The Panagea Tales Box Set

by McKenzie Austin

  “Do you call that a success?” she muttered, her back to Wulfgang. Staring after the child as he followed his mother down the sidewalk, limping, Elowyn shook her head. “I would hardly call it that.”

  “Well,” Wulfgang interjected, shrugging as he watched the two disappear around a corner, “she’s not killing him. Or herself. Or anyone else around her. So ... yeah.” He turned to E, a dim laugh escaping his mouth. “I certainly wouldn’t call it a failure.”

  “It is.” Her words were blunt. Forceful. “It could be better.”

  She knew what she needed to do. Elowyn couldn’t pussyfoot around the issue any longer. Her admitted love for the families of the Underground grew despite herself; it was feelings of sentiment that dulled her action. But she could not stay with them. They did not need her. They were a stepping stone for Elowyn Saveign, and they had served their purpose.

  She knew her next step. It had rattled around in her brain for the last several days, but she was too hesitant to pull the trigger. Too dulled by the camaraderie she felt for the boys of the Underground. For Wulfgang. He had proven to be a loyal and agreeable companion. But she had to remember that Wulfgang enjoyed the company of E.P ... not Elowyn Saveign.

  She turned to Wulfgang, sunlight reflecting off the metal of her helmet. “I need to get these to a scientist who better understands how these chemicals work with the human brain. I can’t do it by myself.”

  Wulfgang waved his wrist, leaning his halberd against his shoulder. “Piss on that. You’re pushing yourself too hard, E.” He paused long enough to grow a smirk. “I can see why Eastern militia valued you enough to give you that feckin’ armor now, though. There’s no stopping you, is there?” He held out a hand, gesturing back in the direction of the Underground’s entrance. “Come on. If you’re too afraid to engage in a friendly duel, then rest. Eat. At least take off that gods-damned helmet, for feck’s sake.”

  “I can’t.” Her words turned to ice. She needed to force her detachment now if she was to spare herself any psychological damage in the long run. She was already growing too close. “Not until the people are better, Wulfgang.”

  The man sighed, but his admiring grin remained. E.P. was an enigma. He knew the soldier loved the people of Brendale. Of Eastern. It showed in every decision E made. But for as much as the soldier wanted what was best for the citizens of the city, E rarely interacted with them. Not the people of the Underground, or those who walked the surface streets.

  Wulfgang thought, perhaps the soldier needed time. In the short period that he knew him, Wulfgang became aware that trust did not come easy to E. They’d known one another for a year, and E had yet to expose himself in any way. Still, the soldier’s spirit shined through that armor.

  Wulfgang couldn’t help but respect it and had no qualms chipping away at it day by day. He was close. He felt it. “We’re family now, you know.” He turned, lifting his hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight that accosted them. “You can trust us. Damn, E.P, you’re like a feckin’ brother to me.” He laughed, shaking his head. “You know I’d take a bullet for you, right?”

  She faced him, spying the sentiment in his eyes from behind her shield. Honesty dripped from him. He meant every word he said. Wulfgang reminded Elowyn of the crew. A human embodiment of the people she came to revere aboard Captain Hidataka’s ship.

  Though Wulfgang rubbed her the wrong way upon their first interaction, with his constant disregard for female ability, admittedly, he had grown on her. Elowyn learned to see his overprotective exploits for what they were. Defensive hovering over the women of the Underground came off as suffocating in the beginning, but the medic soon came to realize it was the only way Wulfgang knew how to show love.

  His expectations of the women were archaic. While he expected them to prep and prepare the meals, keep the encampment clean, and tend to the children, he also had expectations of himself and his men. They were to ensure their safety. They were to bring food. They were to protect them. One gender did not hold any more or less power than the other; their only limitations were their expectations.

  Wulfgang grew up with those beliefs. They were embedded into him. Elowyn frowned. It did not make him a terrible person. It was simply all he knew. And while his antiquated beliefs made her eyes roll, she knew he loved them. Each member of the Underground. E was not the only one he would take a bullet for. She knew he’d die for them all.

  Still ... her return to leadership required swift action. The only way to achieve her goal was to perfect the pills. To keep her people, and by extension herself, safe. “I’m going to take the pills to the facility,” she announced, bracing herself for an expected backlash. “I’m going to see if I can’t get someone there to take my notes and study them. They should be able to make a better product.”

  The shift in Wulfgang’s demeanor was tangible. His brows fell over his eyes and he adopted a rigid stance. “You can’t go in alone. They’ve increased their security since we raided it last.”

  “That’s exactly why I need to go in alone.” She turned, and though she could not see it over the towering buildings surrounding them, she stared in the facility’s direction. “I think if they see I’m not there with an army, they’ll be more inclined to hear me out. I need their help, Wulfgang. I thought I could do it, but I can’t perfect the formula by myself.”

  “We can help,” he said, emphasizing the familial unit at E’s disposal.

  She turned back to him, adjusting her posture to reflect more certainty. “Wulfgang ... you’re some of the best feckin’ warriors I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. If I were heading into a blood bath, I’d call upon you in a moment’s notice. But I do not need soldiers. I need scientists.”

  His once amiable face fell into a disapproving scowl. “I don’t like it, E.P. It sounds dangerous. Stupid. They’re too feckin’ stubborn to help.”

  “Maybe. But I have to try.” The sound of her ticking Chronometer echoed off the walls of her armor. It reminded her of how fleeting her time was. Her jaw clenched as she swallowed, looking once more in the facility’s direction. The fools leading her division would bleed it dry if things continued as they did. The people of Eastern needed more help than she had given. People like Mairyn Catteral and her children. Elowyn Saveign could not let them fall farther than she’d already allowed.

  She’d infiltrate the facility. Tonight. No more excuses. No turning back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Letters from Nicholai brought more than just anticipation. Edvard remembered a time when he found himself tearing open envelopes about Nicholai with dread; a time when the other division leaders wanted his head. Edvard had grown to assume that every letter that arrived on his doorstep back then was an announcement that his son had finally been captured, and assassinated for his act of treason.

  Times had changed since then. Edvard unfolded each piece of parchment with feelings of pride now. The sentiment was as strange as it was welcome.

  It was not long ago that the Western Time Father doubted his son’s ability to rule a division. Not long ago that he felt the crippling stab of disgust when Nicholai committed the ultimate taboo and stilled his division’s time. Edvard frowned at the memory.

  It was his doubt that made him betray Nicholai those years ago. His uncertainty made him give away the Time Father’s position at sea, where Darjal’s ironclad was free to destroy Captain Hidataka’s ancient, wooden vessel.

  His son had struggled to come into his own. Nicholai’s ideals often defied the tactics that the past Time Fathers’ had employed with success. But with each new letter that arrived, detailing the strides Southeastern made toward closing the rich-poor gap, toward making the working class less susceptible to the gods’ manipulations, Edvard felt the sting of those bad memories fade.

  The letters were an ointment to those old wounds. His chest swelled as his eyes darted from left to right, absorbing the content of the latest letter.

  When Nicholai wrote of his efforts in dec
ommissioning a factory owned by the Odenhardths, a small pit of concern blossomed in Edvard’s gut. The Odenhardths were cutthroat blue bloods of Panagea’s elite society. In the back of his mind, he wondered how his son convinced Ganther to part with his precious establishment. The letter did not say.

  Upon reading it in its entirety, Edvard lowered the note to his side. Curiosity thrived at the potential for Nicholai’s endeavors. Edvard, himself, began constructing a similar institution for the constituents of Western, but he moved at a far slower pace. He craved a correction to the circumstances which led to Esther Hiddle’s psychological vulnerability, but not enough to drain his division of its treasury on a gamble.

  Edvard clasped his chin, contemplating. Additional memories of Esther Hiddle filtered into his mind. The poor woman from one of Western’s institutions. The facilities remained at capacity, with a waiting list a mile long. Edvard wondered ... if Esther had more educational opportunities, more security in herself and her surroundings, would she have fallen victim to the gods’ influences?

  He folded the letter into a neat crease and set it on a nearby table. It couldn’t hurt to see how Nicholai’s efforts panned out before he invested more into similar actions. Edvard had his own collection of methods to employ, to keep the people of Western safe from the gods. They performed at or slightly above expectations as things stood, but he doubted the long-term success.

  The people of Western were not shy about voicing their intense hatred for the lesser gods. Many family members and dear friends had fallen across all cities in Edvard’s division, and the citizens were not quick to forget that pain. The Time Father closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

  He failed to invent a solution for sharing borders with Northwestern. That the god’s land touched the tips of the peoples’ was considered a disgusting slight. Edvard could not even petition Vadim for help. What became of the Northwestern division leader, Edvard Addihein never knew. He answered no mail. Where did one even send a letter there? The complete, and utter transformation of Vadim’s division into a primal land of unending forests, and raw, sprawling fields, led Edvard to believe that the Time Father had fallen under the gods’ spells once again.

  A few brave souls dared to venture into Northwestern territory. Some wished to try and save Vadim. Others wished to search for family members who used to live there. Some even boasted that they could fight the gods, fresh off the rumor that a human man in Southern slaughtered several in Seacaster last year. Edvard did not have the heart to tell them that Kazuaki Hidataka was no ordinary human man. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he had.

  Edvard never learned whether those people had any success in their travels. None who left Western ever returned to it. It flung even more heat onto the already blazing fire that was the Western peoples’ hatred of the gods.

  It was that hatred that encouraged Edvard to be especially vigilant. These days, given the torrid history he shared with Epifet, he walked the razor’s edge more often than not.

  In a high rise building across from Edvard Addihein’s tower, a man stood on a ledge. The heels of his boots balanced on a narrow strip, decorative in nature, which sprawled across the outer edge of the gothic architecture. Donned in a dark jacket, to match the color of the building’s exterior, the individual gripped the frame of the open window he had crawled out of, with one hand. It was his only security to spare him from a rather high fall.

  In his opposite palm, he clutched a pair of binoculars. Holding them up to his concentrating eyes, the stranger observed. There was not much he spied of Edvard, with half of the curtains drawn in the Western Time Father’s home. It didn’t matter. It would take as long as it took.

  Barron felt the sharp burn of immobility bite at his ankles and legs. He’d been in the city of Kudgan for days. He forgot how long he stood on that building’s molding, gripping the edge of a window to watch Edvard Addihein. But the pains he experienced in his trying wait, paled in comparison to the hell that certainly awaited him, should he return to Ganther Odenhardth with no useful information on the Western Time Father.

  Several trips to Kudgan’s archives granted Barron a plethora of information on Edvard Addihein. The documents easily accessed by the public held little interest, but some raised additional questions. The Western Time Father’s marriage certificate to Enita. Her obituary. The fact that her cause of death seemed to be omitted from official documents.

  Given Enita’s peculiar title, a surprisingly small paper trail existed for her. A common woman, with no extraordinary background, her only claim to fame was her marriage to the Western Time Father. But it was an exceedingly rare claim to fame, indeed. Time Fathers did not often take lovers at all, married instead to their divisions and the responsibilities brought by leadership. When a Time Father took a wife, historically, it was a big to-do.

  But Enita Addihein, for as rare as her role was, seemed to disappear from Panagea entirely.

  It prompted Barron to dig further. He needed to. Edvard Addihein was otherwise clean as a whistle. The youngest Time Father in history to ever take on the challenge of ruling of a division, Edvard earned public admiration from his teenage years. He boasted no history of crimes, whether grand or petty. No misuse of the division treasury. No soliciting women of ill repute. The man scarcely even drank alcohol, from what Barron managed to pull up from the records.

  On paper, Edvard Addihein was a faultless man. But Barron knew all men suffered from the same ailment: not a single one of them was unequivocally perfect. And he was certain that Edvard’s fault could be found somewhere within his marriage.

  His trip to the archives was not entirely wasteful. A quick bribe to the record keeper bought a cryptic slice of hope. “Ask Nordjan,” the guardian of the archives said. “I don’t know a soul alive who has known Edvard Addihein longer than the Northern Time Father.”

  Barron sent a letter to Nordjan straight away. But the post was a slow system. It would take days before his letter arrived, days longer before he received a reply if he received one at all. He could not return to Ganther without something of use. Barron planned to dangle on the edge of oblivion for as long as it took, to take home what he needed.

  Flexing his stiff wrists, Barron readjusted the binoculars over his eyes. Edvard sat in that chair for hours, either reading or pouring over paperwork. The wind whipped the spy’s jacket around his legs as he sank his fingers harder into the window’s frame. He held fast. An unexpected gust of air would not be the death of him. Not when he knew a proper payment awaited him at the end of this endeavor. Ganther loved money, but he was a fair man. Barron knew he’d pay well. It was the blue blood’s cunning ability to keep money flowing in the hands of influential people, often at the cost of his laborers, which built his empire.

  Edvard stood from his chair. The movement startled Barron, as it had been hours since the Time Father last shifted his weight. The spy watched meticulously, as Edvard crossed the room. The Time Father stopped beside a statue on his fireplace. He reached over and twisted the figurine’s head.

  Barron cursed the curtain that blocked his full view. He dared to lean forward as if it would somehow assist him. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his head as he watched Edvard closer. The Time Father turned toward something Barron could not see. Then, he bowed his head.

  The emissary narrowed his eyes. It looked as if Edvard was speaking. His lips moved, but Barron was no expert in lip reading. He could make out no words. The man’s hands came together, fingers weaving together. A chill ran through the small hairs at the base of Barron’s neck. Edvard’s behavior seemed ... almost ritualistic.

  When a figure appeared in the grand window of Edvard’s home, Barron’s whole body splayed flat against the building’s wall. He held in his startled gasp, though it wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody would have heard him. The woman: she came without warning, birthed from nowhere but the air.

  After settling his nerves, he watched through the binoculars. Her empathetic eyes gaze
d down at the citizens walking Kudgan’s streets below. Her fingers curled around the delicate material of the curtains with a grace detected even from the distance separating them. She was a vision. Beautiful and alluring. Barron felt his heart rate accelerate at the mere sight of her.

  Then, she turned. He saw all of her at that moment.

  Her wingspan dominated the window in its entirety. Large, magnificent things, sprawling from one end of the glass to the other. Given his limited view, Barron could not see them in their glory, but his chest tightened at the assumed presentation.

  He watched as she walked across the room to Edvard. She stopped before him. Barron could not see her face, but the Western Time Father’s was on full display. He wore a smile. A gentle one. He did not fear the goddess’s presence. On the contrary, he appeared to delight in it.

  “Well, well, well ...” Barron lowered the binoculars, his words swept away by the high winds around him. “What have we here?”

  A slow smirk crept onto Barron’s lips. It was a financially driven smile. He hit pay dirt. In a division full of god-hating people, befriending a goddess was an awfully dangerous game to play. A game, he surmised, that Ganther Odenhardth would very much enjoy hearing about.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was no game more dangerous than the one she played when she trusted herself. Given her history, Bermuda knew the limits of what her heart could stomach. It was a gamble, but despite the memories that haunted Kazuaki’s cabin, Bermuda made a home there.

  The airship was a suitable place to dwell. She and the others did not need the luxuries of Aggi Normandy’s running water and silk sheets to comfort their bodies. Life at sea hardened them from requiring such things.

  The quartermaster leaned back in her chair, her feet propped up on the desk before her. An inability to properly pilot the vessel caused her to anchor the furniture to the floor, as it had slid from one end of the room to the other far too many times. Dents lived in the walls to prove it.