I think my heart might have stopped. “Cail?”
He shrugged, “I liked your brother. Cail was a good guy. We shouldn’t let what Edmund did to him tarnish his legacy.”
Fuck. Now I was crying, just standing there sobbing like a blubbering clown.
“Damn you, I can’t go into battle like this.” I smacked his arm playfully but he just smiled and kissed my nose.
“Good.” It was as good as an ‘I love you’ to Thom who promptly turned and ran out of the entryway. He didn’t even look back. Just as we always did years ago.
Every time we were sent out on some mission, we would just leave. No farewell, no heartbreaking last look. He would just leave, then I would leave. But this time I was frozen to the spot.
I stood there, waiting like some lovesick war widow for him to return.
I don’t even know how long I stood there when someone else flew through the stone wall of the entrance, this time going the opposite way. Two figures, a smaller one carrying a much larger one.
“Ilyan!” I was rushing to them before they even landed. Joclyn was carrying him like some kind of oversized, super tall infant. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was with Joclyn I probably wouldn't have recognized him at all. “What did they do to you?”
“Oh, only tortured me.” He said it with the same voice that was strictly Ilyan, the mockery that both of his brothers had, but I had missed from him. He couldn’t even stand as Joclyn helped him to the floor, her magic surging as she both checked for injuries and sent a line of magic down the hall.
“Well, you’re home now,” Joclyn said, kissing him on every inch of skin she could reach. He smiled weakly but kissed her back, both of them doing that creepy stare thing they always did.
“Where’s Ryland?” I said after a moment, scanning the rock as though he would come through at any moment. There was nothing.
“He and Míra should be right behind us,” Joclyn said, helping Ilyan to his feet as the Chosen and Skȓítek she had called from the med ward zoomed into the hall. The Skȓítek immediately went into overzealous excitement at seeing Ilyan. The poor Chosen looked as lost as I felt.
“Míra was supposed to go with Thom.” My heart turned to lead and dropped to my toes. “She was supposed to be his second.”
“And surprise, surprise she followed us.” Now Joclyn was looking at the wall, lips pursed and brow furrowed as no one came through the wall and she realized what I did. As the minutes ticked by and they didn’t return.
“They are still there.”
“You need to go back,” Ilyan said, his weak voice still powerful enough to pull our focus. He stood on shaky legs, staring down from where the Skȓítek supported him. “You need to finish this.”
Joclyn rolled her eyes in true overdramatic fashion as she faced him, clearly ready to fight him. I don’t know why she was though. He was right. We needed to help.
“I can’t leave you, I just found you.” Joclyn rushed back to him, the same pain she was feeling accosting me. Thom may not be alone, but Míra had abandoned him none-the-less. Oh, she was gonna get a whooping when I found her.
“We already talked about this, Joclyn,” he whispered, pressing the back of her hand to his lips. “I’ll be here when you get back. You have to go. Finish this, mi lasko.”
They were having a good old fashioned stare down, so I looked away, back to the stone wall that no one was traveling in and out of now. If she didn’t go, I would.
Thankfully, Joclyn nodded, immediately turning to me.
“Ready?”
She didn’t have to ask me twice. Part of me knew I should fight her, tell her I couldn’t or make some excuse about how tired I was. But, I really, really wanted to. Plus, I was being commanded by my Queen. Thom would just have to get over himself.
“Where too?” I asked, cracking my neck as Joclyn held out her hand.
I could Stutter on my own, but I had a feeling she might be showing off, just a little bit. So I grinned, took her hand and laughed as she blew Ilyan a kiss and we both vanished into the Stutter.
We reemerged in the middle of a war.
Magic flew in all directions, explosions ripping the world apart as two armies converged under the shadow of the tallest, thinnest building I had ever seen. It stuck out of the earth like a needle made of white scaffolding. From where we were, it looked like it went on forever.
“What the? Where are we?”
“We should be where Ryland and Míra are. They should be here!” Joclyn shouted over the battle, both of us blocking a few attacks as I tried to figure out where we were and who we were fighting.
It was only when ruined magic from one direction, and healthy magic from another intersected right above my head that I realized where we were.
“The Kyō,” we said together, looking to the top of the tower that I now recognized as the homebase where Thom had taken the armies.
The Tokyo Sky Tree.
It didn’t take me long to find him, hair flying, magic blazing as he fought more than ten of the Kyō’s men alone.
“Oh no you don’t,” I snarled, running toward him as my fire flared, ripping through the air and taking down every Kyō soldier between us. He turned, gruff exterior already in place.
“Wyn, I told you--” He stopped when Jos came up beside me, his eyes wide as he asked the question that he had been waiting for years to hear the answer to. He was so focused on asking her his silent question that he missed the attack zooming right by his head.
Luckily for him and his brains I had come along.
“Your brother is fine.” Joclyn was practically beaming at that, and Thom erupted in joy as he took down the Kyō soldier that was rushing up behind him without even looking.
“Great! Now let’s get home so I can tell him what a douchebag he is!” Thom raged, grinning from ear to ear as he turned, attacking one soldier just as I turned another to dust.
“Why don’t we go in there?” I called, fighting off another attacker as more soldiers streamed through the door at the base of the building.
“The whole building is shielded. I am sure whoever is behind all of this is right there, but we can’t get in, and I can’t get close enough to try to puncture it! Wanna break it down Wyn?” Thom asked, the three of us standing before it as I smiled and let the fire erupt from the palm of my hands.
“Gladly.”
27
Ryland
I was dying.
This was worse than Ilyan’s barrier around the cathedral in Prague, worse than every other time that Joclyn had taken me through the Stutter. I was fairly certain that I was going to come out on the other side with a missing limb given how much pain was radiating through my bones.
Emerging on the other side, I fell to the ground heaving as I tried to catch my breath and keep the contents of my stomach on the inside. I did a quick check of limbs, thankfully I hadn’t lost any.
I possibly should not have been so dramatic, but I had yet to open my eyes. For all I knew I was trapped on some mountain top, or in some subdimension where everyone had ears the size of their arms.
I took one last calming breath, grateful when my stomach settled and I could open my eyes without the world spinning underneath me. Not that what I opened my eyes to was any better.
There was nothing below me.
Nothing but miles of free air and white scaffolding. I wasn’t falling, but my magic wasn’t keeping me in place either. I was stuck on my hands and knees, watching the sparks of a battle on the streets far below.
“What the hell?” I asked as I scuttled back, grateful when the miles of nothing turned out to be a layer of glass.
“There you are!” Míra yelled from behind me as she appeared with a pop, standing firmly on the metal part of the floor. It must have been some kind of glass observation deck. “I was honestly afraid you were gonna get stuck in there.”
She was trying to be cocky, but her worry showed through as she practically yanked me to my feet, h
er arms already wrapped around me.
“Good job not dying,” she whispered, everything else that she wanted to say caught in the intensity of the hug as I wrapped my arms around her, pressing my lips to her hair.
“I’m glad you’re okay too.” It was just a whisper, but it could have been a whip with how she jumped back, straightening her jeans and jacket as though they were covered in dirt. For a moment, every inch of her was awkward teenager.
“Okay! Let’s go finish this!” And she was back to business. I guess we would have to address all that later. “Should we find Thom?”
I wanted to say yes, it was why we had come here after all. But I had a feeling we had somehow Stuttered right where we needed to be.
“No.” I stepped back onto the glass bottomed floor, staring down at the eruptions of magic and flame that were exploding everywhere. Based on what I was seeing down there Míra wasn’t the only one to have shown up where they weren’t expected.
“If I had to guess, this is the Sky Tree in the center of Tokyo. From what Thom found out, this is where the Kyō headquarters are. So, whoever is leading them is somewhere in this tower.”
“Perfect.” Míra stood beside me, both of us looking down as one explosion turned into another, a ripple of blasts encircling the building. Everything below us was on fire. I braced myself, half expecting the building to topple, but instead the air around it shimmered as whatever shield had been keeping them all out fell away.
Seconds later, the entire building filled with the sound of alarms, the tremors of stomping feet rippling through the line of doors behind us.
“Damn. We have perfect timing, don’t we?” Míra turned toward the noise, her grin as bright as the magic that was already encircling her fingers.
“And I guess good aim. I’ve never known a wicked king not to sit on top of his throne.” I pulled my magic up, both of us ready to race out of this room and into whatever hell was waiting for us on the other side.
“Good thing we both have practice ending wicked kings.” Míra grinned at me, and I couldn’t help myself, I laughed.
She was right. It seemed fitting it would be the two of us ending yet another evil overlord.
Of course, the first time we had been little more than enemies. Now? I restrained the need to kiss her and turned toward the door. Míra was already racing toward it.
I actually wasn’t sure if the girl was afraid of anything.
She blasted through the room with a scream, the door flying off its hinges and directly into a poor unsuspecting soldier who was thrown into the opposite wall.
“That’s one!” Míra yelled, already sending an attack toward the line of soldiers that were racing down the hall.
These were not the soldiers from Mongolia. These ones had magic and were already attacking us. Lines of rotten magic went everywhere. It spiraled into the walls and ceiling as we pushed it away, the weak power fizzling out with barely more than a glance from ours.
“Two!”
“Are we really going to keep count?” I yelled, darting away as an attack whizzed by the side of my head. The slither of broken magic collided with the wall behind me and cracked it.
“Three! And, yes we are,” Míra called back, already moving from her third victim to the next. She was moving so fast I was going to be left picking off whatever of the Kyō she couldn’t get.
Which wouldn’t be all bad, if she wasn’t keeping score.
“One!” I yelled, slamming a dark haired attacker down the hall and away from us. He had only been seconds away from attacking Míra and there was no way in hell I was going to let that fly. “I don’t see the point of this! Two!”
“Four! Five!” Míra yelled in return, flashing me a smile before she spun around, hair flinging around her as she took down number five. “Fine, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“How?” I flung magic back just as I shoved another man forward, right into a door that swung open to reveal at least ten other guards. Great. “Five!”
I would say I was catching up, but with how Míra’s magic was sparking behind me I didn’t know if that was possible. She was a firestorm, taking down attacks and attackers as though it was nothing more than a game. I raced behind her, magic sparking and flaring over the ceiling and walls as I shocked a few more to the ground.
The sound of the battle was attracting more and more of these guys, although oddly none of them seemed to be very well trained. They had magic, they just didn’t know how to use it.
“If you get more points than me I’ll give you a kiss.” She grinned, and I both hated and loved how my stomach swooped at that. “Plus I’ll throw in a hundred point bonus for whoever takes out the head of the snake.”
“Eight! And what if you win?” I asked, perfectly content to ignore the prize she had set for me.
“I get to tell everyone that I killed the bad guy and did better than you in battle. Oh, and thirteen.” She looked at me, eyes alight as she took down yet another with ease, the same training that I had as a child showing through.
Sometimes I needed the reminder that my father had trained both of us. We were both ruthless.
“Fine. You’re on. But I’m not holding back.”
“Good, you’re going to need it to catch up.” She blew me a kiss and turned back to the waves of soldiers that were racing down the hall toward us.
I picked off the soldiers that streamed out of the room with ease, one after another they squeezed through the door with a shout, ready to end me. One after another I sent them down to the ground.
Magic sparked in blasts of color as Míra’s laugh echoed over us, mixing with the battle cry of the Kyō in a creepy symphony that was made more horrifying by the explosions that rippled off the walls. In only a few minutes, everything silenced, leaving Míra and me standing in a garden of bodies, most only paralyzed.
“Thirty-one,” Míra said as we charged forward, heading in the direction the soldiers had been coming from.
“Twenty-eight.” I ignored the wrinkled-nose grin she gave me. She could rub it in later, if she won. For now I still had a chance to catch up.
“What do you think? Were they running toward the armies below or toward their master to protect him?” Míra looked either way down the hall, toward where the soldiers had come, and where they were headed.
I stepped into the hall, facing the direction the soldiers were headed, toward the high stairs to the tower and the throb of magic that was sitting there. A monster on top of their high tower. A pulse of power echoed down to me, the waves of it so familiar that it almost took my breath away.
“They’re up there.” Whoever they were.
Míra followed me without question, both of us racing toward the low pulse of magic as though we were charging toward the final boss in the video game.
The halls were strangely empty, probably because everyone who had been here had come running to face us. The faint sounds of battle echoed through the halls behind us as the armies from below slowly made their way up the tower, but other than that it was nothing and no one but Míra and me as we raced up the last of the stairs and to the door at the end.
It swung open before we could even reach it, revealing a well-dressed man and a walking stick we both knew all too well. He sat in a single chair in the middle of the room, the high-back wooden thing obviously pulled away from the desk in the corner so he could watch us enter.
He was waiting for us.
A tyrant on a throne at the top of his tower.
“Suji.”
28
Ryland
“Suji.” We said together, mine a gasp, Míra’s a snarl.
I had burned Suji to a crisp, but I guess Míra had missed that seeing as she had been unconscious and then carted to the other side of the world. It was time to fill her in.
“I killed you,” I snapped as the man looked up at me, a wide greasy grin already taking over his features.
I pulled Míra back, my arm firm around her bicep as I c
emented her to me.
“You’re not Suji.” I let my magic boil, pulling it right under my skin in preparation for whatever this man was going to send at us. Míra did the same, her magic buzzing against mine as she yanked her arm out of my grip and tried to protect me, just as I was trying to protect her. I had a feeling that this was going to become a thing for us.
“No,” the man said, walking stick swinging as he rose from the chair. “I am his brother, Chikara. I am the one who leads the Kyō, and the one that will kill you for revenge.”
“Well, aren’t you delightful,” Míra said, still angling herself in front of me no matter how many times I tried to push her away. “No ‘nice to meet you’. No ‘monologuing about your evil plan’. Just die! I’ll take it!”
Míra attacked without so much as a howl of warning, her magic soaring from the palm of her hand and right toward the old man. He didn’t even flinch. Before the magic could even reach him, the tip of his cane ignited, a bright flare soaring in all directions that zapped away Míra’s attack as though it had never existed.
“You foolish Gods. You think you can take my throne from me. A God gifted me with this power and I will not let you take it from me so easily!”
“Ugh. Here we go again with the god talk,” I groaned, even though I hadn’t missed that what this man said was different from what his brother said. Suji wanted to worship me. Chikara clearly had other plans. “Torturing a man does not give you power. It makes you a tyrant.”
“A man?” Chikara said, swinging his staff around and sending a few sparks out of the tip. “Do you mean the God we rescued from the SSU?” He paused, grinning with all the slickness I had seen from his brother. I braced for what came next. This would not be good. “No. Not him. His sister was the one who taught me of the power of the gods. She was the one I took my strength from. What was her name?”
“Ovailia.” Míra had stopped fighting me. Some of that playful light was gone from her eyes as she looked at the man and his spinning staff. “What did you do to her?”
Flare of Villainy: The Imdalind Series, Book 10 Page 19