by Cara Violet
Dersji felt the Siliou moving again, the paralysis gone: he got up, took a step back and blinked. Perform Kaianan had vanished and all that remain of either of her was the half-conscious Gorgon Queen—and she was up in the air spinning. Or no, she wasn’t spinning, she was steady—it was actually white light that was circling, swirling diagonally across her face and head.
Glossy white hair replaced her screaming serpents, the white strands began flowing from her cranium down to her midriff, and fell over a gold studded chestplate that formed over her shoulders and down to her belly button. The light then moved over her arms; her gold cuffs turned white, and white flames began burning around each of her Rapiers. Her tail was last to be consumed by the spinning white light; her green scales split into two preform legs wrapped in black pants and a split skirt, with a front and back panel, and slotting on her, some new leather boots.
Dersji couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her green skin had faded to that of a preform and with the last burst, she had transformed into something else, neither Felrin nor Gorgon—an aura of silvery white sparked all over her, embodying her second skin. Dersji gathered his composure and tried not to seem flabbergasted but—he dared to admit it: he was.
Reformed in one body, Kaianan had become some type of hybrid. He narrowed his eyes wondering if this was still his sobriety, or the unknown herbs supposedly healing his stomach, or maybe he had consumed some rum and wasn’t sure what hallucination he was having?
When her mouth opened and she screamed: “You will cease fire.” Dersji grinned in shock—this was real.
“Kaianan.” Dersji heard Arlise shout her name, but she took no notice.
“I am the Rivalex Marked Identity; Queen of the Gorgon people; and ancestor to the prodigious Medusa. You will not linger in this Siliou any longer, King of the Defeated!”
The Defeated King lengthened to his full height. Not sure where they came from or how he hid them, Dersji saw the beast spread two grey wings from his scaly back. Dersji raised his eyebrows at the colossal wingspan, broader than the beast’s own height. “Well, that is unexpected… actually, all of this is quite unexpected.”
Even if he felt this way, he could see Kaianan remained unfazed. “Back to the portal from which you came!”
“You’re going to have to set up your foundation,” Dersji tried to say as she slowly settled on the ground. All he got back was a: “Shut up, you.”
“So menacing,” he muttered. “Well this all does seem quite untoward. I’ve no idea what either of these creatures are.”
The Defeated King flapped his wings, blasting the wind in Kaianan’s direction and she lifted her arm up to station herself. “Go back!”
“He may not actually understand a word you’re saying,” Dersji notified her. “Best you get some action going.”
Kaianan and her shimmering white second skin, ran into the oncoming blizzard; she cocked one arm and flipped her blade back, then realised it—sending the silvery flaming hilt and knife soaring through the air. With excellent aim, the blade pierced the right wing of the Defeated King.
Dersji felt the Kan’Ging riddling through her. This was his Menial. Right in front of him. Then she ‘ported again. Dersji was amazed. She moved above the dragon-beast’s moving body, gathering her fist into a ball and pounding the top of his head, bringing him to his knees. The Siliou had chosen to turn with her. Her aura fed off the atmosphere, burning brighter shades of white.
Around him the Daem-Raal ran.
Dersji couldn’t believe it. She’s becoming slightly more terrifying … how is that even possible? The more pressing question was, what the holom was she? A white-haired banshee? She looked it. But what creature could control so much Siliou? Against several Pernicious? It was unheard-of. And Dersji could tell the Pernicious were pissed about it.
They shrieked, plummeting through the sky, not happy they had lost their ability to manipulate the Siliou and, like fleeing Daem-Raal, retreated into the portal.
She’d just dropped the Defeated King to his knees and knocked his face into the ground. The prediction of certain death had left her; instead Kaianan stood like a stunned Seevaar at what she had just turned into.
Where had this strength come from?
Although she didn’t know what she was, she knew all her wounds and pain had been removed. She had become something else. On top of that, the Daem-Raal and the Felrin were rising, the former fleeing, and the Pernicious had gone—did she do this? Did she send the Pernicious back into the portal and free the Siliou?
Dersji Brikin waved at her. She frowned. What was he—
She screamed, jumping out of the way of the projecting flames of fire coming her way. She was too quick to be hit. She had far more agility than she remembered. And when her silvery white aura brightened and then dimmed, her only conclusion was that ‘porting was what just transpired.
Intriguing. Was she astonished by her change? Or simply in shock. She thought the latter. A calm room, and a library was what she needed. Research on this debacle was a necessity. What was she? Then, annoyingly, someone had begun screaming her name.
About to question their repetition, she heard a swish through the air and pivoted her neck round—an enormous, electrifying red beam, soaring like a stream through the Siliou, was flowing out of the Defeated Kings fingers directly at her.
“The Silkri …” she murmured out.
In the split second she had, she dropped to her knees and thrust both palms forward with might. Her white aura beam swiftly flowed out of her palms to meet his, and, with a deafening pound, the beams clashed against one another. At that moment, the sky dropped away and Kaianan, on wobbly knees, observed a gigantic bubble materialise around them—a bubble of half burning red and half silvery white aura.
She was at her wits end. What had she been doing? Standing around looking pretty? This wasn’t the moment to question what she had become. Her knees were scrapping against the rock underneath them. She tried to raise one leg, to steady her movement. But his aura kept pushing her back, it took all the strength in her to stop it, and thrust it, and hers, back at him and stand.
It was a wave of tug of war.
Aura versus aura.
Kaianan didn’t even want to think of how it got to this, how it got to the point of her being in an aura deadlock with the Defeated King. She held in her breath, and held on for dear life.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Explosion
Xandou felt a shuddering impact on him, then an unsteady snuffle on his neck.
“Master Xandou?” Young Ryar said, bumping into him.
“What are you doing here?” Xandou shoved him off as the Felrin Cruiser recalibrated and halted its spinning.
“Sir, we must go,” the young Giliou said short of breath.
Xandou, rubbing his head from a prior heavy contact with the ship’s wall, scanned the room; he could hardly see anything. He waved a little clearing in the smoke and spotted Desrix’s face. “I can’t leave h—” he couldn’t finish, the cruiser spun around again and they were thrown about like pebbles. Xandou wanted to ‘port to Desrix, but with all the smoke, how?
“We must get out of here, now,” Ryar said again. Xandou could barely pinpoint his location. He was holding onto a steel pipe trying to stabilised himself. It started getting warmer. He heard a scream.
“What was that?” Ryar said from somewhere.
Metrix came rolling to Xandou’s feet as the cruiser stopped rotating. He bent down to assess her. “She’s out cold,” he said, feeling a swish of a blade somewhere near.
“I’ve got Nake!” Desrix said from somewhere, “Just go, Xandou—”
They all flipped again, tumbling, round and round. Faster and faster. The smoke burned Xandou’s lungs, his eyes were watering from the mist, his body cracked and snapped against the cruiser’s insides… There was high-pitched yelling, and Xandou’s eardrums took the brunt of it.
There was confusion and blind panic. Xandou didn’t think he would lose cont
rol of his body so. Until he had. Until he had no way to know where either Ryar, Desrix, or Metrix and Nake were. But the second Ryar’s illuminating hands came out of nowhere from the black nothingness and gripped onto Xandou, the Giliou Master knew it was all too late –
Ryar’s ‘port pulled them, in an arresting blue light, from the cruiser.
“No!” Xandou yelled as his voice carried not forward into the smoky cockpit but amongst the trees under the mountains of Forsda.
“Why did you take me—”
Rays of blue and orange flames viciously and violently engulfed the cruiser; whirling and rolling in mid-air. A bright blinding flash cracked through its middle; and with a powerful push of force, like someone had set off a giant detonation, the Cruiser blew.
And with the surge of blasting heat, Xandou fell back.
A huge ball of fire exploded outward.
Yasminx felt the heat on her face, glancing up to the violent explosion of burning steel, rubble, glass and generator power streaming through the air, she gaped as it covered the Palace, the Edification Centre, and Bretix Arena. Everything was burning.
“Desrix!” she screamed. Her hands had been bound by the guards that apprehended her but it didn’t stop her from pushing against them and turning back to the flames. “Xandou,” she whispered in sudden tears. Generator power bursting would disintegrate anyone, mortal or not.
Did their idea of coming here to rescue Xandou seem pointless now? Was this all her fault? Disappointment undid her, she fought against restraint.
It did her no good to retaliate the hard grips against her though, the guards spread aura through her body and she instantly became limp against them.
“Lock her away.”
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Conductor of Croone
“Kaianan is winning, Caidus,” Chituma gasped from the other side of the mountain, witnessing the white light bursts against the red.
“Aye; she has re-enabled the Siliou, we are no longer stagnant.” Caidus stretched his fingers in and out. “We are near the gatekeeper,” he pointed at the smoke billowing on the not-too-distant horizon of mountain terrain. “Let’s go.”
Lenity sat perched on her chair of rock. In the depths of her bottomless cave in the lowest range of the Rook Mountains divide, she became angered at the planet shaking above her. Refusing a watchtower be made the day she became a gatekeeper, she set up her Euclidean Vector gate underground. She fidgeted with her thin fingers in agitation, remembering the Felrin Liege harming her for doing so.
When she heard voices, her black eyes darted to the cave entries, trying to gauge where it was coming from. Her lips twitching wildly, she began singing to direct them closer:
They come, they come after us,
And what must we do is run and hide or die.
They come, they come, they come,
After us after all these years and what we must do is run and hide.”
Following the voice bouncing around like a croak to the ear, Caidus and Chituma made their way into the small central cave.
“Are you the gatekeeper?” Caidus asked, looking at tattered black dress robes between two small smoke-pits sending black smoke into the air.
A robed figure slowly turned to face them, then dropped her hood. Her half-human, half Daem-Raal form caught the two visitors off-guard. Caidus tried to look away from her pinkish face and oblong nose and ears. The small cracks of light through the cave, shining only on her face, made it difficult for him to remove his eyes.
“Aye, and who is asking?” she asked in a high pitch squeal.
“I am Caidus of Sile,” he explained.
“And you travel with?” she asked, suspiciously.
“This is Chituma of Layos.” Caidus gestured to Chituma.
Lenity cocked her head to the side. “Why must I allow so many of you in, when I seldom let any out?” She said. “There is nowhere to hide; he will take us all.” She said dreamily.
Chituma pushed past Caidus to Lenity. “Are you not able to Vector us out?”
“Why shall I do that?” Lenity said scornfully. “Your fate shall be the same as mine.”
“You cannot tie us here.” Chituma said in astonishment. “You are bound by the Felrin to take us home.”
Lenity, the mangled crossbreed, stalked toward Chituma, “I let you in here with that stupid Giliou!” She clutched a chunk of the Gorgon’s hair in her hand. “She promised me an escape! And where is she now?”
Chituma squealed as her hair was pulled. Caidus lifted his arm to disable the Conductor’s hold. Lenity raised her free hand and spiralled a black aura toward the Prince, freezing Caidus’s cocked arm in its tracks.
“They are coming,” Lenity whispered, staring into his eyes, “Mark my words.”
Caidus pulsed himself in red Silkri aura, feeling his skin turn grey and his second skin of red flames shoot out of him. “You take your hands off her now!” he shouted while gaining control of his movement. He seized Lenity around the neck, pulling her to his face. “You listen to me, you delusional fask of a Harpy, you open that Euclidean Vector for us now or I will end your short, empty, meaningless life.” Caidus’s pupils glowed fire under his dishevelled grey hair.
Lenity released Chituma’s hair from her grasp and spun the Vector opening, splitting the room open to the moving blackness of stars.
“You think this is over?” Lenity said. Caidus, dropping his aura and morphing back to preform, guided Chituma through the ice path, ignoring her. “You’ve nowhere to hide, it won’t take long until we are all cut off!”
The Vector closed around the two Rivalex natives heading home, not bothering to take Lenity, or anything she said seriously.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Aura Versus Aura
“Kaianan!” Dersji, for the second time, heard his son cry and ‘ported aside him.
“Stop, you fool. What is with you?” he looked up and slapped Arlise across the back of the head in disgust, “she’s trapped in that vortex with him.”
Before Arlise could retaliate, the soil beneath their feet began vibrating. Particles of dirt spun about them. Dersji saw Kaianan shaking, struggling to hold her beam against the Defeated King whilst the planet became unstable under her. Alas, she was a lot more powerful than he truly could imagine. Even sparring with her in the Manor grounds seemed like a lifetime ago. That weak girl was gone and buried, and if anyone was going to destroy this beast of a man—again he hated to admit it—it was her.
“What was that for?” Arlise interrupted his thoughts.
Dersji narrowed his eyes. “I felt like it.”
“Bloody holom, shall I flatten you?”
“Don’t be peevish with me, ankle-biter. I don’t take lightly to threats.”
“I’m your son, I don’t either.” Arlise grew indignant. “I’m only concerned about what this witch of a girl is doing to the Siliou. You’ve really made a mess of this. What was the point in me saving her back on Earth? … I mean I can’t even do anything right now with no aura on this damn forsaken planet!”
“Your aura’s not working?!” Dersji laughed. “Sounds like your usual laziness … and a witch you say? … Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
“What do you mean ‘a plan?’” Arlise scrunched his face up. “She’s triggered everything. The Siliou is waning. The Defeated King is right there. Open your damn—”
“Cuki save her!” Cuki piped up. The Brikins looked down to jagged teeth jutting out of a horrid Daem-Raal smile.
Dersji snorted. “We don’t do anything,” he said to his son and Arlise’s eyes widened. “She is about to do it for us… Get your Felrin comrade up and let’s find the gatekeeper. And you …” he said, searching for Cuki, “… I don’t even know … go be useful … or something … just stay out of trouble, will you?” Cuki nodded, running off. “Good grief, give me a heart attack.”
Kaianan held her aura against the Defeated King’s with all her might. Sweat was pouring down her forehead and annoyingly down her eyes and no
se. She listened to the generating commotion of Dersji Brikin and Arlise, but it was when the sky opened above her and a huge Felrin cruiser penetrated the Croone atmosphere through a closing Vector that she gasped.
How did it get in here? Wasn’t the Siliou poisoned?
Kaianan narrowed her eyes. The silver steel body and black wings of the huge cruiser escaped into the open air. With her violet eyes burning she could see it was piloted by Felrin Liege. The vessel turned head on toward Rook Mountain, and Kaianan was positive they were here to kill her. But neither of these Liege, one woman and one man, were Ferak Jarryd.
Inside the cruiser, Maki Ryhad and Garen Lofar sat gobsmacked at the aura versus aura battle.
“This is insane, Garen,” Maki said.
Footsteps grew and General Aradar of the Felrin emerged from the rear cabin. “Aye, we have arrived,” he said.
“The Daem-Raal are fleeing.” Garen said pointing.
Maki squinted at the white-haired woman projecting a white aura against the Defeated King’s beam of red, “What is going on? Is that the Rivalex Mark going up against the Defeated King?”
Garen gulped at the surging bubble of energy. “General, I think we have a problem on our hands.”
“No, this works,” Aradar smirked, “kill them both, get the beams ready to fire.”
“Aye,” Garen confirmed, glancing anxiously to Maki.
The wind swirled harder and faster from the Felrin cruiser circling the battle, and Dersji stuck his feet into the ground to stabilise himself. He was at ten percent efficiency, at best. How he was going to pull himself out of this was a guess entirely. His only thought was to somehow pry Kaianan out of that bubble before the Felrin opened fire.
The swines would most likely kill her before she got a chance to take the Defeated King down. On top of that, she probably wasn’t powerful enough to do it just yet. The question was though, how was he going to penetrate the bubble in this state, without letting it kill him? And could he muster the strength to ‘port them out after that?