It wasn’t fast enough.
Nordjan was not nearly as graceful. Age, and the ease of a political lifestyle, left his muscles underdeveloped. Still, his proximity to Brack granted him a much quicker arrival. Dangling off the fifth-floor balcony, he made the final jump to the base below, and immediately placed the barrel of his weapon against the bleeding man’s temple.
Elowyn stopped in her tracks. Her gaze flicked to Brack. The small hole in his neck bled profusely, but there was no arterial spurting. He looked panicked, but his chest still rose and fell. Still alive. “Don’t—” Her request trembled from her as she held up her hands. He still had a chance. If she could get to him, she could save him.
With a wild heart, Nordjan’s large eyes darted around the room. From Elowyn to the crew, who one by one started jumping to the fourth floor. Nicholai landed first. Granite. Penn. By the time Revi made contact with the floorboards, he already had a knife drawn, his arm pulled back, poised to hurl it at Nordjan.
“Do it,” Nordjan dared him from across the room. “Hope that you kill me immediately, lest my finger doesn’t contract and pull the trigger.”
Revi tightened his jaw. His eyes shined with a thirst for bloodshed. For Nordjan’s head on a pike. It took every ounce of willpower he had to lower his weapon.
Nordjan motioned with his stained fingers to the footmen on the ground below, while Brack wheezed beside him. “Throw it to the first floor.”
Stealing a glimpse of Brack’s face, Revi swallowed his pride. He pulled his fingers from the handle one at a time and begrudgingly threw the knife over the balcony. It clattered to the floor, around the feet of the strangely pacified footmen. Were he not so consumed by Brack’s situation, he would have wondered why they remained in their places, instead of charging up the winding staircase and opening fire.
Nordjan looked to Granite. To Penn. To Nicholai. To Elowyn. There had been more, hadn’t there? Where did that damnable Hidataka go? His heart thundered as he scanned the fifth floor above. He saw no movement. He needed to be careful. Extra cautious. Only four bullets remained in his gun’s chamber. He could shoot all of those who remained, but he’d have to be sure they fell with a single shot. He could not risk leaving a survivor. They’d have the advantage over him for sure. “All of you,” he wheezed, signaling with his gun, “abandon your weapons. Surrender.”
Having no weapons to speak of, Nicholai glanced at the others. Granite ground his teeth, tossing hidden blade after hidden blade over the staircase’s railing. After initial hesitation, Penn followed suit.
Writhing on the floor at Nordjan’s feet, Brack tried to speak. His words were muddled, garbled by the viscous liquid pooling in his throat. Nicholai did not need to hear the plea to understand what it was: an appeal to damn his life, to kill Nordjan where he stood, by any means necessary.
Nobody listened.
Still on the fifth floor, Bermuda pressed her back against the wall. In the shadows, her heart raced. Each beat was more painful than the last. Her body was running on empty.
She was almost out of time.
Everyone was.
It was only a matter of time before the frenzied Nordjan realized she was not among the crowd.
Reaching into her pocket, she plucked the syringe from inside. It felt comfortable in her palm. She knew the damage it brought, but a year of military-grade stimulant use was hard to bid farewell to forever. Gliding her thumb over the vial, she felt its strength even before the needle touched her.
She had twenty seconds at most before Nordjan dug the Chronometer out from under Brack’s bleeding body.
Feck. She wanted to say goodbye to Kazuaki …
Perhaps it was better that she didn’t.
Closing her eyes, the quartermaster rammed the needle into her hip. Her back arched. Her irises iced over with a cold, translucent blue. All the aches and pains went away. She inhaled through her nostrils. As the effects of the stimulant flooded her veins, she continued to slide herself across the fifth floor. Right outside Nordjan’s room. She could see the top of his graying head, from where she stood. The perfect view.
She couldn’t hit him with any of her knives. Nordjan was right when he said any non-fatal hit would leave him plenty of time to shoot Brack …
A whisper of a laugh left her. Only moments from death, she never felt more alive.
“We’re unarmed now.” Nicholai held up his hands, having watched as the last weapon hit the first floor of Nordjan’s estate. “Let Elowyn assist him. Please.” He chanced a small step forward. “It’s not too late to—”
“We’re beyond that, Nicholai.” Nordjan’s frightened face straightened, as he knelt beside Brack. Fishing under the bleeding man’s body, he searched for the hard metal of the Chronometer. “You’ve fought well for your beliefs, however misguided they may be.” His stomach leaped when he felt the pocket watch fill his palm, and he pulled. Nordjan held it to his chest, though it smeared with the molten scarlet fluid that pooled around Brack’s neck and chest. “But not as hard as I intend to fight. I would rather die than condemn the people of Panagea to live in the bedlam of a lawless land. Do you think you’re giving them freedom? Freedom is only another word for disorder, and without order—” His chest heaved as he inhaled. “—the wicked would rule the world. I won’t allow it.”
The crew stood by as Nordjan lifted the barrel from Brack’s head. He needed both sets of fingers—one to hold the Chronometer in place—the other to pull the crown.
“Nordjan—” Nicholai shook his head, his gaze pleading. “You’re doing no favors to the people of your division, trust me, I know.”
The Northern leader shook his head. “My boy. You know nothing.”
The first tug on the crown failed. His fingers were too slippery, too marred by blood.
He never received a chance to tug on it a second time.
Bermuda’s body crashed into his from above, sending the two of them over the rails.
Four flights to the bottom.
Four flights.
Milliseconds in reality, and yet an entire lifetime flashed before both of their eyes.
The unforgiving stone floor ended Nordjan’s aged life instantly.
It took longer to feel the grip of death for Bermuda. The stimulants coursed through her, dulling the pain. She stared at the ceiling, the intricate patterns of the arches spiraling around her.
Her legs. Her arms. She couldn’t feel them. Paralysis, she guessed.
She heard them shouting her name from above. Then thunder.
No, not thunder. The sound of Granite, Revi, and Penn leaping down the various floors to reach her.
Several of the footmen in the room turned to look at her. At Nordjan. She felt their gazes on their bodies, but could not pull her focus enough to see their expressions.
Above, Elowyn hastily applied pressure to Brack’s neck wound. If she could work fast enough, perhaps she could get to Bermuda as well—
It was strange. Surreal. As Bermuda laid there, trying to convince her lungs to inhale, she felt like she could see them all. The panicked looks on the others’ faces. Nico’s gut-wrenching reaction to being surrounded by death.
She was going to miss them. Going to miss Kazuaki.
Shit. Bermuda forced her eyes shut. She promised she wouldn’t think of him in her final moments, for fear he might mistake her thoughts of him for prayer …
By the time she opened her eyes again, he had already appeared beside her.
“What did you do?” he wheezed, wanting nothing more than to cradle her in his arms, but halting out of fear he might cause more damage by moving her broken body.
Around them, without Kazuaki’s focused influence, the footmen began to regain their former mental states. They looked around, perplexed, all staring at the deceased body of Nordjan, who splayed flat on the stone floor.
Bermuda stared up at him, half of her lips pulling into a loving smile. She thought she was ordering her brain to lift her arm—to touch his f
ace—but the limb did not respond.
Blood trickled from the side of her mouth, staining her pale skin. Kazuaki’s eye took on a glossy sheen as he cupped her face. “You could have waited—I, I would have—”
Her body tried to cough, but only gasping sounds came out. When the fit passed, her smile remained. Unable to speak, she mouthed the words: ‘love you’ as she soaked in the last sight of his darkening face.
A shuddering breath left the captain, and he pressed his forehead against hers. Her light was fading. He could feel it. “If there is a way to get back to you,” he rasped, feeling her soul tug away to the mortal afterlife, “I will find it. I will search for a hundred years. A thousand years. I will find it.”
She didn’t respond. He knew why. Kazuaki’s shoulders shook while he loomed over her, his long black hair disguising his face.
Gone.
The decade of her presence that she was a part of his life was but a drop in the ocean of his long existence. But the farewell … the final goodbye … it felt like the birth and death of a universe. An endless expanse of time.
Granite, Revi, and Penn hit the first floor, after leaping down from the second. Nicholai met them after hurrying down the stairs, his wide eyes fixated on the hunched captain and his quartermaster.
Unsure what to do with themselves after the strange influx of temporary peace, the footmen hesitantly turned their weapons to Nicholai and the others. Were they still in active war? It almost felt as if they’d just woken from a dream.
Nicholai held up his hands, standing on the first step that led up the winding staircase. “Nordjan of Northern is dead,” he announced, trying to disband the crippling feeling of loss that invaded him at the sight of Brack. At the sight of Bermuda. He gestured to the body he knew those in the room already saw. “His commands and ideals have died with him. Whether or not you wish to continue fighting is another matter, but I believe for now, we can all agree that dealing with the Chronometer is the top priority, before we’re all frozen in this place.”
Exchanging panicked glances with one another, the footmen stayed in their tracks.
Their division leader was dead. Yes. Without him, they were susceptible to time in Northern coming to a halt.
For as brutal as the soldiers of Northern were in their battle tactics, they were intelligent enough to recognize the importance of the matter.
One stepped forward, his arms stiff at his sides: the rigid posture of his militant upbringing. “What can we do to ensure time in Northern does not stop?”
Nicholai felt his shoulders relax, admittedly surprised by their willingness for self-preservation. “I need the Chronometer.” His gaze slid over to the blood-stained object beside Nordjan and Bermuda’s bodies.
The Northern footman followed his eyes. Without hesitation, he traipsed over to the object and seized it. He tossed it to Nicholai quickly, as if he feared it was a grenade. It was a strange thing to touch such a powerful object. None other than Nordjan had laid their hands on it since he’d taken up ownership of Northern. It held a certain weight and birthed a specific fear in the division’s people.
Catching it with his metal hand, Nicholai offered the soldier a nod of gratitude. His focus turned to Kazuaki, still huddled over Bermuda’s corpse. Pinching his lips together, Nicholai shuffled forward, taking careful, considerate steps over the debris that littered the floor.
Slowly, he knelt beside the captain, his voice soft. “I … I am so, so terribly sorry, Kazuaki …” Glancing to the limp, metal hand he had made for Bermuda once upon a time, Nicholai felt his throat tighten. “She quite literally saved our lives …”
A moment passed before Kazuaki thrust a hand out to Nicholai. His long hair remained shrouded over his face. “Just give it to me,” he instructed, his voice rattling with unspoken darkness.
If only there was something he could say. Or do. There was nothing. Nicholai knew the pain all too well, two times over. Gingerly, he placed the Chronometer in Kazuaki’s waiting palm.
Without lifting his head, the god drove all of his bottled sentiment into crushing the final piece of glass and gears. Cogs clattered to the floor, mixing together with the ceiling fragments and blood from the dead.
Pulling in a slow breath, Nicholai rose to his feet. He stared at the footman and hardened his jaw. “We should announce to the others that the fight is over,” he said, his voice firm. “But if we’re to end this successfully, the remaining soldiers of Northern need to hear it from a fellow comrade, not their enemy.”
Gazing at the crumbled remains of the Chronometer, the footman drew his shoulders back. Lingering feelings of the peace that Kazuaki had embellished in his mind surged forth. Was this a loss? With Nordjan’s corpse sprawled out on the floor, he wasn’t sure. Even in the event of their leader’s death, he could not deny the breath of relief he felt knowing that the odds of meeting his demise shattered with that Chronometer.
Stepping up to Nicholai, the Northern soldier held out a gloved hand. “You’re no longer an enemy of mine, Mr. Addihein. You call off your men, and we will call off ours.”
It was a strange thing to hear. They weren’t his men at all. Just free beings, acting under their own wills, to pursue what they felt was right. Nicholai glanced over his shoulder, looking once more at Kazuaki, as he loomed over Bermuda’s body. “Yes,” he said, knowing full well the god deserved a moment alone with her. His eyes trailed upward, and he found himself praying. Praying that Elowyn Saveign had enough skill to save Brack’s life. Praying they only had to make one difficult goodbye today. “Let’s go. Quickly now.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Forty years.
Gods, where had the time gone?
Nicholai relaxed the muscles in his neck, leaning back into the pillow that sat upon his bed. It was nice to be able to peer out the window. Old age had invaded his bones, binding him to one spot most days. It would have been maddening if he didn’t have the simple pleasure of gazing at the world going by outside. For as ancient as his body felt, his mind remained sharp; it would have been torture having nothing to stimulate it.
Streamlined vessels delighted him with their appearance every so often. He had to look quickly to see them. Their speed was unmatched, zooming outside his line of sight almost as fast as they appeared. The inventions of the current year looked far different than their archaic cousins. Long gone were the clunky ornithopters that squeaked and squealed on windy currents. A few of the older zeppelins remained attached to some of the larger models, but most had been retired from the air. Something about public safety. Some of the more antiquated models had even been placed in museums for future generations to gawk at.
Technology had blossomed in such a short period.
It wasn’t the only thing.
The importance of ecology maintenance had been granted more credence. A band of people rose up from the rugged Northwestern division, bringing the knowledge of the forest with them when they reentered society after the gods had left them. They passed the information on to anyone who would listen. To anyone who craved the nurturing touch of the wild over the cold touch of iron.
Battles still waged, but with a significant reduction of bloodshed. Technology and ecology butted heads more often than Nicholai would have preferred to see. The news would come of one success, one failure, and the grand scope of which was more important changed with each calendar year.
He smiled at the thought. It didn’t matter which remained the ‘enemy’ in the public eye. So long as there were still a handful of people fighting to keep a balance between the two dichotomies, he trusted all would be well. The people of Panagea never could agree on any ‘one’ thing being the best … but that just left opportunity for those who had the desire to fight for their beliefs.
The desire and the freedom.
Lifting his mechanical arm with a slow, measured movement, Nicholai swiped it through his hair. The dark brown locks of his youth had all been replaced by a silver-gray, and save for the i
mmortal bronze and copper components that made up his forearm and hand, the rest of his body sported its age as well. For all intents and purposes, he still managed to look the part of a tireless humanitarian.
In a chair, pulled up beside the bed, Kazuaki studied the former Time Father. The God of Salvation knew that his outward appearance—the serene smile, the peaceful breaths—was something of a ruse. The man he had grown to call ‘comrade’ was on his death bed.
Understandably so.
Touching over seventy years of life was an impressive feat for most mortals in Panagea. Medical technology had improved with each new day, but the average lifespan of an individual still hovered somewhere around the sixties. Kazuaki ventured a guess that Nicholai made it as long as he did from sheer determination, as well as the lingering effects from the Earth Mother’s energy that flowed through him when she healed his injuries those many decades ago.
Kazuaki leaned back in his chair. It creaked under his weight. He folded his hands in his lap, his gaze fading to somewhere far away.
Forty years.
He still remembered what it felt like to press his forehead against her dying body. He felt so weak then. A frown invaded his expression, and he flicked his focus back to Nico. How much weaker would he feel when the last man who prayed to him left the mortal world?
Itreus had called it. Just as the God of Lost Souls predicted, the deities fell away from peoples’ memories once more. It went faster than Kazuaki had expected it to. Perhaps, because the majority of the gods had left.
How long had it been since he last answered a prayer? Five years? Ten? The last person to pray to him had been an old woman in the Southern division. She too, was on her death bed. She asked him to make her passing peaceful. Kazuaki’s lips tightened at the memory.
He hoped he helped her. She didn’t die with the same smile on her face that Rennington Platts did … but she did seem comfortable.
The Panagea Tales Box Set Page 159