The Panagea Tales Box Set

by McKenzie Austin

  “Yes, well,” Kazuaki convinced himself to return his hand to his side, “sentiments never were one of my specialties.”

  “Do not joke, Captain,” Bermuda uttered, her voice choking, “please.”

  Kazuaki’s eye crept over her. From the boots on her feet, his gaze crawled upward. Her long legs, her hips, her chest, her neck, her lips, eyes, hair. He wanted to memorize every inch of her, down to the look of disappointment on her face, as he saw perfection in that too. “What do you want me to say?” he whispered. “It’s our most efficient shot at victory. I can fight for the rest of time, Bermuda, but not you. Not the crew. Not Panagea. The world can’t take much more of this.”

  The quartermaster tried to put on a brave face, but he saw through her. Kazuaki became a critical piece of Bermuda; he was the strength she lost when Ty Aldon fell. She saw who she used to be when she looked at him. A powerful, unyielding person. At first, she thought, if she spent enough time around Kazuaki, she could become that person again. But he shifted into more than just a tool for her to rediscover herself. “What is a world without you in it?” she whispered back.

  Her words pulled him in. His sober brain would have kept him at bay, but the whiskey gave him a push. For years, Kazuaki kept himself in control around her. Not only was she in a perpetual state of despair from Ty’s death, but his feelings for her were impractical in every way. Ty’s death destroyed her. He vowed never to put her in that situation if he could help it. A separation would kill her ... and separation was inevitable. She lived in pain now, but if he gave in to his temptation and pursued a romantic relationship with her ...

  No. Immortals and mortals just did not mix.

  “Where are my manners?” he asked, listening to the music as it sprawled from the phonograph. Attempting to change the subject, he propositioned her. “Would you care to dance?”

  Bermuda looked behind him at the phonograph. “You don’t dance,” she accused, more than a little relieved to abandon her vulnerability for the moment.

  Kazuaki took one of her hands. He summoned all the memories from a few hundred years ago when he learned formal dances from one of his more jubilant crew members. “One dance won’t kill me,” he joked, though the dark humor only irritated his companion.

  He led her across the floor, but her movements were clumsy and awkward. Even when victim to his inebriation, Kazuaki’s steps were fluid, but Bermuda had trouble keeping up. “What I meant to say was, I don’t dance,” she admitted, confused how she could slaughter an army with skillful choreography, but could not perfect a simple box step.

  Kazuaki waltzed into dangerous ground. He thought he could balance on the line without crossing it, but liquor and natural human selfishness prodded him. Her touch did things to him. Despite his best efforts to resist, he felt his fingers on the small of her back spread, trying to take in as much of her as he could before the opportunity vanished. She did not appear burdened by his actions. Perhaps it was his imagination, or wishful thinking, but she even seemed to melt into his touch a little.

  Their box step started with them at arm’s distance from each other. But with each additional step, their bodies crept closer. The gap between them became nothing more than a sliver. Bermuda felt his heart. It was wild with an intensity she only thought it mustered in the heat of battle. Though she tried to quiet it, the beating organ in her chest matched his. It supplied weightlessness in her stomach. “Is there no other way?” she asked, her words soft in their proximity to his ear.

  Kazuaki failed himself when he lowered his head. He rested the side of his rough jaw against the softness of her cheek. He was derailing. But damn, it felt good. “It’s the only way,” he forced himself to say. “With them paralyzed by the nightmares, they can’t use their Chronometers as a weapon ...”

  Bermuda knew all of this. His skin against hers sent an invisible shock of lightning through her bones. She, too, was falling. For years after his death, her heart still belonged to Ty. But it was a lie to say a romance with the captain never filtered into her thoughts. Long nights on the sea could be lonely. She delighted in her strength never to pursue it though. Her resistance was the only thing that tempered her hatred for her otherwise weak heart.

  The quartermaster made a promise to herself to never let her heart stray into another situation where it could crumble as Panagea was. But promises all around broke today. They shattered like glass around her feet. And in the heat of the moment, feeling the warmth of Kazuaki’s chest pressed up against hers, she would have thrown her boots from her feet and walked on the shards of those broken promises if it meant one more minute with him.

  Still ... the timing was atrocious. “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” she said. One last-ditch effort to put a wall between herself and a dangerous situation.

  Kazuaki smirked. His eye closed as he pulled her closer still. His last shred of volition abandoned him. She consumed him. His ego reassured him it was okay, he deserved this, just one taste of her unadulterated closeness. “I will miss you the most.”

  Bermuda lifted her chin. He lowered his gaze. Her eyes darted around his face. It felt like she was suffocating but in the most thrilling way. His lips lingered perilously close to hers, teetering on the last microscopic shred of self-control he possessed. The whiskey on his breath surrounded them, but it brought her no discomfort. The only discomfort she felt was knowing the moment might end. She couldn’t let him go. “I’m sorry, Kazuaki ...”

  He stopped himself from closing the centimeter that separated her lips from his, but he did not pull back. He couldn’t. But her apology was a clear sign that they should stop what they were doing. What they were about to do. Though her words pained him, he found some relief in her sense. “You’re right,” he said, summoning all his will power to pull himself back an inch.

  He misunderstood her. Bermuda felt her heart pound harder than it had before. “No,” she said, but stopped herself. She just had to do it. “Kazuaki ...” The quartermaster inhaled, trying to breathe in the last seconds of the moment. “Forgive me.”

  Before he realized what happened, Bermuda reached up with great speed. Her aim was direct and her force purposeful. She sank her fingertips into the socket that hid behind the bloody cloth tied across his head. The gelatinous sphere popped into her palm as she pried it from his skull, ripping it and the cloth from him in one swift pull. She squeezed the cursed eye in her hand until she felt it burst from the pressure. Kazuaki cursed and stepped back. He brought a hand to his bleeding socket as he took to a knee.

  Bermuda let her guilt devour her. Along with the potential to lose themselves to each other, the eye was gone. She crushed Mimir's short cut to cleanse his soul in her hand. Kazuaki would be angry. No, he would be livid.

  But he would be safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The flying machine, restored and functional, waited for its pilot outside Aggi Normandy’s residence. Kazuaki stared at it from his place at the window. A weak ray of morning light punctured through the gray smog that clung to the sky. It pierced the glass, highlighting the dust particles floating around the ragged captain’s form. Though the light was soft, it was far too bright for him. He pulled back from the window, away from the dull shine that split his dehydrated brain in two. He wished to spare his suffering head. It hurt enough from the alcohol consumption and the familiar sting of having its eye ripped from the socket.

  A chair across the room provided him with relief. Kazuaki slid down onto the cushion and rested his face in his scarred hands. His mental health’s current state matched his horrid physical appearance. He felt like a complete ass for what went down with Bermuda. His anger filled the spacious room last night. He still heard it echo off the walls of his mind as he berated her for what she’d done. Kazuaki wasn’t even mad at her for ripping out his eye ... he was mad at himself. Mad he let his guard down. Mad he abandoned rationality and succumbed to his primal desires. That he illuminated his lingering feelings of lust for h
er. That she now had to deal with that on top of everything else.

  She refused to leave while he chastised her. Bermuda stayed and endured the storm that was Kazuaki’s fury. It wasn’t until he admitted her efforts were in vain, that he tried ripping his eye out many times before only to have it grow back, that her broken heart carried her out of the room. The look on her face, complete dejection, haunted him.

  Kazuaki lifted his face from his hands and stared across the room. He wanted to go to her chambers before the light on the horizon rose. But he couldn’t. Embarrassment and apprehension paralyzed the otherwise fearless man. He wished to tell her he was wrong. His fingertips touched the cloth that remained wrapped over his head. He was wrong about a lot of things.

  Nicholai, Aggi, Elowyn, and Umbriel entered the room first. Donned in defensive armor, they swept across the room and found seats beside Kazuaki. The Southeastern Time Father couldn’t contain his unease. “An emergency meeting on the morning of departure?” He leaned forward to get a better look at the captain. “I have to admit, Kazuaki, your request leaves me a little concerned.”

  Aggi, Elowyn, and Umbriel shared Nicholai’s apprehension in their expressions. Kazuaki stared at the door. The anticipation to see Bermuda grew despite his best efforts. “We’ll wait until everyone is here,” he said.

  Granite and his mongrel entered next, unfazed by the high volume of liquor consumed the evening prior. Bermuda was close behind. Her gaze darted to the captain for a split second. He locked eyes with her for as long as he could, but their exchange was over as soon as it began. She turned away and sat down.

  The other men dragged themselves in moments later, wearing their hangovers so well a blind man could see it. A series of groans escaped them as they pulled up to their chairs and slumped down. “I feel like death warmed over,” Rennington muttered, rubbing at his face to wake himself.

  “So does my upholstery,” Aggi murmured. The stench that came off his chairs in the library would take weeks to get out. And the vases ... he didn’t even want to think about what he found in there.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Brack waved his hand, his eyes closed. “Put it on my tab, Mr. Normandy.”

  Aggi grunted. “Those vases were antiques. I fear it’d take the rest of your life to pay me back, Mr. Joney.”

  Brack leaned forward on the table and laid his head down on his arms. “Then may death take me swiftly in battle today, so that I might escape my debt.”

  The Northeastern Time Father smirked. He turned his attention back to Kazuaki. “I received word from Bartholomew. He collected any soldiers Southern could spare. Emont of Southwestern has done the same. I’ve dispatched a capable army of men as well. They departed from Northeastern in the twilight hours. If the winds are favorable toward the flying machine, we should meet them at Panagea’s center roughly at the same time. Everything is in order.”

  Kazuaki nodded. “Everything but one,” he confessed as he reached up and removed the cloth from his head.

  The crew shielded their vision immediately, conditioned never to look at Kazuaki’s cursed eye. The others were slow to react, but it did not matter. There were no nightmares. Not from Kazuaki’s eye. It was gone.

  Bermuda shifted with an anxiousness. With excitement. Kazuaki felt her heart skip from across the room. When Revi realized nothing bad happened, he turned to face the captain, cautious. He remained unhurried to trust what he saw. “What the feck happened?” he asked in disbelief.

  “The details of the event are irrelevant,” Kazuaki replied, trying to steal another glimpse of Bermuda to gauge her reaction. He tried to convey a silent, sincere apology from the distance that separated them. She stared back, breathless, holding fast to her emotions. The captain cleared his throat and tore himself away from her. “I don’t know why it hasn’t grown back,” he admitted, “but our ace in the hole is gone.”

  The atmosphere shifted. Without an ability to stop the Time Fathers from reaching for their Chronometers, they were vulnerable to a uselessness, save for Aggi and Nicholai. One pull of the crown and their best weapons, Kazuaki and the crew, fell powerless.

  Rennington shrugged, and he sat up from his slump. “Who cares? This is good news. The captain doesn’t have to spend a shit afterlife with Mimir and now we can just kill the feckers as we should have from the get-go. Give us three seconds, pop-pop-pop, they’ll all be dead and we can get on with our lives.”

  “No,” Nicholai’s tone stood firm. “We can’t keep murdering everyone who disagrees with us. We’re here to ignite a change, not carry out the same tactic used by the Time Fathers of the past. If we kill them, we’re no better than those who executed the Earth Mothers. It would solve nothing. And even if it did, we wouldn’t be able to come up with suitable replacements in twenty-four hours. If you kill them, you’re damning Panagea.”

  “He’s right,” Umbriel interjected. “We’re making progress with the little we’ve done, but right now it’s but a drop in the ocean. If five of the eight divisions are frozen in time, Panagea will panic. The remaining three divisions will be rubble before the next day’s end.”

  The news disheartened the crew. Until now, a well-timed bullet solved everything for them. “So, we need a new plan?” Penn asked as he looked to the collective for insight.

  “No.” Nicholai stood from his seat. “We don’t need a plan. I’ve never needed one before.”

  “With all due respect, mate,” Rennington sounded from the corner, “that hasn’t exactly done well for you so far.”

  The Southeastern Time Father shook his head. “We survived this long, we can’t stop now. We’ve come too far and we’re running out of time. Southern, Southwestern, and Northeastern armies are already on the march. It’s now or never.”

  Aggi’s eyes swept out the window. He stared at the state of his home town, once a glistening example of near perfection, reduced to crumbling buildings ravaged by disaster. Morale was at an all-time low. Joblessness and homelessness infected his land. He was ready for change. His people needed it. The world needed it. “The flying machine is outside and loaded up,” he said. “We’ll follow the Northeastern border to the center and meet the armies there. Let’s go.”

  Aggi stood from his chair and led the way, determined to follow through. Others walked after him, too resolute to abandon the cause. Kazuaki lingered back. He hoped to steal a moment alone with Bermuda, but she slipped out with the rest of the crew.

  Nicholai approached the captain and put a hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad your eye is gone.”

  Kazuaki arched a brow. “Then you’re a fool,” he replied. “I made sure there was a shield and a gun in the flying machine for you. If they freeze their divisions, you will need them.”

  Nicholai shook his head. “No guns, Kazuaki. Darjal still haunts me,” he admitted, his voice low. His eyes glazed over as he lost himself to his internal demons. “I will never take another life again.”

  The captain remained unsympathetic. “They’ll kill you, Nico.”

  “You offered your life to see this plan through. I’m not afraid to offer mine. Truth be told, I prefer it that way.” His thoughts drifted passed Darjal to the countless people who suffered from the disasters’ wrath. With Panagea’s deterioration escalated by Southeastern’s state, he felt responsible for many of those deaths. “I already have enough blood on my hands.”

  Kazuaki watched as Nicholai walked off to join the others. He frowned and turned to Umbriel. “He’s going to get all of us killed,” he murmured. “If he’s dead and time is frozen, my crew is as good as done for. All they’ll have to do is put themselves in a favorable position, restart time, and put a bullet in our brains before we even realize what’s happening.”

  Umbriel crossed her arms. “Nicholai is an intelligent man, Kazuaki. I’m sure that knowledge is weighing heavily on him too. But that’s not what’s bothering you the most today, is it?”

  “Umbriel,” Kazuaki rubbed his temples, “I
have had a trying morning, and an even harder evening. Two hours of terrible sleep separates me from complete insanity. If you have something you want to say, please skip the cryptic beating around the bush and just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Despite his verbal tirade, the Earth Mother smiled. “You certainly did have a rough night, didn’t you?” She gestured to his missing eye.

  Her damnable comforting aura eased his tense shoulders. Kazuaki sighed. “I don’t understand it,” he admitted, his voice quiet. “I’ve tried to rid myself of Mimir’s influence for years. I’ve ripped the feckin’ thing out myself a handful of times. I don’t know why it hasn’t come back this time.”

  Umbriel tilted her head. “It wasn’t you who tore it out then?” she asked, though the way she said it, it almost seemed as if she already knew.

  “No,” Kazuaki confessed. “Bermuda did.”

  A slow smile appeared on Umbriel’s face. She did not appear surprised by his admission. “I know they’ve fallen from mankind’s memory now, but you know, I remember a time when the gods ran rampant through Panagea. Their capacity was incredible. We stood in awe of their omnipotence. But even gods have no patent on miracles. The world is full of them. We’re blind to them because we can’t see them with our eyes ... but it’s often the invisible forces that possess the most power.”

  Kazuaki narrowed his eye. He was hung-over. He was tired. Though he considered himself a philosopher, he didn’t pick up on the hints Umbriel dropped. “What’s all that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  The Earth Mother maintained her steadfast smile. “I should think it’d be fairly obvious.” She slipped off, headed outside toward the others.