by F. R. Brooks
Then, the flickering dimmed and slowed. Liam squinted, mesmerized by the blooms of light and hazy perceived by his broken eyes. The darkness between each flash grew longer and longer until only a slow pulse faded in and out with every rolling shadow in the garden.
Liam blinked in exhausted confusion. Perhaps this was a hallucination, perhaps he was already dead.
A weak cough flooded Liam’s body with pain. Scarlet beads of blood floated just past his lips.
Time had slowed nearly to a halt.
Darkness engulfed the room once more and as light rolled back across every prismatic, icy surface, a fourth figure stood beside the Chevalier.
A tall man in a silver suit approached Liam, unnoticed by the Chevalier. As he drew closer, Liam realized that the man did not wear a silver sentisuit—the man himself was made of silver.
The silver man stopped before Liam in silence. Liam couldn’t have known the look on the man’s face even without waves of darkness pulsing over them.
He gripped the spear and Liam screamed, voice drowned in his own blood. Pain surged through him as the silver man pulled the weapon from Liam’s torso. Blood poured as Liam crumbled into a curled heap on the ground. He clutched the wound, desperate to keep from unraveling.
The silver man tossed the spear aside and knelt before Liam.
“Don’t forget this time, Liam.” The quiet voice reverberated in his skull with soothing kind of familiarity. “This is where it begins.”
Another tide of light rolled over them and the silver man was gone. Light burst around him as the Chevalier’s aetherbreak landed upon the pillar. Little more than sparks and a fractured stalagmite remained where Liam had once been pinned.
As the Chevalier realized the Liam, albeit bleeding out on the ground beside the pillar, had lived, she lowered her arms. He sensed as much confusion in the electric exalt as he felt in himself—what the hell had just intervened?
A frigid avalanche crashed over the Chevalier, followed by James and a barrage of ice.
Liam squeezed his eyes shut and attempted to move. He screamed as pain ripped through his body, emanating from where the spear impaled him.
At the heart of the battleground, James and the Chevalier fought. He froze her arms to the ground and smashed a thick, ice javelin into her visor with bloodlust in his roars. The Chevalier kicked back and screamed with a chaotic surge. The ice around one arm exploded and it was all she needed to hook one hand behind James’s knee and pull him into another paralyzing surge.
James crumpled beside the Chevalier, body jerking and writhing in agony as smoke billowed off the surface of his suit.
I know her electricity is stronger than my metal… especially if I’m in this shape. I’m not trying to kill anymore. I’m just trying to buy him time. This is my contingency plan.
“James…!” Blood sputtered over Liam’s lips.
The Chevalier had freed herself and made her way toward James as sparks rolled across her fingertips.
Liam opened the battery compartment in his collar piece and replaced the empty one in his suit’s core. His suit lit up once more with full LCR. His broken armor mostly sealed as threads of lucidium wove across the gap. The damage was too severe for a mere battery to erase the structural breach.
“James,” Liam tried again as his comms system came back online, “…use your aetherbreak…!”
Blood trailed behind Liam as he hobbled toward James and the Chevalier.
Metal tendrils curled around him as his suit diverted all lucidium resources into one final attack.
Through a cracked visor, the Chevalier’s features curled in a snarl. She abandoned James to finish off the dying metal exalt.
Wave after wave of electricity burst and flashed around him as she approached. The growing web of metal tendrils took the brunt of her assault. The rest still broke through and ripped through Liam’s broken body. His LCR wore down faster than his aetherbreak gauge could fill.
Just as the Chevalier leapt for him, Liam’s aetherbreak gauge chimed with a scrambled ding inside his weathered helmet. The gold lucidium veins in his suit flashed to life. The web of metal cords split, doubled, and then tripled across the battlefield until a cage of metal began to close around the Chevalier.
He closed one fist and guided the structure to collapse into itself and crush the Chevalier. Finally, the Chevalier dropped to her knees, ensnared by heavy, multiplying cords. Liam tightened the cords around her and just as he expected, the Chevalier sent another high-voltage charge through the cords. The current traveled through the metal still tethered to his gauntlets and burned through his body.
Any wings of lucidium exhaust that had started to form at Liam’s back darkened and faded as the Chevalier interrupted his aetherbreak.
It didn’t matter to Liam anymore—when he saw James climb to his feet and toss his drained battery aside, he knew his job was done.
The silvery veins in James’s suit flared to life and his frigid aetherbreak activated. Lucidium exhaust flared from the converter on James’s back.
Liam’s metal went brittle and cracked as ice spread across the battleground. The panes across the conservatory’s dome ceiling froze over and shattered. Glass fragments whirled like thousands of crystallized raindrops in a kaleidoscopic storm.
White light and avalanches of ice and crystal engulfed the garden. Liam could just barely make out the silhouettes of the Chevalier and his brother in the midst of the aetherbreak. A crystalline lance formed in James’s hands. He raised it over the trapped Chevalier who struggled against a prison of electrified cords. In one final burst of light, the javelin ripped through the Chevalier’s armor and plunged through her chest.
Silence fell over the battleground as the sparks faded. Ice spread through the Chevalier’s body until only a frigid, lifeless body remained.
The night sky sparkled with fewer stars than they saw upon their arrival as the static in the air faded. As she died, the wisps and butterflies faded with her, burning out one by one like the last stars in her isolated universe.
The structure of James’s sentisuit morphed and shifted. Accent colors faded to white. His suit began to evolve into one befitting of a new Chevalier.
Black splotched and spread over the surface of Liam’s suit. The transformation of his brother’s armor mirrored his own.
Both of their suits began to evolve.
16 | “Like a ring around the sun…”
The lucidium core of James’s suit flashed and pulsed. White had become the dominant color of his sentisuit, accented only by thin, black patterns and the silver, circuitry-like patterns of lucidium veins. The changes to Liam’s suit mirrored his brother’s, save for the dominance of black spread across his armor.
The suit of every exalt changed in subtle ways when their rank increased. The change from Rank 8 to Rank 9—Chevalier—was the most dramatic of all. Standard-issue accent colors either faded to white or darkened to black.
Liam had once heard an urban legend about the color of a Chevalier’s suit. For a new Chevalier to emerge with white armor, it was said that Libelle would know at least a decade of peace and quiet from the threats of wasteland mobs. For a Chevalier to emerge with black armor, it was said that their reign was fated to be short and riddled with misfortune and violence for Libelle.
People loved to speak of it just as much as they loved to quickly brush the adage aside as if they weren’t superstitious.
As he looked down at his black, bloodstained gauntlets, Liam wondered what meaning could possibly come of having both? There had never been two Chevaliers in Libelle’s history.
What had transpired in that moment was unprecedented. Even the system had said it—the title and victory went to the exalt who dealt the killing blow.
It should have been James. He couldn’t be a Chevalier. There had to be something wrong, some error, some glitch.
Then again, what did it matter?
Liam’s vision blurred again as disorienting fatigue barre
led over him. His parched mouth and throat burned. His body barely moved as he willed it to. Sleep tempted him in a way he’d never known before—anything to be released of the pain in what remained of his body.
Delirious, Liam hobbled toward his brother through a firestorm of pain.
Just let me say goodbye.
He glimpsed his brother’s face one last time before an opaque mirror of chrome filtered across the visor.
Deafening static blared through the comms.
James screamed and pawed at the clasps on the base of his helmet. Liam winced through the sound penetrating his skull. Had he not been on the verge of death as it was, he may have ripped at his helmet, too.
“James…!” Liam cried.
The Chevalier dropped to his knees and roared once more in agony.
Vespid drones hovering overhead darkened. No bold, red light indicated recording. Libelle would not see any of this, Liam was sure. Chrysid would hide this from the world, too. Only they would witness the truth. Only they would witness the fleeting in history where Libelle had two Chevaliers.
A cacophony of noise ground through their comms, rising until it peaked with silence. James stilled and slumped forward. Despite the comms going momentarily offline, Liam could hear his brother groan. A long mewl that escalated into a tearful wail.
“Don’t show me this—don’t show me this, please! Get out! Get out of my head! GET OUT!”
James went quiet again. His shoulders rose and fell through loud, deep breaths. Then, he turned his head up toward Liam. Liam saw only his own reflection on that chrome surface, curled over in a pathetic heap despite immaculate black armor.
When James spoke, Liam heard a dull, whistling sort of hum through the comms.
“You need to leave, Liam.”
Crystalline structures splintered and spread across the battleground. Plants became little more than glassy ice sculptures. The skeleton of the shattered dome resembled the sharp insides of a cerulean geode.
Ice clusters spiked around them as pale mist blanketed the garden. James rose to his feet and crossed through the mist toward Liam.
Three spikes of ice jutted out, downed, and then crushed a vespid that hovered too close.
“James,” Liam managed, “…what’s happening… why are there two…?”
Liam lurched forward as James closed one fist around his throat and dragged him to his feet. The wound in his torso felt as if it split further and Liam screamed. He didn’t want to think about what his protruding injury looked like under his armor.
“I can’t stop it, Liam,” James spoke through heavy breaths and grit teeth.
What the hell is even happening?
“You weren’t supposed to live. You need to leave… they… they want me to kill you.”
Every time James’s voice carried through the comms, Liam heard what sounded like a million other voices whispering over him. “They’re telling me everything… I…”
James trailed off and the chrome face of his visor turned up toward the sky.
“James…! Snap out of it!”
The new Chevalier dragged Liam as he carved a path down icy stairs toward the elevator they came from. He muttered to himself as he walked. Words which barely made it through glitched static in their comms connection.
“I fucked up… I fucked up…! Get out of here. Tell them they’re coming—”
Liam’s back slammed against the walls of the lift. James stumbled back on weary legs and slammed one fist against the control panel outside. His limbs spasmed as he curled and jerked as if some unseen force struggled to puppet him into submission.
The elevator doors began to slide shut.
“James, wait!” Liam had seconds to try and think of anything to remind James of, if only to help him fight whatever the hell was taking him. “Alyssa, she’s—”
The doors shut.
I… didn’t make it in time.
Liam slumped back against the wall in numb exhaustion as a slow descent began. He would probably be dead by the time those doors opened on the first floor. How he’d even held on this long was beyond him. The inside of his suit was soaked with blood and he wondered how much of what he’d just witnessed even really happened.
This… is just a bad dream, I think.
Blood loss.
Dehydration.
Maybe I’ve been dead for a while now and this is just the nightmare my final burst of endorphins leaves me. I thought it’d would be a little more euphoric.
The same quiet piano music from before ghosted into the lift. The same, mournful opera melody from the art gallery blended over it, a sound superimposed where it should not have been.
Shivering, Liam wondered which of the two sounds was a hallucination.
A reminder echoed with static in his helmet.
“Don’t forget this time, Liam.”
“Ah, there’s the hallucination…” Liam slurred. “Nym…”
Only glitched chirps buzzed in response.
“Nym… if you’re there… send the backup to Lo.”
Another static storm surged through his helmet.
Nym arguing in protest, perhaps, knowing the little AI.
“Delete… delete everything in this suit’s database. Get out of here. Find Lo.”
More glitched chimes and blips followed. He might have heard fragments of syllables in Nym’s voice littered through the noise.
Nym’s deletion process began and finished in seconds.
The lights in his helmet darkened and the glow of his suit’s lucidium veins faded.
Nym was gone.
All that remained was the uncomfortable awareness of isolation.
Without the visor’s clarity provided by his system, the lights on the ceiling bloomed with halos as Liam slumped onto his back.
Despite painful fatigue, Liam’s body trembled in bloodloss-induced cold. He could barely hug his arms to his chest as his flesh ached for warmth it would not find.
Halos…
Like a ring round the sun.
The lights flickered three times and then came the drop.
Liam body hurtled upward.
Light flickered in the lift before the music cut the silence and his freefall went black.
(3) Unread Messages
MESSAGE FROM ALYSSA Y575-10-07
I know that I told you not to mention anything to James, but…
I know this sounds terrible, but I’ve been thinking about worst-case scenarios.
The truth is, if there’s a chance I might never see him again, I’ll forgive you for telling him about, you know. The thing. I wish that I could know for sure that he’ll come home and I’ll be able to tell him myself.
But I know that sometimes even Chevaliers don’t come home. I don’t know why that is. I don’t even know what Chevaliers do up in that tower. I just don’t want to risk the chance of him never knowing.
I’m sorry that you had to find out first and carry that secret. It’s unfair and stressful, I know. I’m sorry about this. I just wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted the news to be something that would make him happy.
Just know that I’m grateful that James has such a wonderful brother.
You’re going to be an amazing uncle, Liam. Come home safe.
[ MESSAGE DELETED ]
REPLY FROM LO Y575-09-23
Don’t worry about it, Nerd.
Just meet me in Euclid someday.
[ MESSAGE DELETED ]
MESSAGE FROM JOVE Y575-08-21
You did a great job, Liam. Don’t let James tell you otherwise.
You’ve come a long way. I’m proud of you.
[ MESSAGE DELETED ]
* * *
Other Tales in the Crystalise Series
Crystalise: The Exaltation System
A E T H E R B R E A K
“The worst is yet to come and the halcyon days are dwindling…”
In the Realm of Libelle, warriors called exalts take part in a battle royale for glory, presti
ge and survival known as the Exaltation System.
Art and his twin sister Lo are the children of the legendary exalt Jove Darner. Greatness has always been their destiny—until the day a powerful man entrusts their father to mentor his prodigy sons, the Sterling brothers.
From the moment the Sterling brothers entered their lives, everything changed. An imminent tragedy nears that will soon upend their lives forever. With training suddenly in their own hands, Art and Lo must navigate their path to progression alone.
Through the dangerous quests, dungeons & missions of a brutal exalt academy, Art and Lo must level up their elemental abilities and cultivate their fighting skills if they hope to survive.
The Exaltation System is coming for them and they will have to forge their place in a kill or be killed world.
Read Aetherbreak online at
https://lunaire.io/aetherbreak/
* * *
Crystalise: The Exaltation System
S O L S T I C E
“Fight the mobs, get the exp, survive to Rank 3, and then you’re free.”
A world that eats the weak awaits Art and his twin sister, Lo, as they stand at the beginning of a long and bloody fight for their lives.
Graduation from a chaotic exalt academy, dangerous quests & missions, and malefic oppositional beasts (mobs) will put their elemental fighting skills to the test.
When a routine mission goes sideways, a mysterious girl with a rare elemental power falls into Art’s arms and an avalanche of conspiracy follows.