Fallen Star

by Ivan Kal

  Her body was stronger than his, her reactions faster, being on the level of the seventh step. But her ki, her spirit… He had yet to see her unleash the power that Vin was capable of. He believed that it had something to do with the nature of the seventh step; nothing else made sense.

  Lei himself hadn’t been able to find a way to take the next step, as something about the seventh step was eluding him, and he was growing more and more certain that it had something to do with souls. It was the only thing that was different about Vin’s body that made sense.

  A loud ping brought Lei’s attention to a small magical device tied to his sash. He palmed it and looked at the glowing red stone.

  “Come, Ashara, we are going back through the gate. Narzarah wishes to speak with us.”

  Ashara picked up her spear and followed behind Lei as they walked among the corpses of an army they had singlehandedly destroyed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sao Ban

  Three Years Ago

  A god walked the streets of Tourran disguised as a human. Sao Ban was moving urgently, his mind scanning the mortals around him, looking for anything amiss. He had failed—none of the events that he had been trying to make come to pass had happened. The journal he had used to guide the mortals seemed even worse than useless. The fact that most of it had been written in the form of prophetic dreams that he had to interpret didn’t make the things easier. He had thought that he knew what he was doing, that he had learned enough from his mother to know how to nudge the mortals in the right direction, but he had obviously been wrong. The only problem had been that he couldn’t find the source of his problems, couldn’t pinpoint the moment where he’d made the mistake.

  The events that should have happened naturally hadn’t—it was as if the entire world had decided to follow another path simply to spite Sao Ban. There were a few events that were mentioned in the journal of Vardun Con Aroch which had come to pass: the retaking of Tourran, the spirit artist from another world growing closer to the Eternal Soul and the young woman from Amaranthine… But it was as if everything else had changed, and Sao Ban wasn’t sure if he had been interpreting the dreams wrongly or if he had just screwed up on a massive scale. The woman, Ashara, had disappeared, and by the time Sao Ban realized it there had been not even a trace left of her anywhere on the world, despite his checking thoroughly. And that shouldn’t be possible—even if she was dead, he should have been able to sense something. There were a few dreams that spoke of the three not being together, but nothing else that he had read from those futures was the same. Amaranthine hadn’t gone to war with the Lashian Empire, the Mage Council hadn’t tried to kidnap the Eternal Soul and break the bond she had with the fragment of power.

  There were so few events that Sao Ban could see that had been recorded. It was as if someone had the same prophecies he did and was actively working to foil every single one of them, and that couldn’t be possible. In all of his travels he had only ever discovered one account of what he considered true prophecies; he had tried to find more, but with no success. He couldn’t completely rule the possibility that someone had prophecies of their own, but if he hadn’t been able to find them, he doubted that anyone else could either.

  Still, he knew that he needed to act, so he did attempt to make a few suggestions over the years, mostly to the Council of Mages, making them more eager to forgive and reestablish connection with Tourran and the Eternal Soul. So far he had been successful, at least partially. The Council was very stubborn and didn’t want to entertain the ideas that the Eternal Soul put forward.

  Sao Ban had discovered that the Lashians had their own people making sure to guide the situation in their interests. While Sao Ban could try some forceful means like mind control, he was hesitant to try as much. There were a few prophecies that described him doing that, and they never ended well—a few even ended with a fight between gods. Sao Ban was not willing to risk that, not until he could figure out just exactly where he went wrong.

  The fact that he couldn’t find a prophecy that matched the exact situation they were in actually made him feel hopeful. There was an infinite number of possible futures, at least according to his mother, and if they were on a path to one that had not been foreseen, it did not immediately mean that it was a bad future, only that he wouldn’t know what was to come—which was how life usually was.

  Still, Sao Ban had been trying to make sure that there was no one else who was interfering with the mortals. Khalio was at the top of his list, but he hadn’t sensed his brother anywhere on this world—which, of course, meant little. If Khalio had as much power at his disposal as Vanagandr had warned him about, then it would be easy for him to hide himself from Sao Ban’s sight. But even the gods made mistakes, which was why Sao Ban was scouring the city regardless. If someone was messing with him, it would be here, in this place. The Eternal Soul and Kai Zhao Vin were essential to the future.

  He spent another three days searching with no success—until one of his rings flashed, and a message found him. He looked at it for a moment and then mentally read through it. It was a message from Vanagandr, informing him that he needed to see him, and asking Sao Ban to meet him in the Nexus. Sao Ban looked around the city and the people walking about. He was hesitant to leave, but Vanagandr’s message seemed urgent.

  Finally he sighed and found a secluded alley. Once he was certain that no one was looking for him, he opened a portal to the upper plane and stepped through.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LEI

  Present

  Xhao Wa Lei walked with Ashara through the ruins of his world. They had traveled through several gates to reach Orb from where the world they had been on. The Arashan had several hub worlds, as they called them, from which they opened gates to other worlds, and then connected those to others. From what Lei gathered, his world will become a smaller hub in the future, once the Host finished with their next target.

  The two of them were in the city that had been the capital of Orb, although not in the sense of a ruling seat. It was a place where the spirit artists had gathered from all over the world, from different Clans and villages, all in order to test themselves against one another. To see which Way was the strongest, which Way would take them the furthest along the Path. He glanced around at the rubble. The Arashan hadn’t rebuilt anything; this world was not as valuable to them as some others. It was small, and the only value it had was in its people and their spirit arts—and they were gone, save only for three survivors.

  “It looks so much…bleaker than what I imagined. From Vin’s stories I pictured a world filled with color,” Ashara said slowly as she looked around.

  “It used to be, before the Arashan came,” Lei said. He saw her wince at his words, but he didn’t hold it against her, not really. She had made a choice to abandon her old life for power, a bargain that the Arashan god had fulfilled. It was the same bargain that he himself had made. He didn’t know why she had done what she did, but it didn’t matter anymore. The Arashan god had his hooks in them now, and dwelling on the past would do them no good.

  Lei glanced to the sky. It was tinted in red, an effect of the Arashan tapping into the world-core, as they called it. He had learned that that was the purpose of their conquest, their god’s desire for power. As Ashara had said, there was no color in the world anymore. The plants had withered and would soon die, and this world would follow soon after. Khalio had drained the vital energy of worlds themselves and added it to himself. A portion of it he had funneled back to his followers, through the tethers he attached to all of their souls, a way to control them as well as make them stronger.

  The red tint made the once majestic sight of Father Sky seem somehow ominous. The storms that danced on the surface of the world around which Orb turned looked both angry and sad. Lei wondered what the gods, and his ancestors in the heavens, thought about what had happened on this world. Did they even exist? Lei had met a god, or at least someone who claimed to be one; did that
mean that everything that his people had ever believed in was wrong, or did their gods exist in truth? And if they did, why had they allowed this to happen to their people? The Arashan god had interfered in their affairs, so why hadn’t theirs?

  Perhaps it had all been a lie. Perhaps his ancestors didn’t watch over them from the heavens. If they did watch over them, they surely never would’ve allowed this to happen. Lei shook his head—a spirit artist could only live by his decisions, striving always to climb up the Path. Dwelling on such things as the existence of the gods or the heavens would not help him now.

  The two of them made their way through the streets filled with Arashan of many races. The most numerous were the Brutes, tall beings with black horns and red scales and leathery wings folded on their back. They were the saddest things in existence Lei had ever seen. His education in all things Arashan had taught him that they used to be just like him—beings whose world was attacked by the Arashan, and they, too, had refused to bow. The Arashan defeated them and using great magic bound them, breaking their will and making them slaves. They twisted their forms to make them better soldiers and crippled their minds. There was no intelligence in their heads now other than that of a trained beast. They followed orders and little more.

  The second most numerous were the Darji. With their red-tinted skin, they looked almost human except for their horns. There were a few others that he hadn’t recognized, but only a few, and then there were humans. Lei had tried talking with them, but they were too zealous for him to be able to keep a conversation for long. He wondered if he would become like that one day, worshiping Khalio to the point of not caring about anything else.

  The Host was preparing for war, an entire army having arrived from many worlds. There were weapons of war being readied for transport, massive constructs mounted on wheels and carts that were as large as small barns. Animals the size of houses were pulling those, with tiny Arashan drivers sitting on their backs. Lei had seen most of these weapons—he had destroyed many himself—but he knew that the weapons, while incredibly dangerous, hadn’t been able to show their true power on Orb. They required aura, or anima as the Arashan called it, in order to work, and powering them from anima-wells alone had been a problem for the Arashan during the war—especially since Lei’s people focused and destroyed them often. Eventually, they had abandoned the use of such weapons and instead brought in more troops, with which they eventually overwhelmed Orb’s defenders.

  Lei had been surprised when he had decided to switch sides that he had been given a highly placed position. He was a Champion of the Host, a highly ranked and respected position, albeit one that didn’t have its own command. He was high enough in rank that he could only be ordered by a Grand Commander or someone of a higher rank, and there had been no real hate directed at him from the Arashan, even those who had fought in the war against him. They respected Lei’s power and were glad that it had been added to that of their god.

  The commotion around them was a tightly controlled chaos, but still as they walked people moved out of their way. They knew them on sight. The spirit artist Xhao Wa Lei, the man who had betrayed his own world and became a Champion of the Host, and Ashara Ravena, the woman brought to the Host by their god himself—the two warriors who had pacified an entire world all by themselves. There was no fear in their eyes as they looked at them, even though they knew that the two of them were the most powerful beings among them. They were all Arashan, and they all served the same god.

  The camaraderie that all the Arashan shared was something that Lei had been missing his entire life. Spirit artists were lonely beings, each guarding their secrets and working to trump one another. But the Arashan all worked together for their common goal, even though they didn’t know much beyond that it was the will of their god.

  The two walked into the large square where the rows of Arashan troops were arranged and ready to pass through the gate the moment it was opened. They made their way to a large pavilion with a crest depicting a violet sword proudly shown above the curtains leading inside. The guards were two brutes who stepped away as Lei and Ashara approached, and allowed them inside.

  The pavilion was open and filled with furniture. A bed stood on a floor of planks on one side, with large chests on each side of it. The beams were adorned with long red banners with a dark orb on top and three lines spreading downward—the flag of the Arashan. Floors were covered in fur carpets, and in the middle was a large war table. Next to it, hunched over, was the Grand Commander of the Host’s seventh division, the one that the two belonged as well.

  Narzarah was a Darji. He had red-tinted skin and long, curving black horns, longer than any other Darji that Lei had seen. He was tall, as tall as Ashara and Lei, who were both over two meters in height themselves. He wasn’t wearing his armor, but Lei could see it mounted on a stand on the other side of the pavilion. The black metal suit of armor looked strange with its glyphs dormant—when Narzarah wore it, they glowed and released faint wisps of smoke.

  The Grand Commander’s top was left bare, revealing a back filled with scars. From the waist down he wore a simple pair of loose black trousers. Next to him, leaned against the table, was his sword—a strange weapon that was broad and curved, at least a meter and a half in length. Its scabbard was black leather etched with red symbols that were now dormant, its guard a cross fashioned out of the white bone of some old and powerful spirit beast. The handle was wrapped in violet cloth, but the most important thing was the gem placed in its pommel, which resembled a gnarly hand grasping around the orb: the fragment of power, and one bound to Narzarah. Lei had rarely seen him dismiss his blade, even though he knew that the man could do so. He had to admit, the blade gave off a strange aura that made even Lei feel uncomfortable.

  The two of them paused just inside and waited. Narzarah glanced behind him a moment later and gestured for them to come closer. They approached the table and looked down at the maps of a world—the one that they were about to invade. Ashara’s home.

  Narzarah put his finger on the map. “We’ve managed to make a few connections with our agents on Enosia over the years, so we know the general situation that we will face. Enosia is a colossal-class world, and those are always a challenge to conquer.”

  Lei glanced at Ashara, trying to judge how she felt about going to attack her own world. She had done well over the years by Lei’s side, but they hadn’t been fighting on her own world. This would be different.

  As if he was reading Lei’s mind, Narzarah turned his eyes on Ashara. “How do you feel about going back to your world?”

  Ashara didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she looked at the maps with a strange expression on her face. She put her hand down on the map on an area that bore the name Amaranthine, then she spoke. “The only thing I had on my world was betrayal and weakness. I couldn’t do anything, was always at the mercy of others…” She traced her fingers north until she reached a large bay and pressed her finger at the city nestled between the mountains and the water. “There is nothing on Enosia that I care about, not anymore.”

  Narzarah nodded and then turned his attention back to the map. He pointed at a red dot in the mountains on the northern part of the continent. “The gate has been built in the mountains of the central Lashian Empire. The Lashians have kept it a secret, although I am told that Kai Zhao Vin has discovered its location.”

  Lei immediately felt a rush of guilt. He had allowed Vin to escape his imprisonment, had let him fall through the portal that the Arashan used to get their advanced agents to Enosia, and through which Ming-Li followed. That Vin was now a danger to the Arashan was his fault. But no one had discovered his crime, nor did anyone blame him. He still wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Lei had never been as completely on board with the Arashan as Ming-Li had been; he just couldn’t have brought himself to harm the greatest spirit artist that had ever lived. It would have been dishonorable, and after all the dishonorable things Lei had done, he hadn’t wanted to add one more. />
  “The Lashians are certain, however, that they have made any attack on the gate impossible. They have the neighboring nations convinced that they do not want a war and that the Arashan threat is nonexistent,” Narzarah continued. “We will be following the usual plan of conquest for colossal-class worlds. We will keep our word to the Lashians—provide them with armies and help them in their conquests—until such a point when the gate can be open permanently, and we can bring over the bulk of our forces. Once that happens, they will be given the choice of joining the Host or death.”

  Lei nodded in understanding. He had been involved in the invasions of two worlds in the last few years. One had been a smaller world, just a bit larger than Orb: the home of the Úlfriir, which Lei and Ashara had pacified on their own. The other had been larger, one where Narzarah had led a great army against the inhabitants. Lei had seen how the Host utilized temporary allies on the worlds they invaded. There were always those who believed that they could benefit from siding with the Host against the others and somehow profit. It made Lei sick to see such dishonor. The Arashan might not have an honorable mission, but at least they never betrayed one another.

  “Our first target will be here.” Narzarah pointed at the bay and the city. “Tourran. I will be using the two of you to take care of high-priority targets.”

  Lei felt a touch of fear. “Will he be there?” There was no need to say who he meant.

  Narzarah nodded. “Yes. The plan is to take care of the threat Kai Zhao Vin poses as soon as possible rather than allowing him the time to grow stronger. The Lashian Empire has a plan for the invasion, and their Emperor will use their two fragment-bearers in the ensuing combat.”