by Cara Violet
Something registered when he stared at her and the Defeated King locked in their clash of aura. He gasped. This was power versus power, aura versus aura. This was a replica of the battle between the forefathers of aura. It was Kan’Ging and Silas Silkri all over again. There was no way the Felrin could come between this. He needed to stop the cruiser.
A noisy cry pierced his ears.
“Dammit Cuki, what did I say?” Dersji huffed, staring at the critter jumping about and then on him. “Get off! … hang on, what is my son doing?”
“Get Gorgon girl!” Cuki shouted.
“Fool of a Menial.” Dersji stated dispassionately. “Cuki, listen to me. I need you to do me a favour.”
An odd feeling was brewing inside him. Arlise felt strange. It unnerved him, especially considering he hadn’t felt anything at all since he was a captive with the Daem-Raal. Was this emotion? Feeling the wind grow from the locked auras that violently swirled his hair across his face, he stopped close to Kaianan, just outside the vortex.
How could she have this much power? It didn’t make sense; she wasn’t even a Conductor. This also made him furious at his own lack of aura. Damn this planet! How was this happening right now and what was he going to do to change the situation? He’d tried to call her but she did not acknowledge him.
He studied her. He could see the gears turning in her mind. She thrust her white aura beam at the man-beast with an expression of fierce vengeance. It was irritation that consumed Arlise. He didn’t even understand why. Maybe all this arguing with her proved one thing to him—she was irrational, and crazy, and he wanted to slap it out of her.
“Arlise!” he heard and looked round. Adrel? What was she doing—
Then it was all too late. Everything followed in slow motion. The world got blurry around the edges and Arlise knew this was it. The force of the expanding aura ball surged with power, the same time, large chunks of rock started breaking away from Rook Mountain and the Felrin cruiser began dollying about in the air.
“Kaianan,” Arlise said, “you’re going to destroy the planet and kill yourself!”
Kaianan could not hear Arlise’s exact words but she could feel his eyes on her as she held the beam against the Defeated King. Dersji was also circling with Cuki. The Felrin cruiser was soaring closer to them. When it got close enough, the Defeated King had somehow turned his head to the cruiser in the sky and fired a massive stream of burning flames into it.
The cruiser returned fire. Kaianan began screaming.
The Defeated King’s swirl of flames engulfed the entire spaceship in burning blazes. Kaianan watched as it staggered and jolted through the air; warnings and alarms shrieking. The Felrin were thrown about inside.
“Stop!” Kaianan was shouting.
The cruiser slid diagonally. It was gliding downward like it was descending a ski slope. The whole thing was shaking and suddenly spinning.
Kaianan concentrated her mind on the cruiser. She felt like her whole body was inside it. She could hear the alerts sounding: “Shields low … close to critical … Shields low … close to critical.”
The glass of the cruiser was suddenly burning up, and the heat invading the cockpit was becoming unbearable.
“Shut up,” The Liege, Maki, yelled at the alarm, sweating. She held the pilot stick firmly, trying to stop the cruiser spinning.
“Maki! Now!” General Aradar was screaming.
“The Euclidean Vector won’t generate! We’re going to crash!”
Kaianan, who was basically invisible to the others inside the ship, glanced down at the controls standing behind Maki. She stretched her hand out to the Euclidean Vector light and with a flick of her wrist through the air, turned it to glowing green.
“It’s green! It’s working!” Maki slammed her palm down on the button as quick and as hard as she could, and the alert came over the top of the warning sound immediately. “Euclidean Vector generating … Warning: shields low … Impact on arrival may be fatal … Euclidean Vector generating … Warning: shields low … Impact on arrival may be fatal …”
“Just go!” Maki screamed at the computer.
The Vector split open and the burning ship flung sideways into the icy stream of space.
Inch by inch, the ice crinkled and built up around the outside of the cruiser, extinguishing the hazardous fires. But with the melted and cracked glass exposing the cockpit to space, Maki was now breathing in unfiltered cold air.
“Shields – are – out.” She spoke shakily and the drastic change from insufferable heat to blistering cold knocked her out over the top of her controls.
Back in her physical form, Kaianan watched the cruiser get sucked into the Euclidean Vector. Saving the cruiser took too much of a toll on her body. And the strength it took to maintain her aura was slipping; she couldn’t hold it against the Defeated King anymore. Who was she kidding? She didn’t have the strength. Her legs started to shake; one tremble after another, she gradually fell to her knees barely holding her palms and fingers upright.
Sweat invaded every part of her skin as she willed herself to keep going. Fear pressed her temple as the huge black faced dragon and winged beast man, pushed his burning Silkri aura closer to her and diminished her white. Once the Pernicious soared back out of the portal and began spitting into the atmosphere again, she knew she couldn’t control the Siliou any longer. Kaianan felt her body becoming stiff all over again in the paralysis.
This was it; she was going to die. The Silkri aura was inches from her. She was about to perish, about to get consumed by the Defeated King’s strength. Her thoughts were laced with fright, her heart beat was going one hundred miles an hour …
Her eyes then fell on a purple force breaking through the expanding red ball of aura. It was all fuzzy though. Who was it? Out the corner of her eye, she noticed the little Daem-Raal, Cuki, tying rope around the Defeated King’s ankles—how did he get in there?
The air became thick, quickly. Kaianan heard Arlise yelling. Nothing mattered, the Silkri aura kept coming and coming, it was about to consume her when –
Hands suddenly clasped to her, purple light embraced Kaianan and she was fading away at the exact moment she’d given up the fight; the exact moment she thought death would take her, the entire vortex bubble—splitting apart as several red rays poked through it skyward—finally gave way and burst outward.
Yet Kaianan didn’t see the remainder of the blast, the purple aura had ‘ported her out, seconds before she was blown skyward by the Defeated King’s aura.
There was a blinding flash in Arlise’s eyes, and the detonation threw him and huge chunks of rock aggressively through the air. The feeling of crashing into someone rocketed him further through the debris. It was a few minutes before he could open his eyes. The aftermath of the eruption of aura, left Adrel puffing a few metres down the mountain near him. He must have lugged into her and sent her flying. She stood, checked if she had any major wounds and when she was all clear, paced back up the mountain.
Arlise smiled as she approached him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, are you?”
Adrel nodded.
“We’ve got to get to the Conductor.”
She nodded again. Arlise at once, caught on that everything was too quiet. The platform was empty. Everyone was gone, except … he gulped … except the Defeated King.
Oh, holom, the beast had just finished untying his ankle restraints and lifted himself up, scrutinising them, wings flapping in haste.
“Move!” Arlise cried out.
They sprinted east. As they ran, Adrel fell down a section of mountain, down a trail and Arlise dropped down chasing her. He whipped her up in his arms as soon as she’d come to a stop.
Her face flushed red as she looked up to him. Adrel analysed Arlise with ravenous eyes.
“Thank-you for willing to risk your life to save me,” she said.
“Adrel.” Arlise had to say once or twice before she was paying him a
ttention. “Oh to the Sarinese Gods, act like a dam Shiek, listen to me,” he said, yanking her sideways to her feet and pointing to the smaller range of the Rook Mountain divide. “The entrance to the Conductor is in—”
Arlise fell forward. Pain surged in his gut. He wasn’t sure what occurred or how, but blood dripped down him.
“Are you—” Adrel tried to say before the roar reverberated around the mountain. The Defeated King was gaining on them.
“Run,” Arlise murmured, spluttering blood.
“Oh, my holom,” Adrel collected him in her arms, and began to shift them painstakingly across the rock and dirt, trying hard not to look back at the beast on their tail.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Removal from Office
Pitter, patter…
Awoken by footsteps that beat the black stone floor, Julius peered up from his slumped sitting position. Staring at the hanging scriptures of worded attacks, lining the dark walls next to his mother’s portrait in the office, he swayed back and forth from his daydream. He was drifting through space, floating, carefree…
The footsteps grew quicker and louder.
“My King…” a whispering sound lingered through the black nothingness around him. The words were repeated and Julius forced his eyes to face the sound. When he did, breathless and gasping, he slammed his fists down into the table he was sitting at, splintering it outward. Red Silkri aura fired out around his wrist and then dissipated.
In front of him, standing in the middle of the black and gold throne chairs, a guard, jaw agape, was gawking at him.
“What!?” Julius rebuked, scrutinising the man yank his head to the other Onyx Office tables on either side of him and then back to the one Julius had just fragmented—perhaps questioning why the King sat here and not in his throne. “I said speak.”
“My King…” The guard began nervously, “we have word from Arch Mage Konrolic of a battle on Croone. The Felrin are sending troops. The last we heard… we heard… Holom’s door has been opened, sir.”
“What?” Julius’s voice cracked.
“Aye, the prophecy is becoming.”
Julius hadn’t realised his face had dropped. “And what of Holom?” he inquired, searching the guard’s face.
“Released, sir, and they say the Defeated King has returned… straight out of the portal,” he said.
Julius had zoned out in fear.
“Call a meeting at once. Round everyone up, here, in the Office now…” Julius ordered, then added, “... don’t disturb my wife.” The guard nodded and dashed away without so much as a backward glance.
How would he do this? Julius regarded the tired and yawning members of the Onyx Office sitting along the narrow Miry tables sending sly and exasperated glances his way. Now sitting in his proper place, in his black throne alongside an empty gold chair, aware Kydra was not woken, he cleared his throat. Even though his brain bore a heaviness and confusion at the stars he was flying about in earlier, Julius made it a point to not make them wait after they’d been dragged out of bed.
“The Defeated King has been released as Holom enters as a poison in the Siliou.” he said sharply. Following this there was silence.
After several long moments, General Krivta, red-nosed and looking tightwad, finally stood up. “How long ago?” he said.
“I’ve only just been given word.” Julius said.
“What is your call, King?” Metrix said, seated beside the General.
Julius observed those around him; irritable and contentious—he felt insulted by their stares. “We keep Sile defended, and I suggest we prepare for the Pernicious.”
“Aye, this is very exciting, shall we make contact with the Defeated King, then?” General Krivta said standing, pushing his fists along his thin red robe and resting them on his sides.
A part of Julius froze. Make contact? Holom no. He did not want to make an associate out of the Defeated King. A Necromancer he once was, yes; but King Warlowes, a welcome guest to Sile now? No. And at this moment, he was King, not his father. His Sile governance would be free to create its own path and rules. Did they forget he was the dictator?
“No.” Julius stated, assuredly. The Onyx Office crowd fell silent.
“You’re foolish!” Fenix Skeletongrey rebuked. “We must embrace him as our own.”
“Watch your words, I am the King, this is my dictatorship.” Julius reiterated crisply. What had gotten into them?
“He will not, this is a serious matter,” Krivta exclaimed, and Julius felt himself robotically inching out of his chair. “The King is not taking it seriously enough. We cannot sit out and observe what happens. The Defeated King must know we are here for him, he has shelter. That we are in this as much as he is.”
“Sit down, Kriv—” Julius tried to command but the General kept going.
“I will not!” Krivta shouted back. “We have supported our Defeated King for an eternity and we will not stop—”
“I said sit—”
“Onyx Office,” Krivta continued over the top of Julius’s orders. The General gripped his fist and shook it fiercely in front of him, “… will you support your feeble King and do nothing or will you spark vengeance for the Defeated King? Our true leader… Do you support the Defeated King?”
“We support the Defeated King!” one roared.
“The Defeated King!” Another.
They began rising, Julius’ arms had dropped limply beside him and he looked white instead of grey. They cannot overthrow him, surely? Where was Caidus when he needed him? This can’t be happening.
“Stand down, Krivta!” Julius boomed, trying to retake control of the meeting.
“I will not. We will not.” Krivta said. “Are you going to contact our Defeated King?”
Julius looked around at his antagonists; gripping edges of tables, fists in the air, looking furious, and after a moment’s silence opened his mouth. “No.” He said in a steady tone. “I will not.”
“Then I’m calling into question the integrity and validity of your public service… By majority vote, the party of Drakes has decided, you will be stepped down. Nake, take him.”
Eventually, Kydra burst open the doors of the Onyx Office. Julius’s Silkri aura was flying everywhere and so was the aura of several Arch Mages and General Krivta. Loud and aggressive shouting followed when the auras evaporated. And at the centre of it all, Julius was keeled over, on the steps below his throne, spitting blood. General Krivta then used his foot to push him over and the King went down, awkwardly slumped on his spine.
“You can’t rewrite the law of Sile and that of the Drake even if you can use the Silkri aura,” Krivta laughed, with the Office behind him watching on, “… you are messing with millions of years of ancestry. I’ve seen many Kings embrace their position and fulfil the role with such direction, as they devote their life to the authoritarian mandate. A line of dictators so pure… There is no way you deserve the Nermordis name or the title of Silkri Drake.”
“Change must start somewhere.” Julius wheezed out. “And it will start with me.”
“NO!” Kydra yelled. All heads turned in her direction. “Leave him!”
“You’ll be dead before that, King.” Krivta ignored her and began circling Julius, standing over him, and as Kydra came running, he crouched down to Julius. “I thought burying your father would be more satisfying: the King dead … fulfilling, you would think, but no,” he twisted Julius’s hair in his hands, “this is much more satisfying.”
Julius saw Kydra unsuccessfully trying to pull the General off him by tugging on his robe. Julius shook his head. He wanted her to keep her Silkri aura under wraps.
“I will have my retribution, in this lifetime or through the crossover.” Julius whispered through clenched teeth before passing out.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Mass Exodus
“Oh, to the darn Mugadeers and back, look at my boots, will you.” Dersji cursed at the thick brown scunge clinging to the white leather. His body, that was still being
infected by Mercury and unknown herbs, had him thinking that the specks of dirt on the leather, looked more like thick mud. “Possibly running at … five percent in the Siliou?” he muttered to himself, aware he was more or less only capable of preform movement and actions.
Lenity covered herself in her robe. Shielding herself from the intruders.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” Dersji smiled to her, assessing her shadowy hybrid face with restrained disgust. “Please, dearest lady, we need a Vector … hmm, you do smell so sweet.” So sweetly bad, Dersji thought, staring at her shabby robes giving off a distinctive smell. “Can you see my friend and I need to leave? As soon as you can, would be even better.”
“I said no more through! And definitely not the runt of a Daem-Raal.” Dersji noticed her stare past him, to Cuki who cowered in the corner.
“Oh, I seem to have forgot he was here. Sometimes I do miss the boat …” Dersji went searching for the critter who had begun running off to hide. “You were supposed to lock tie him up, you know that?” Cuki averted his eyes from Dersji’s eventual stare. “Good-for-nothing …”
Kaianan swayed, her eyes rolling, trying to keep herself upright. “What have I done to myself?” She clutched her white hair in disbelief, tears smudged round her eyes.
Dersji creased his forehead. “Why are you looking morbid for? This isn’t time for a pity party.”
“Oh, I like pity parties.” Lenity piped up, between the two smoke pits, with intrigued eyes.
“Lenity,” Dersji said charmingly, “would you like Kaianan to share with you her absurd story? Such a melancholy drama.”
“It’s not absurd!” Kaianan rebuked.
Lenity nodded with a large smirk. “Oh yes, please share.”
“It’s preposterous then.” Dersji corrected.
“That means the same—” Kaianan began.
“He is the death of us all!” Lenity cut off, shouting, and pointing at Arlise being escorted by Adrel into the small cave opening. Arlise dripped blood through his croaking cough. Cuki wailed at the sight of the hurt Felrin, springing around like a panicked animal.