The Crystal Warrior

by Lori Hyrup

  Aria studied Kharra curiously. “Sure.”

  Kharra placed each of her hands on either side of Aria’s head and closed her eyes. Unlike Zephyron’s touch, Aria felt nothing unusual in the contact. The woman’s fingers were both delicate and strong and her contact warm. After a few moments, Aria’s right hand, the one with her crystal shard, tingled, sending a brief chill up her arm and along her spine.

  Kharra released her hands from Aria’s head and opened her brown, moist eyes. “There is something in you as well but not quite like what I sensed in Kiem. In him, I detected leyoen. I’m not certain what I just detected in you. I sensed the power of your shard, which is actually woven throughout your body. It seems like there may have been something deeper, but it’s obscured. When I tried to follow it to the source, I met with some type of resistance. I pressed against it a little bit, but it seemed to push back. I didn’t want to force my way through; I don’t know what effect that might have.”

  “That must have been the tingling I felt from my shard.”

  Kharra’s eyes widened. “You felt it?”

  Aria nodded. “At least my shard did.”

  “Interesting,” said Kharra. “Would you mind if I tried to go deeper?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Kharra placed her fingertips along Aria’s temples once again and closed her eyes. Her brow furrowed in concentration.

  Aria waited patiently, resisting the urge to shift or fidget. She caught Zephyron watching the two of them, but his expression gave nothing away. Without warning, Aria’s entire nervous system felt as if it had been dunked in a river of snowmelt. Her vision blurred momentarily, and she gasped.

  When her vision returned, Kharra stood before her with one hand over her mouth and a worried expression on her face. Zephyron was kneeling beside her with one hand on her shoulder and another on her arm.

  “What…was…that?” she asked, her words moving slowly between gasps of breath.

  “I have no idea,” said Kharra. “I’m so sorry. That’s never happen before.” Kharra’s hands went to her head, and she began pacing.

  Aria’s head cleared. “Is something wrong?”

  Kharra shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But you have a block of some sort.”

  “What is a block?” Aria asked with growing confusion.

  Kharra stopped and looked at her. “Someone…” Kharra began pacing again. After several long moments, she stopped and looked at her once again. “Someone very powerful put something in your mind so you couldn’t access it.”

  “My mind? Why would someone want to do something to my mind?”

  Kharra threw up her hands and exhaled with frustration. “I have no idea. This whole thing keeps getting more complicated.”

  Kharra returned to her seat on the bed. She pulled her legs up and crossed them in front of her. “I am really sorry.”

  “Don’t be. If there are questions, then I want answers just as much as you. If someone messed with my mind, I would like to know who and why.”

  Zephyron patted her arm and moved back to the window. Silence shrouded all three of them for many minutes.

  “What is the significance of Kiem having leyoen?” Aria asked, more to break the uncomfortable silence than anything else.

  Zephyron left his spot beside the window and moved closer to the two women. He cleared his throat. “People with leyoen are those who have a natural connection to Mattekan, our world. It is through them that it expresses its needs, and from them, Guardians are called. That is how it protects itself and adapts. As we learned from Marimon, the continent on which Kharra grew up, those who can’t ‘hear’ Mattekan will at some point bring harm to it and, over time, potentially try to kill it. If it dies, so does all other life.

  “For thousands of years, the number of people who possessed leyoen grew, but there were those who stopped believing in the symbiotic relationship we have with our world and saw only the power they had gained. They were the ones who brought upon us war and enslavement. Now there are probably less than a thousand people in the world who have leyoen, and the Guardians are almost extinct.”

  “Part of my ongoing quest,” Kharra added, “is to find all of the scattered leyoen tribes and bring them back together. My mother fought for over a hundred years to protect our bloodlines, and I vowed to continue her fight. Much of the world is now controlled by those who sought to extinguish those bloodlines or use them to further their own conquests. Scattered, leyoen will continue to dwindle and die out. Together though we can work to set the world right again.

  “The fact that I’ve sensed leyoen in someone in a place where none was thought to exist gives me hope—maybe even more allies.”

  Aria nodded. “I see,” she said. “But what do you hope to gain by finding people here? Most of these people don’t even know there is another land. They won’t leave to fight in some war that doesn’t concern them.”

  Zephyron, his arms crossed in front of him, cleared his throat. “I think Tanoria has been lucky until now. As I mentioned before, there is a darkness growing. I feel it here even more than I did in Aerous. When the time comes, I don’t think Tanoria will be able to avoid becoming involved.

  “Our objective right now is to reach Ei’ars’anu.” Worry lines creased the Guardian’s forehead. “But I won’t deny that there are connections here I can’t yet discern. I suspect the prophecy that brought us here is but a small bit of the equation, and I hope the picture will become clearer once we reach our goal.”

  With their collective quest for answers only creating more questions, the three travelers each retreated to their rooms, hoping clarity would form after a good night’s rest, but Aria found rest an elusive beast. Kharra’s discoveries disturbed her. Someone had tampered with her mind. Who in Tanoria had such an ability? Why would they go through the hassle? How long had it been that way? What effect did it have on her?

  Staring at the ceiling of her room, Aria scolded herself. Whatever was done, was done. She had been living with it for years, possibly her whole life. She recalled vivid memories of her past and, to her knowledge, never had problems thinking clearly. So if something was wrong with her, there would probably be some symptoms, right? At last, far later than she intended, sleep claimed her.

  10

  IN THE FOG

  Aria’s eyes sprang open. Her senses flared to life, and her body pumped with adrenaline before she threw back the covers. With practiced hands she donned her gear in the early morning darkness and rushed from the room, only vaguely aware of a gentle probing touch on her mind. Five minutes had not passed before Aria rushed out the door of the Wild Mercer and into its adjacent stable. Xierex sensed his rider’s mood and fidgeted excitedly in his stall as Aria threw open the door. Without bothering with a saddle, Aria vaulted onto his back, and the two sped away, scaring a sleepy stable boy who arrived to inspect the commotion.

  The thin line of predawn light outlined the eastern portion of the city skyline, but Aria turned west, riding into the still-darkened sky. Only a sliver of Wei’s orange shape hung visibly; the other two moons had already set. The air smelled damp though no clouds were evident, and a chill breeze swirled in from the west, meeting her head-on. Only the rhythmic beat of Xierex’s hooves and the whistling of rushing air reached Aria’s ears.

  A sudden realization occurred to her. Because of the sense of urgency she had met with upon waking, she had rushed off and forgotten to say anything to Kharra or Zephyron. Too far to turn back, she gave a determined growl and pressed onward.

  Aria glanced down at the crystal shard in her hand, confirming what she already felt. The shard swirled with a mixture of red and orange—shard beasts. Surprisingly her sense of location told her the shard beasts remained a considerable distance from the Wild Mercer, but she felt them as intensely as if they were beside her. There were not many, but what she sensed was strong. Xierex raced through the western gates with the on-duty guards having no time to react to their passing before they sped
out of sight.

  After five minutes of pure sprinting, Aria slowed Xierex to a trot as she surveyed the area. Thick fog rolled in around the zegu’s legs. Aria reduced his speed further as the billowing misty blanket continued to grow, limiting her visibility considerably.

  A low groan caught Aria’s ear. She kneed Xierex gently in the direction of the sound. Within a few steps, they came across a young man—a soldier, going by his uniform—lying on the ground and pressing his hands against his abdomen. Aria leaped from Xierex’s back and knelt beside him. She pressed her hand against his wound though she knew the effort to be futile. The pallor of his skin, if not the puddle beside him, told of how much blood he had lost. The best she could hope to do was give him some amount of comfort.

  “What happened here?” she asked, taking in the circular rose emblem on his tabard.

  The young man, not much more than a boy, failed to see her at first. Then his eyes fluttered into focus. His gaze caught the shard on her hand, and he smiled. “Kruusta,” he whispered, relief evident in his voice. “We were attacked. Shard beasts.”

  “How many were there?” she asked.

  “The fog…couldn’t see…” he rasped.

  “Do you know what kind they were?” she pressed. She felt guilty questioning the poor kid while he bled out, but she needed information.

  “No,” he whispered in response. “Very fast.”

  Aria glanced about the area with her eyes and scanned it for shard beasts with her senses. She spied no other soldiers and sensed no specific shard beasts, but the sense of approaching danger nagged at her. She glanced at her hand. Her crystal continued to swirl with its reddish-orange hue.

  Aria glanced back down at the young man and sighed. The breath of life had already left him. Sympathy and compassion turned to anger as Aria summoned her krusword. Its power flooded through her, and she savored it. She closed her eyes and stretched out her kruusta senses, searching for the source of the danger she felt pressing closer. Still, she could pinpoint nothing.

  Kharra’s door swung inward, admitting a fully clothed Guardian. A growl accompanied by unsavory words escaped Kharra’s lips, causing Zephyron’s white eyebrows to climb to their apex. She blushed. “Sorry.” Kharra threw up her hands. “I can’t get through to her.”

  Zephyron paused. “She’s blocking you?”

  Kharra scowled and chewed at the inside of her bottom lip. She reached out with her mind to Aria once again, allowing her consciousness to travel outward with practiced skill. As before, something rebuffed her, but what that something was, she could not identify. It was not like a shield, which was almost like a tangible obstacle her mind could sense. No, this was different. She still sensed where Aria was; shields obscured that at the same time they obscured the mind. This felt more like her mind voice was being drowned out by something else. To her knowledge, and with Zephyron’s affirmation, no one in the world was better than she at mind seeking, or empathy, for that matter. Did this have to do with whatever she touched in Aria the night before? Maybe, she thought to herself though she did not really believe so.

  Kharra set her chin and shook her head. “Yes and no. I don’t have time to explain. I can’t seem to get her to hear me, but I can tell where she went.” She grabbed her cloak and rushed past Zephyron. “Let’s go.”

  The tall Guardian followed without a word.

  Several long moments passed with no additional information, not even a direction. Then without warning, a surge of power flooded through Aria, knocking the air from her lungs. She stumbled forward, smacking her right knee down into the damp earth. She used her left hand on the ground to stabilize herself.

  Aria shook her head clear, and within moments her awareness grew infinitely sharper and more distinct, identical to her experience back in Braylore. Then she knew. Without her making physical contact or trying to reach out for more power, the shard from the city’s temple four miles away had reached out to and connected with her. Giving silent thanks, she focused on identifying the danger.

  With the shard’s assistance, clarity formed. The danger lurked somewhere in the fog, was the fog. Utilizing her additional power, Aria allowed an image to form in her mind. She opened her eyes and maintained the image. As she opened them, a shape coalesced before her, something Aria had never before seen—a visage to give children nightmares.

  Vaguely humanoid in shape and proportion, there the similarities between the creature and a person ended. It stood almost twice Aria’s height, and its entire body shimmered with a crystalline gleam. The sleek torso gave way to elongated legs, but where knees should have been, the bottom limbs tapered into a dark mist that billowed like a flowing robe. Long, narrow arms swayed as if on the ocean, and the hands resembled those of a clawless prism wraith. From the shoulders came six long crystalline protrusions fanning out above the creature and to either side, reminding Aria of an insect getting ready to take flight. Because of the density of the fog, though, she could not see the terminal ends of the protrusions. Though the shard beast wore no clothing, its head appeared cowled in contrasting crystalline colors of light and dark blues. From within the cowl burned two violet eyes. The mist swirled about the creature like a fond pet.

  The creature reached a hand toward Aria, and the portion of the fog in front of its hand grew denser. Instinct propelled Aria’s feet to move, throwing her into a roll just before a lance of crystal erupted from the spot and skewered the ground upon which Aria had been kneeling. It retracted just as quickly. A second lance erupted from another patch of dense fog to the creature’s right. Aria brought up her krusword just in time to deflect it.

  Having never encountered this type of creature before, Aria possessed no knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses, but within moments she ascertained that the speed of its attacks was one of its strengths. Small wonder the young soldier never saw what hit him. The creature itself barely moved except to gesture with its hand in Aria’s direction. A third lance erupted from another patch of fog, this time to its left. Again Aria deflected the attack.

  Having seen enough, Aria rushed the creature, hoping to bring it down with haste. As she leaped into the air to strike a heavy blow, the creature dissipated, its form vanishing into the fog. Pain laced through Aria’s back as one of the crystalline lances pierced through her side, but her forward momentum prevented the creature from landing a perfect blow through her back. The creature now hovered near the lifeless form of the young soldier, it and Aria having changed positions. Aria charged the creature again, but like before, it disappeared into the mist. Ready this time Aria twisted and blocked the lance that struck at her from her right side.

  Remembering how she had caused the creature to appear the first time, Aria drew on the energy borrowed from the city shard and in her mind focused the image of the creature. A third time, Aria rushed at the creature. This time, when it tried to disappear, its image wavered for a moment but remained in place. Aria’s blow with her krusword struck against its torso. The creature hissed and batted at her sword with one of its arms. Before she could pull the blade free, two of the protrusions from its back lowered, and two lances came toward Aria, one from each side of its body. Desperate to avoid the deadly cross attack, Aria threw her weight against the creature, forcing it backward. Though the maneuver likely saved her life, it also caused her to lose her concentration. The creature disappeared into the fog before hitting the ground, sending Aria into a rolling tumble.

  With her still-heightened senses, Aria detected Kharra and Zephyron’s swift approach from the south. Only a small part of her brain even wondered how they knew where to find her. In the three weeks she had been with them, accepting their resourcefulness had become the norm. Aria detected the approach of one other, this one a rider from the west—another kruusta, in fact. The fog thickened. Because of her connection to the shard, it did little to hinder Aria’s perception of the area around her. The others would not have that advantage.

  Aria turned, vaulted onto Xierex’
s back, and kneed him into a run in the direction of Kharra and the Guardian.

  Aria, came the expected and very worried mental voice of Kharra.

  Before Kharra could say more, Aria responded, Stop where you are. I’m heading your way.

  A crystalline lance flew at Aria’s head from her right, but she deflected it with an upward swing of her krusword. A second lance appeared directly in front of her. Aria jerked Xierex to the left as hard as she could. The zegu’s eyes grew wide, but he obeyed the command, saving both of their lives.

  With her heightened senses, Aria heard the voices long before she arrived. “First off, you will address me by my title. Second, do not tell me, a kruusta, what to do. You and your girlfriend need to head back to the city. Now!”

  Despite her focus Aria found it within her to groan at the voice—Targus. She ducked again as another lance struck at her from behind.

  “You’re already injured. You—”

  Though still quite a distance from her companions, Aria used the shard’s visual perception and saw the other kruusta’s face grow red as he batted Zephyron’s hand away. The Guardian stood a foot taller than the kruusta, but Targus stood up straight, trying to minimize the difference. He pressed his chest toward Zephyron. “No one orders a kruusta to do anything,” he snarled as he pushed Zephyron back a step.

  None of them knew the magnitude of the danger around them. Xierex swerved rapidly to avoid yet another lance. It clipped the zegu’s shoulder, but his momentum remained undeterred.

  Kharra stepped up. “Kruusta, please. Zeph—” Kharra’s words were interrupted as Targus backhanded her away, catching her across the face. Stunned, Kharra only stared at him.

  Aria clenched her teeth as Zephyron grabbed Targus by the throat, lifted him from his feet, and then thrust him down to the ground. Keeping him pinned, Zephyron lowered his face to the kruusta’s. “Don’t you ever hit her,” he hissed.