“Do we have to pretend though?”
“Yes. To the very end.” These words were definitive but left much unsaid. What did they pretend? Before whom? “Now, if we can’t cut through the beasts, we will go underneath.”
The twin brothers groaned.
“What about that demi-dragon? We could use him to dig.”
“No. Keep him sleeping. If he wakes up, he won’t go down without a fight and we don’t want to use force to beacon our position to the Pures.”
So that was the reason. They haven’t used their true power. My bottom felt sore and I moved, the fairies had a very good hearing as they tensed immediately.
“Check on them, Mira. She may want to run away.”
Mira’s liquid helmet returned to its place and a few powerful strides brought the man next to me.
“It’s a shame that you guys can’t deal with a driller,” I said with the purpose of whining up the fairy. Not really understanding why. Some culmination of the fucking shit that has been happening to me in recent months. And they deserved worse for taking Sol from me. The first moment, I got a chance to deal with them, I’d make them regret everything.
The brother stood unperturbed, watching the cold blackness cling to where we’d come from.
“Do you know how much separates us from the Academy?” he asked out of blue, ignoring my teasing.
I guessed that we made about half a mile. I said nothing. Mira nodded, appreciating the silence. “Two miles, and you hardly feel the distance. If we’re lucky, some sections of the makeshift tunnel already collapsed. Were you the one who freed Perses? Of course, it has to be you.” He turned to me. His mesmerizing eyes piercing my flesh, searching for the soul. “Do you think this is all a coincidence or luck? Think again. Some gods favor us.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. Except for the opening I noticed, and so I asked, “who is us?”
He knew right away. Mira and his brother looked no more than the late twenties, but they showed a spark of wisdom.
“This is bullshit.” Came from the other side of the ridge. I glanced the way the four had meant to dig. One of them held a power-leaking sword that they hadn’t used in the Academy. That thing was seriously formidable. How did they manage to get it through unnoticed? I haven’t sensed any artifacts from them.
Curses followed, and the sword slashed at the thick skin of the first driller. The beast twitched violently, a noise came out of it. I thought it slow, but its surge ahead left a blur behind my eyes. The other two drillers that had been entwined with it, moved on the cue. The passage was clear.
“Are you mad, Ara?”
“I’m tired of waiting, Akasa.”
“The Pures can sense the Rupturers.”
“Then, if come, I will cut their heads off, too,” Ara admitted with a smirk.
The ground shook and as rapid as the beasts disappeared, they returned. One exploded out of the ground, crashing the ridge like some sort of a punch, too powerful for a victim’s jaw to withstand. I expected some sort of mouth, teeth, something. Not a featureless stub.
Mira screamed as the driller attacked our trio. His armor snapped in place, fully covering him. At the last second, an enormous round shield of black liquid exploded out of his arm to defend him. He no longer cared about me or Lotian, and perhaps this saved us both as the beast corrected its surge and hit the fairy.
Atrocious hiss and odor of burning flesh filled the cave. Mira disappeared and with the driller. I had no idea what to do. The creature took him out as if he was an ant. This was insane. I grabbed Lotian by the gray cloth and retreated back toward the Academy. The massive hole made by the driller smelled of death. We passed it with care, then I ran down the cave.
Somewhere behind me, the fairies screamed in agony or anger. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. Not a bit. They deserved it. My foot caught a rock and I fell, tumbling down. As my mouth opened to cry out and arms extended to protect my face from whatever lay in the darkness, I hit the ground. It wasn’t the time to savor the pain though. A driller erupted out of the ground not more than twenty feet from us. I had no idea if that was the same that had killed the fairy. It was entirely featureless, no eyes or nose. How did it see me? Or maybe it wasn’t me who it saw. Maybe it sensed magic. In this case, the dampening cuffs made me invisible, but Lotian. Shit.
Without a thought, I reached to the ground, finding a fist-sized rock, my fingers closed and I threw it at the monster. Right where its face should be. It dissolved on impact.
“Hey asshole, get—”
It attacked.
I sucked the air, expecting pain. Expecting death. Expecting something but not this. It stopped ten inches from my face. Its porous skin smelled of dirt and dampness. Though it had no eyes, I knew it saw me somehow.
It froze, perhaps contemplating if I tasted good. Maybe it didn’t like the flavor of my magic? Maybe it preferred the fairies? Who knew? Either way, the driller retreated and left.
Utterly shocked, I forgot about the pain or the other fairies, and so I didn’t see the kick that knocked me out.
Chapter 17
While the kick sent my fragile consciousness into a dream state. His voice brought me back. I glanced around, biting the pain in my foot, forearms and left side of my face. The magic-dampening cuffs were gone. But the new prison was raised for me. A golden cube that floated above the floor. The second one was occupied by Lotian, who sat with his legs crossed.
“Finally awake,” Saaron said. I made a disgusting look, which froze as if struck by Medusa’s charming stare. I noticed something wrong about him. His eyes had that chromatic tint similar to the fairies, which had kidnapped us.
“Lotian, are you okay?” I asked, ignoring Saaron. The room beyond him drowned in darkness. Our beautiful cages radiated bright golden light.
“I failed you, Flare.”
“No time for that.”
Saaron snapped his fingers and a throne appeared where he stood.
“You should get ready the last words and proper farewells. Soon, I will have the tool to break the dragon’s bond. Killing you, Lotian, will be a breeze in comparison to what I have planned for our father. Old Atrax will meet a terrible end.”
His words weren’t right. His mind, I sensed it even in the cage, was infected. There was magic inside his head that was not his. Did someone use the Green Eye on him, too?
“Lotian, this Saaron…”
“I know. I sense it too.”
“The Green Eye. Someone used it on all of us.”
“The Green Eye?” Saaron snorted. “You understand so little about magic.” He then sat on the throne, his leg draped over the armrest. The air of nonchalance didn’t suit him, made him look out of place. This wasn’t the man who had come to the clinic to take me to the Academy.
He produced the Finger of Death and played with it for a couple of seconds as if only to evoke fear in our minds. We gave him nothing but blank stares.
“So, you stood behind Elleria,” I said flatly, sounding unimpressed.
The effect on his face was immediate. It creased and grimaced.
“That bitch,” he growled. “Complicated our perfect plan. She stole the Green Eye, learned about our scheme somehow. But we found out who had steered her.” A cruel grin bloomed on Saaron once a beautiful face. “Children of Entropy thought they can use her against her own kind! Fools. Ah, and there was one more. Black.”
A breath caught in my throat.
“Vesalius helped Elleria?”
Saaron laughed out aloud. He made the knife disappear. His melodramatic behavior didn’t work on me.
“Don’t listen to him, Flare. His words are poison.”
“Shut up, Lotian. Soon, she’s going to be mine! Mine!” The kind of rage that erupted from Saaron had very little in common with the dragon’s wrath. It
was madness. “The fucking fairy, Markus Black betted on our fall. Hugman was involved too. Now he is ours to poke and prod.”
“Why haven’t you arrested him then?” I asked unable to believe his words. I meant Markus Black.
“Because his stupidity benefited us. We failed to make the primary agenda work, but it doesn’t matter anymore. All that left is to make Mirenne and Atrax fight, and once they kill each other, I will have you, Flare, as my reward.”
“Let me out of this cage and I will kill you. I will kill you as you killed Issa Verax!”
He waved his hand as if my words were flies that needed to be swatted away.
“He did … what?” Lotian rose. The cube was twice as high as he was tall. He punched the wall of golden light but nothing happened.
“This fucker had sent five fairies in black liquid armors to kill her and kidnap us.”
“She knew too much,” Saaron hissed. “A loose end. Don’t worry, brother. You’ll join her soon.”
“Lay a hand on him and I will make you regret every second of your life, fucker!” I screamed, boiling with true rage. Darkness swirled, and one of the aforementioned fairies walked into the light.
There was a pause before the blackness revealed the blonde woman. Her chromatic eyes didn’t acknowledge me or Lotian.
“Simun returned.”
Saaron inclined his head, his attention torn between me and the blonde. “What of Baktus, Mard?”
“Lost to Bastiel’s shadow magic.”
The throne broke in half as Saaron’s fist dropped on it. He pulsed with ire, the anger consuming him like a disease.
“Did Simun succeed?”
“No,” the woman named Mard replied with excessive reverence. I wondered how Saaron came into the possession of such servants. I understood that he must have made a deal with an angel. Were these fairies the part of the deal? They were too powerful to serve him out of fear. They had to be. What did Saaron promise the angel to gain such allies?
I tried to speak to Lotian in my head, but that channel of communication has been blocked, the same as any other form of magic. The cages worked the same way as the runes in the Academy. If only Lotian could access them. He must have similar thoughts for he glanced at me troubled.
“Take the remaining Seven Hands and recover Nix! I must sever the bond, and while you are at it, remind him that I am waiting!”
Mard lowered her face in the unexplained respect and left.
“Kill the rest!” Saaron called after her a moment later. We couldn’t know if she heard him or not, as no reply came back.
I hissed, scratched, beat and eventually dropped on the floor. The inside of the cube had a stable temperature, but Saaron’s words made me shake with cold. Vivid nightmares conjured by my merciless imagination were too much to bear. All my demi-dragons dead, except for Saaron who kept me at his feet like an obedient dog. But I was neither a dog nor obedient. I sought a sharp retort. Something that would make Saaron’s ego bleed. Only, I couldn’t find a will to push away despair that clung to me like wet rags. There were the Pures, crunching millions of lives beneath their feet. Blinded by some remote power, they heeded nothing but their desires. I shifted, trying to expel the unwanted thoughts. It was then that Lotian spoke, “you must be a fool to believe that they will let you keep Flare.”
“He promised,” Saaron murmured breathlessly. “The promise such as this holds him accountable. Flare will remain in my possession once this world turns on its children. They won’t even know what happened until too late. By that time, I will, too, sit by the Sacred Table and watch the worlds beneath our feet, burn. It’s for the greater good.”
Lotian snorted. “They blinded you! We can help you before is too late!”
“Help me? No. I am about to ascend into godhood and I will keep her as my pet. I do not need your charity.”
Claws of despair tightened their grip on me then. I saw no hope. Nothing but death lay ahead. I thought I could counter these visions, but they swept me off into their depths.
Chapter 18
Nix
“They wanted you, Nix,” Dramer said, trying to catch his breath. The two attackers knew their craft well and fought formidably. If not for Bastiel, we would fail. That thought was a grim reminder that demi-dragons had much to learn. We were too young by the demi-dragon’s standards.
Bastiel’s whisps of shadow held the black-haired man with large chromatic eyes and spiked ears in their grip. Bastiel was awfully quiet, standing near the prisoner. His black, ankle-length coat and even darker long hair matched the mood. We were sickly worried about Flare. The Academy had been hit, and we knew it because of the emergency call we’d received from our father. Suddenly, all the differences between us meant nothing. More than a score of his Dragon Soldiers and Issa Verax were murdered in Saaron’s office. He, on the other hand, was at large. If not for Rosa Waterman, we wouldn’t know that Lotian and Flare both had been kidnapped by the same people who had attacked us. One more thing that would not see the final version of the report was the presence of the Titan of fire in Saaron’s office.
Her official statement sent without the approval of the board must have pissed them off, but at least we knew where we were. Bastiel revealed to us that Flare had sensed the Titan during her interrogation in the office. Was this what happened there? Did she go there to satisfy her curiosity? But that didn’t explain all other things like the Seven Hands.
“They must know about the bond,” Nix admitted. “They seek to sever it.”
“Why?” Dramer asked.
I could only guess.
“If they know who she is, it’s imperative to cut off all vulnerabilities. To them, Flare is a weapon.”
“Them? You mean unicorns?”
If I didn’t see the face of the man in the black liquid armor, I’d indeed believe that Mirenne risked, making her final move, but our prisoner banished that notion. He was a pure fairy. Somehow, pure fairies were considerably weaker than pure unicorns or dragons. He was the first pure fairy, I’ve encountered, too. I was about to answer Dramer when Bastiel said, “they cannot take Flare off the planet with two bonds in place. Neither of you can leave as long as you are bonded.”
“What? I’d never heard such a theory.”
“Because it’s not common knowledge,” Bastiel countered a little too sharply. “The longer I think about the past events in the Academy, the bigger and more complex pattern emerges. There are too many coincidences for my liking.”
“Maybe,” I admitted because the sound of this left my bones iced. Who could possess such knowledge and power to engineer the whole scheme?
Dramer’s muscles flexed and he lost interest in our theory-crafting. At this point, we knew nothing. Too many moving parts. And the most dangerous thing at the moment was to assume anything. One wrong assumption could lead us into the embrace of an enemy.
“Let’s ask this shit,” Dramer punched his palm, eager to beat the assassin.
“Careful, Dramer,” Bastiel warned. “That armor is one of the exalted artifacts. It has been made out of the interstellar dust, sacred and forged in the agony of a thousand souls. It’s dangerous to touch.”
Dramer hissed as he stepped back. “Then how do you…?”
“My magic is resistant to that thing. But breaking through, it is going to be a challenge.”
The closed warehouse in the industrial part of the city was a good spot for an interrogation. We surveyed a building we’d thought of buying when two assassins descended onto us. We managed to confine the damages to one hall. The building was obliterated completely and we didn’t want to wait for the Dragon Soldiers and the City Guards to arrive. We had captured one of them and now came a time to unravel the mystery. Who did they work for?
“Have you ever encountered a pure fairy, Bastiel?”
Our brother looked thoughtful for a momen
t. What was there to consider? He either did or not. I didn’t urge him. His power strained as he kept the enemy contained.
“Not like this one. But with a similar magic signature. They are created by the angels. You could say, the fairies are their servant and extension of their will. I am quite sure that angels cannot fully commit to physically manifest outside of the Heavens. But that’s only a theory. It doesn’t matter.”
I nodded, sorting his words out. It was too easy to forget how ancient Bastiel was. So, the angels were likely to be behind this. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.
“How do we make him speak?” Dramer asked. His torso steamed with the excess of the heat he produced. A trick he had learned when he was young and has done it since.
“Try asking him first.”
The enemy’s chromatic eyes appeared to see us for the first time. He showed no fear or even contempt. Barely a scrap of amusement hanging on his thin lips with a brief attachment.
“Who sent you?” Dramer asked a bit melodramatic, mouthing his question as if speaking to a child.
“You can save your brothers,” the fairy looked straight at me. “If you go with me.”
Dramer’s fist stopped a foot from the man’s face as one of Bastiel’s wisps coiled around the demi-dragon’s wrist. I withstood his words without outwardly showing my emotions. Something I’ve been learning my entire life. Keep emotions in check or they would consume you. Over a week ago, I had a taste of what the uncontrolled rage looked like. Most of my salary went to pay for the damage done in the parking lot. Saaron’s and Dramer’s accounts were frozen after the destruction they had caused in the city, a few years back.
“Tell me, fairy, do you fear death?” Bastiel asked when neither of us supplied a question.
“Death? You, half-mortals, and your pathetic rhetoric. If you truly want me to fear then do not talk about it. Show me.” His chromatic eyes glowed softly as the echo of his words returned to us. It was a large dusty place. “You don’t have, what it takes to kill, in you. I know all about dragons and in all your mighty rage, you hate killing. Now, give him to me and you can go free.”
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