Laurel shrugged. “Hell, I don’t even know if they really exist. Hard to tell reality from fiction these days. But from what they say, they’re farther north than even the Frozen North.”
Gregory laughed. “I didn’t know there was such a thing. Come to think of it, I don’t know much about anything outside of the Valley, and now the Dark Forest.”
“Hey,” Laurel replied with a jab to his arm, “the Dark Forest is still part of the Valley, even if you douchers want to disown us.”
“We disown you? In our stories, it was the druids who chose to leave the city. Wandered into the woods, never to be seen again.”
Laurel shrugged. “With all the shit you’ve told me, can you blame us? I mean, things got pretty bad there.”
Gregory felt conflicted over her words. He immediately felt a sense of defensiveness toward the home that, with all its injustices, he still loved and was ready to die for. But it was hard to argue her point.
“OK, but you are the one who ran away from it all!”
She batted her eyelashes in an overly dramatic way. “I took one look at you, fair Gregory, and I just couldn’t—”
They both jumped as a voice rang out behind them. “Am I interrupting something?” Hannah smirked. “Hell, every time I see you two—”
“We’re working.” Gregory grimaced.
“That’s what you said earlier today.” She crossed the room and joined them at the bench. Eyes on Gregory, she queried, “You look like bloody hell. Sleeping much?”
“I’m fine. I’ve gotta get this done.” He waved a hand over the table full of ropes, pulleys, and other things that Hannah couldn’t identify.
Laurel pulled the handkerchief off his hand, inspecting the healed knuckles. “I think I have something for the sleep issue, too.” She patted her leather bag before pointing at her squirrel Devin. “I’ll be right back. You stay here and behave.”
The little creature ran down her arm and jumped to a table adjacent to Gregory’s workbench. She eyed Hannah and Gregory as her master turned and left the room.
Hannah wrinkled her nose. “I kind of hate that thing.” She nodded at the squirrel. “Gives me the creeps.”
Gregory gave her an amused look. “Says the girl with the dragon.”
“Point taken.” Hannah looked down at the bench, taking inventory of the strange devices. “So what’s your play here, anyway?”
He leaned against the table and watched Laurel go through the door on the other side of the room into the stairwell. Gregory exhaled. “I am so glad you asked. I’m clueless, really. I might need your help.”
“My help?” Hannah exclaimed, fully aware of her ignorance concerning all things mechanical.
“Yeah. I mean, I think the right thing to do is to take it slow. You know, not scare her away. But she’s just so damned forward with me. I think she actually wants me to—”
Hannah jabbed him in the ribs. “Dipshit. I’m talking about your work.” She indicated the table. “You know, taking down an unstoppable death machine? I don’t really have time to dedicate to your love life right now. But if you bring it up at the next team meeting about how we are going to orchestrate an attack on Arcadia with a bunch of old women and kids while also saving Irth, I’m sure Zeke would be willing to devote some time to it.”
Gregory blushed. “Oh. Shit. Right, this—”
Laughing, she waved her hand at him. “I’m screwing with you, G. Listen, we’re not a bunch of overgrown kids at the Academy, angling to get the attention of some cute magician. Just be yourself.”
“People don’t tend to like ‘myself.’”
“Bullshit. We all love you here. Well, maybe not Karl, but he doesn’t love anyone. Really, if you keep playing this over and over in your head, you won’t be able to contribute. Be you. Hang out with her, and if something happens, run with it.”
Gregory nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m always right. Not to mention, odds are that at least one of you will be dead before this is all over. Then all this concern will be for nothing.”
He laughed. “I hate you.”
“Join the large and diverse club.” She poked his ribcage again. “Now tell me about your project.”
Before speaking, Gregory rearranged the contents of his workbench, taking inventory. Finally he pulled a piece of parchment and a writing tool from the back of an adjacent table and started to draw.
“That almost looks like a magitech rifle,” Hannah said, squinting at the page.
Looking up, Gregory smiled. “Indeed, something like that. Only here is the difference…”
Biting his lower lip in concentration, he put the pencil to paper and drew a set of legs holding the device in place and a picture of a man standing next to the device. The thing was nearly as long as the character was tall.
“Shit!” Hannah exclaimed. “Haven’t seen any magitech that size.”
“I know, right?”
“So, it will send a massive blast to take down the airship?”
Gregory shook his head. “To create a blast that powerful, we would need half the amphoralds in the Heights, or at least as many as the airship needs to fuel it. According to Karl, they’ve been providing crystals for months. All we have are these.” He nodded to a pile of small green stones. There were hundreds of them, but they were tiny.
He continued. “I took apart the magitech cuffs—the ones the men who escaped from the factory were still wearing when they got here—and extracted the bits of amphoralds embedded in them. Karl wanted the bracelets for some reason, which was fine by me. I got what I was looking for.”
Hannah looked puzzled; none of it was making sense. “So you have a device the size of a cannon with the power of a pea shooter. Guess we’re finished.”
He held up a hand to slow her down. “Just listen. We aren’t blasting power at the ship. We’re using the power of the gems in a different way, a more powerful way. Remember when you broke into my father’s safe?”
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “I heated the crystals until they exploded.”
“Exactly. The crystals hold power until that power can be released in a controlled fashion. But if the crystals are broken, that power is released all at once. This has always been seen as a disadvantage.” Gregory paused, his throat tightening as he thought of his father. “My father built a regulator that would stop the flow of power into the amphoralds as they were being fueled, to ensure that these accidents wouldn’t happen anymore, or at least fewer of them.”
“Ok, so how does this help us take down their ship?”
“I intend to turn the disadvantage of the amphorald technology to our advantage.”
Hannah was grinning like a fool as she watched her friend come into his own.
“We will make a giant spear and insert it here,” Gregory placed the tip of his pen at the end of the barrel. “To the butt we will attach a very long rope.”
“And the amphoralds?” Hannah asked. “What the hell do they do?”
Gregory pursed his lips and nodded. “That’s the tricky and dangerous part. At the end of the barrel, we’ll have a compartment. We power up the amphoralds beyond what they ought to hold.”
“Yikes!”
“No shit.” He grinned. “Right now I’m working on a mechanism to ignite the amphoralds.” He mimicked the appearance of an explosion with his hands and made a sound to match. “All that force stored in the amphoralds will have nowhere to go except up the barrel.”
Hannah jabbed a finger at the end of the barrel. “And it will push the spear out of the end of this massive tube.”
“Exactly!”
Hannah laughed. “If only we could fight Adrien directly with the power of your oversized brain, we could take back Arcadia in an instant.”
He flushed and shook his head. “If only the indirect use of my brain works…”
“What could possibly go wrong?” Hannah grinned.
“Don’t say that! There are countless problems.
”
Hannah looked the drawing again. She picked up Gregory’s pen and drew in a shape that looked more like a goose egg than an airship and added the spear with a rope trailing behind to the drawing.
“OK. Say we are able to get your rope somehow attached to the ship, then what?”
Gregory scowled. “Still working on that. But I think we might be able to—”
A scream interrupted their conversation, along with the sound of a hundred boots marching above them.
“Laurel!” Gregory cried as he dashed for the stairwell.
****
Hannah and Gregory made it to the great hall just as the sound of thunderous footsteps faded down the long corridor in the opposite direction. Laurel was sprawled on the floor between the dining area and the kitchen.
Gregory ran to her side and knelt, his face knit with concern. “You all right?” he asked, helping her to her feet.
“What happened?” Hannah inspected a dozen or so overturned tables and chairs.
Laurel gave a sly smile. “Your dragon! That’s what happened.”
“No, really?” Hannah laughed. “All that lazy ass ever does is lie around, eat, and sleep.”
“Not today.” Laurel pointed to an overturned bowl at the base of a table in the kitchen. Brown liquid had spilled out. “Gregory was so tired, I thought I would make him some kaffe. I turned around and there was Sal, lapping from the bowl. Pretty sure he likes it.”
Hannah frowned, eyes moving from the mess on the floor to the druid and back. “Kaffe?” she asked, the word feeling completely foreign on her tongue.
Laurel giggled. “Don’t tell me you don’t have kaffe.” She watched Hannah and Gregory shake their heads in tandem. “Damn, this place! No wonder everyone’s so cranky all the time. It’s a drink. A hot drink made from a ground bean. I’ve been told that the bean only grows far south of here, but the druids have been using magic to grow it in the Dark Forest for years. Some say it was the Chieftain’s idea.”
“So, what?” Gregory asked. “It makes you drunk?”
Laurel could hardly control her laughter. “No. Not drunk. I guess I would say, it makes you feel more alive or something; more energetic. Apparently it was all the rage in the old world. I thought I would whip you up a batch to help you keep working, but that…that thing drank it all.”
“That thing has a name,” Hannah quipped with her hands on her hips.
Just as Laurel opened her mouth to speak, a loud thump interrupted them. Before any of them could react, Sal, his beady little eyes flashing in every direction, crashed into the room. He slid to a stop in front of Hannah and started turning in circles, chasing his own tail.
Hannah turned to Laurel. “Will he always be like this? I think I liked Lazy-ass Sal better.”
“Oh, no. It wears off, but he drank a ton!”
Hannah pointed toward the doors leading outside. “Sal, I love you, pal, but you gotta go.” Sal stopped his circling. He looked at Hannah, head bouncing up and down. “Really, buddy. Go outside and run yourself ragged.”
Gregory jogged over to the door and opened it, allowing the dragon to dash outside into the cold afternoon air. He saw him take four steps to the edge of the stairs and leap into the air, his wings beating double-time.
“I think I should be glad I didn’t drink any,” Gregory said as he watched the creature sail away. As he started to close the door, something peculiar caught his eyes in the distance. A girl, hands bound in front of her, was walking toward the tower, followed by two men on Karl’s team, sticks in hand.
“Is that...Violet?”
Crossing the room, Hannah and Laurel joined him in the doorway, watching the soldiers march their captive toward the building. Violet was the girl Hannah had despised most during her time at the Academy. Not only was she the most stuck up of the nobles, but she had also deliberately tried to make Hannah’s world a living hell.
Seeing her in the custody of their troops made her heart leap for a moment, but then she wondered what the hell she was doing here. Nothing about the girl had impressed Hannah, except perhaps her ability to be a complete and utter douche. She certainly wouldn’t have been sent by Adrien to spy on their community, not unless part of his master plan was getting the young woman caught. Hannah guessed that wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility.
As they got near, Violet squinted, staring in the direction of Hannah and Gregory. “That’s them. They’re the ones I need to see. Let me go, scumbags.”
Hannah smiled as they half-carried her up the steps.
“What’s going on here?” she asked Karl’s men.
Philip, a boy she had grown up with in the Boulevard, pushed Violet toward them. “We found her in the woods on the south side. Said she needed to see the nerd and Deborah. Just kept repeating it over and over. She sounded a little out of her mind. Billy here thought she might be a remnant.”
“I’m not a bloody remnant, you dipshit. My father—”
Hannah up held a hand stop her, and thankfully Violet complied. “I know her. Unfasten her hands. Gregory and I will take it from here, see if we can’t find Deborah or the nerd she’s talking about.”
Cutting the rope tying her wrists together, Philip nodded to Hannah and turned to leave. Billy was right on his heels.
“Hey, guys,” Hannah called behind them. They glanced over their shoulders. “Nice work out there.”
The men left with a grin and a little wave, heading back to their rounds on the edge of the woods.
Violet’s eyes, generally adorned with the finest cosmetics coin could buy, were bare. Dark circles stretched toward her cheekbones. “Deborah, thank the Matriarch. I’m so glad to see you.” She glanced at Gregory. “And you, too.”
“Cut the shit, Violet. What the hell are you doing here? And can you give me one good reason I shouldn’t hang your body from the top of this tower and let it sway in the wind while the birds pick it to pieces?”
The young woman’s eyes grew wide and her bottom lip trembled. She just stared mutely at the girl she had known only as Deborah. Whether it was the threat of force, the stories of Hannah’s display of power in the fight against the Arcadian forces, or the fact that she was now a prisoner of the enemy, Hannah couldn’t be certain.
Finally the girl spoke. “I am here to learn the truth. What happened to my brother?” She croaked out her last word and broke into tears.
Gregory and Hannah shared a look before he finally nodded. Hannah took the cue and wrapped her arm around Violet as she shook with emotion. “Come on, let’s get you warmed up.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The great hall was full of people preparing to fight or working to keep the tower fed. They were occupied enough not to notice the three young people sitting in chairs drawn close to the fire. With one hand, Violet pulled the blanket up to her chin. It quivered in tandem with her shaking body. In the other, she gripped a mug of herbal tea that Eleanor had made without complaint.
“First of all, my real name is Hannah.”
Violet looked over her mug with a vacant stare.
“Deborah was a ruse. The hair, the family, being a student. It was all a lie, a part of our plan to overthrow Adrien and take back the city. To return it to the way it was supposed to be.”
She blew across the surface of the steaming brew and looked at Gregory. “Then who are you? Some sort of spy, too?”
“Me?” Gregory asked. “I’m still just Gregory. Same guy, completely different life.” He gestured toward the people moving around. “As you can see. But my question is, what are you doing here?”
Violet took a long drink of tea, then sighed before jumping into her story.
“I came here because I didn’t know what else to do. After you,” she glanced around the room, “all of you did what you did, Adrien was furious. He gave a very impressive speech about the dangers you all presented to the good life we were living in the city, and how if we wanted to preserve our lives, we would ready ourselves for attack.
All the students, including me, were inspired. You know how Adrien can be.” She looked at Gregory with pleading eyes. “Classes were canceled, or so they said. In fact, they really just changed. The faculty began teaching us how to use our gifts for combat.”
Hannah nodded, listening. It confirmed everything she had assumed, but she wanted to get to the meat of the story.
“There was a problem for a few of us,” she continued. “Some of the students had siblings who were part of Adrien’s Scholars’ Program. I was told that my brother Robert had been accepted into the program and that it was residential, which, made sense at the time. But once the pivot happened, once we all began to train for war, I expected the best students to return to the community. To become part of the great plan to thwart the rebels and re-establish peace in Arcadia.”
Glancing at Gregory, Hannah saw the scowl growing on his face. He too had been accepted into Adrien’s Scholars’ Program, and it had ended with him being chained to the machine, his power and life being drained out of him.
“Go on,” Hannah urged her.
“Rumors started to circulate in the residence halls and between training times that Adrien had used our friends and family members in a most horrible way. He…he sucked the life out of them.” She paused to sip her tea. “I don’t know what is true and what isn’t, but I couldn’t get any answers inside the city, so I came to the only people I knew who might tell me something. Do you know? Do you know what happened to my brother?”
Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Gregory reached out a hand and placed it on Violet’s knee.
“The rumors are true. Adrien killed every person who accepted his scholarship. I’m sorry.”
Violet stared at the floor. She didn’t cry or scream or shake, she just stared down, as if she could see through it. Finally, she looked up and it was clear that she made up her mind about something.
“Thank you for telling me the truth. Now I have something to tell you, Deborah.”
“It’s Hannah.”
“Sorry. I know I was a complete bitch to you. There’s no excuse. But maybe I can make it up to you. Adrien’s planning to attack tomorrow. He’s coming with everything he’s got. Soldiers, the student magicians, Capitol Guard, everything.”
Revolution - C M Raymond & L E Barbant Page 17