepped forward and placed her hand on top of the soldier’s bowed head. “Look me in the eyes and repeat yourself, soldier.”
The cadet humbly lifted his gaze to meet the queen’s and trembled as he uttered the news. “King…” His face twisted, straining to correct himself. “Seam of Vale was spotted outside the ruins of Faylon. He is not far, my queen.”
“Where in Faylon?” Aleigha’s stare was piercing as she inched closer to the trooper.
“The fields of Allium, twenty miles southeast. He is alone.”
Aleigha stepped to a nearby window and peered out over the fields below, the sun setting over the plains, lighting them ablaze with a brilliant orange hue. She squinted, looking at the horizon, as if waiting to see her son break into view.
“What was his state? He is alone?”
“Yes. Fighting alone.”
“Fighting!? He attacked our men?” Aleigha’s eyes lit with an unbridled intensity as she turned back toward the soldier.
“No, my queen. Our patrols found him fighting a morel swarm...by himself.”
“A swarm, this close to Vale?” Aleigha’s face softened as she pondered the news. “You are sure he is alone? Did he advance on our patrol?”
“No, my lady. We lost visual after firing on the swarm. He followed them into the nearby wood across the fields before we could set a perimeter.”
“How is this possible?” Aleigha whispered to herself as she stepped back to the windowsill, staring back out over the open fields below. “I want the garrison tripled inside the city.”
The soldier rose and bowed low before Aleigha. “As you wish, my queen. I will leave with haste.”
“You’re not leaving. Not yet. Send word for Olsen that I want all stationed Guardsmen by my side. Get Donahue on the coms. I need to talk to him as we will ride out to meet him head on.”
The soldier’s face twisted as he tried to hide his true thoughts. “My lady?”
Aleigha glared back, her face like steel, “That’s an order, soldier. We are going to bring him in. Now.”
Dyrn glared into a small screen mounted to the wall, shaking his head and grumbling to himself. He scribbled a few notes on a nearby datapad and turned back to the screen, watching the world unfold before his most recent masterpiece. The screen flipped and changed to the perspective of another product, surrounded by a cave, trying to slink further into the darkness. Like a rat...how far you have fallen, Nyx. The screen flipped once more, revealing a deep wooded grove, a mass of morels filling the perspective. Dyrn placed a jagged fingernail against the screen before flipping back to Seam’s point of view. He turned to a nearby console and pressed a button, before speaking into a lifted microphone.
“Turn back, Seam. She is not far from your last mark. She must be recalibrated, and I know you can quickly dispatch her. There is a reason I sent you to her first.”
Dyrn looked back to the screen, waiting for the desired response as his vessel redirected. Instead, Seam turned in the opposite direction, sprinting at full speed away from the coordinates Dyrn had just uploaded.
Dyrn screamed with fury, “No! What are you doing?!”
“You said you left him for dead!” Aleigha’s voice broke as she shouted, refusing to restrain her anger over the commlink to Bronson. “The carrion birds should have picked his bones clean by now if you were honest with me, Captain Donahue!”
“My lady.” Bronson shook with every fiber of his being before the screen that had been hastily rolled into his cell. Aleigha’s face blazed in bright blue light. “I swear to you, he was hardly alive when I left him. I cannot explain what your soldiers have seen. It would have taken a miracle—”
“Miracle!? This is no miracle, Captain! This is a curse on our Realm and my house. It ends today.”
From his perspective Bronson could see a small squad of Lottian rooks flanking whatever craft the queen occupied as they sped through the open plains.
“My queen, if I may implore you. Please, don’t go after him. Allow me the honor of riding out to him now. Your life is too precious to jeopardize.”
“It’s far too late for that now, Bronson. I am going to bring him in, even if I must do it myself. I will regroup with you after he is captured.” Aleigha glanced off screen and Bronson heard the engines of the rooks begin to slow.
“Permission to engage the target, your majesty?”
“Engage.”
The sound of machine guns roared over the com’s channel, and Bronson stood up, his hand shaking as the connection flickered with panicked energy until cutting off.
“Aleph above,” he whispered.
Seam shot after the Lottian carrier like a rocket. As he ran, great plumes of upturned earth jolted up from the ground as the military vehicle unleashed a maelstrom of shells over him. Seam ran so unnaturally fast that the soldiers within the war machine didn’t have a chance to focus their aim on him, even a half a mile away. Their lives were rendered useless in a matter of seconds, as Seam ripped through the vehicle as if it were made of paper. Dyrn and his obsessive commands would have to wait. If she knows I’m here…
The echo of roaring of engines alerted Seam to a new threat. Standing by the wreckage of the carrier he could see them; a patrol of Guardsmen riding towards him on Lotte’s only squadron of rooks. The twelve war machines were older, nearly a generation of advancements had taken place in the Groganlands on rook vehicles, but these were still deadly. They had been a gift given to Seam’s late father from Wodyn, the former Sar. The gift had been a gesture of friendship but now it barreled toward him with all the warmth of careening bullet storm.
Seam stared at the oncoming rooks and smiled. He knew that this had something to do with his mother. Yes, she had found out that he was here and alive. This display was personal.
“Very well…” Seam whispered.
Not slowing or changing their course the rooks machine guns extended out from the craft and began lighting up the field.
Seam did not expect the sudden escalation and just barely shifted his hand into an impenetrable shield. Hundreds if not thousands of bullets sprayed over his crude defensive position and he cursed under the sudden pressure brought by the Lottian Guardsmen.
Focus. You have little time left. What will you do?
Seam knew the basics of rook maneuvers well enough to know the Guardsmen would pin him down under their fire while strafing around his defenses. Seam could not count to maintain a defensive positio
n for much longer.
“Enough of this.”
Seam leapt twenty feet in the air, a superhuman act that caused utter confusion for the Guardsmen. Their tracking movements could barely keep up with him, as he landed and came at them in a full sprint.
Seam grabbed one of the war machines and rode onboard the cockpit. A spiderweb of shattered glass showered over the main cockpit door as Seam thrust himself through the rook’s outer defenses. The Guardsman screamed as Seam opened the machine like a tin can, only to kill and throw the soldier out from behind the controls.
A few seconds went by, and Seam had taken full control of the vessel, rocketing it around to face the eleven others that had scattered in his attack. His hands flickered on the guns as he quickly set the weapons to automatically fire upon any movement in the vehicle’s field of view. The machine guns let out a torrent of fire, as the Guardsman struggled to comprehend what was happening.
Seam locked onto one of his adversaries, threw open the throttle and leapt out of the cockpit. The vacant rook shot out like a cannonball, colliding with the other in a fiery explosion.
“What is happening out there, Guardsman?” Aleigha stood transfixed at the twelve commlinks displayed over the single screen within her transport. Three feeds from the Lottian rooks had been cut off, each in a manner of seconds. The soldier’s eyes went wide, as he scanned the valley below them.
“I don’t know how this is possible, your majesty. I don’t have an explanation…”
The young soldier’s sentence was cut with the sound of mortar volleys thundering over the plain. The remaining nine rooks were volleying mortars unsuccessfully at their target, who moved with an indiscernible speed that made Aleigha’s jaw drop.
She spoke, her face grim, “Pull the men back and take me to him. Have the taze nets charged and ready.”
The soldier nearly choked, “You cannot be serious, my queen!”
“That’s an order! Have the others pull back and stand ready. I will give signal when you are to attack.”
The queen’s scout stood silently beside her. Aleigha whispered to him, “Be ready for what is coming, young one. You must earn your keep today.”
Seam had just lanced through a fourth rook, when he felt the Guardsmen pull back from the battle. A Lottian transport rumbled to the field, its banner and colors symbolic of the royal house.
Seam smirked. “Well mother…it seems you do have a spine.”
As the transport came to a stop, a small boy on the edge of adolescence hopped out. Wearing the tell-tale shade of green reserved only for the queen’s guard, Seam smirked at the foolish boy, a living remnant of a failed and ancient institution.
The young man stood; his hands dangling by his side, close to the weapons no doubt the scout bore. “Make way for Queen Aleigha of Lotte.”
Seam said nothing as a breeze of fall air blew through the trees and over him. He stared unblinking as his mother descended to the ground, her brown eyes locking instantly with her son’s.
Seam’s glare bore into her with frightening intensity, but Aleigha held up the sign of peace and walked toward him, unwavering.
“I thought you were dead, Seam.” Her voice was stilted in the intensity, but the words were true.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, mother.” The exiled High King looked away from her, the first to break their shared stare. His entire being recoiled from her presence. She had aged, but her eyes still held a fire that challenged him on a subconscious level.
“I want you to come back with me to Vale. We have much that must be discussed.”
Seam slowly morphed his hand into an oscillating array of different weapons. A lance turned into an axe, then into an ebony sword. “What is there to discuss? You made your feelings about me perfectly clear. What was it mother? That the next time you would see me would be in a coffin? No…mother there is nothing to discuss. Nothing.”
“Oh, Seam,” Aleigha’s countenance crumbled. “I should have never said those things.” At last her hands shook, and Seam was both relieved and dismayed. She was falling back into a role he both understood and could control; the doting, anxious mother.
“I wish I could take back what I said to you…when Zenith fell I…I…cursed myself for being so angry with you. We can still rebuild what we have, son.”
Slowly she approached him, and Seam relented his showcase of his new body’s features. She suddenly felt very small to him, and she opened her arms up for an embrace. “We can still restore what has been undone, my love. Please.”
To Seam’s surprise he found himself relenting, allowing himself to be embraced for what felt like the first time in his life. He could feel his mother’s sobs on his shoulder, and hear her whispers, “I’m so sorry, Seam. I’m so sorry.”
He awkwardly patted her on the back, trying to find words to comfort her when a jolt of pain like hot fire ripped through his neck. Seam recoiled, his arm grabbing for the small syringe that Aleigha had stabbed into his neck.
“You…” Seam snarled. He swung at her with all his strength, but his vision and powers were dulled in an instant. Whatever she had injected into him was powerful. The world was vibrating around him and Aleigha was moving too fast for him to catch. He saw her signal her scout, who approached swinging a long taze net in his hand. Other guardsmen joined the throng, each bearing a separate electrically charged net.
Seam cursed as he heard his mother issue orders, “Secure him and do not relent. We cannot afford for this monster to escape.”
The nets fell over Seam like a million electric spider webs. The current surged over him like lightning and Seam felt the world go dark in an instant.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They were coming. Willyn could hear the shrieking cries of the morels as they descended onto Rhuddenhall. The earlier chorus of cheers from the War Quorum had evaporated, overtaken by a cacophony of gunfire and bloodcurdling screams. Willyn unholstered her pistol and rushed to Luken’s side, lifting him from the floor. A long river of blood poured from his nose, and he struggled to steady himself, his knees buckling beneath him.
“He’s so strong,” Luken muttered to her. Willyn stared at his eyes as horror struck her heart. The gray of Luken’s eyes had been swallowed in blackness. “Run, you have to run,” he begged her.
“Not without you,” Willyn answered. “I know where we have to go. We just need five minutes.”
A booming bark filled the ceremonial chamber as Grogan soldiers rushed to surround the complex. Willyn turned to see Rander pull up a map from his datalink, his eyes wide with fear. Willyn stared at the projection of her city and saw an incalculable number of blue dots surrounding the outer gates, while red dots worked to bolster the defenses of the city.
Willyn’s mouth went dry and her gut clenched. “What are their numbers, Rander?”
Rander flicked his right hand through the projection as a scan analyzed the map.
“We are overtaken, my Sar. Outmaneuvered and unprepared...our losses in Zenith will be our downfall.” Willyn stared at the number that hovered between her and Rander. Thirty thousand. Rander stood dumbfounded. “How could Seam amass such a force this quickly?”
Willyn stared blankly at the number, her face stern. “This is not Seam. Candor faces a much greater enemy now.” Visions of Hagan’s face transforming into Isphet threatened to overtake her, but she buried her fear and forced herself into action. “Get on every datalink in the city, Rander. Tell the people to get to the tunnels. Direct our soldiers to fire the morel barrier forces onto the city.”
“But that will…”
“Yes,” Willyn cut him off. “Do not hesitate. Have every single missile and mortar barrage the morels even if it brings Rhuddenhall down. Get the people to the tunnels. We will make for Legion’s Teeth if we can survive this.”
“Aye, my liege.”
Willyn laid a strong hand on Rander’s shoulder as their eyes met.
Rander spoke first. “It is a good day to die, my Sar.”
>
An explosion went off overhead, causing the whole chamber to shake. A moment of silence filled the room, only to be filled with high-pitched cries of the thousands of shambling nightmares that poured into the streets.
“I will see you in Legion’s Teeth, soldier,” Willyn replied. Rander nodded and began his broadcast over Rhuddenhall’s datalink network.
“All Grogans - Make for the tunnels. Arm yourself and get to the tunnels. I repeat all Grogans…”
Willyn turned to Luken. “Can you stand? Can you run with me?”
Luken looked at her through a cloudy gaze, his voice distant. “I’ll follow you. Let’s go.” Willyn nodded and ran toward the back exit. Two guards stood at their post, their assault rifles drawn toward the sounds of the chaos erupting outside. Willyn called to them, “You two! You’re on point. You will escort us to the lifts immediately.”
The soldiers saluted her. The younger of the two spoke, “My Sar, let me help you.”
Willyn checked her weapon and steadied Luken’s frame against the soldier who came to their aid. Together, they carried Luken easily enough on their shoulders. Willyn barked, “We have to move quickly. No one is going to die on my account. Not today. Now move!”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers shouted as they bolted down the hall.
The passage was clear and the group of four made good progress as they pressed for the compound’s primary elevator bank. The hallway spilled out into a large foyer with two doors on each wall except for the wall with the four lift accesses. The room was surprisingly void of life despite the raucous sounds of battle raging nearby in the streets.