A Citadel of Captives

by Bella Forrest

  Well played, Kallisto.

  We all moved to cover our ears, just as Araquiel and the remaining Perfects turned to face Kallisto. The Faulty took a deep breath, still holding Douma’s arms twisted around her back, then opened her mouth, preparing to scream.

  We would have a quick sprint to put some distance between us and the Perfects before Kailani could teleport us away from them. My heart stopped. Oriphiel snuck up on Kallisto and shoved a long needle with a small device on one end right into the side of her neck. The scream never came, as Oriphiel pressed a button on the contraption. Kallisto’s neck lit up red from the inside, then faded back to normal.

  I could smell the burnt flesh. The look of horror on Kallisto’s face nearly broke my heart. Her voice was gone. She tried to scream, but all that came out was a raspy hiss. She couldn’t speak anymore.

  Oriphiel then knocked her down, conking her on the back of the head. “Now, time to die, little worm,” she hissed.

  Araquiel chuckled, then looked at me. That smugness made my blood boil.

  “Anyway, where were we?” he said, grinning.

  “What did you do to her?” I asked, baring my fangs at him.

  “We burned her vocal cords.”

  “You’re monsters,” I managed, my eyes wide with shock. I could only imagine how painful that was for Kallisto. She was lying on the ground, writhing in agony and unable to scream, as Oriphiel towered over her, ready to finish the job.

  I, too, was in deep trouble.

  “We’re Perfects,” Araquiel said. “And we will have everything we want. Right now, I want to peel the skin and the flesh off your bones.”

  Deep, deep trouble.

  Elonora

  With Kallisto painfully muted, we had no choice but to keep fighting and find another way to flee from the Perfects. We were nowhere near capable of killing them yet. Amane had sliced them in half and they’d come back!

  “Rose!” I shouted. “Cut off the heads!”

  It probably wasn’t going to kill them, but it was sure as hell going to slow them down. Everyone in our group heard me, but so did the Perfects. They got even more vicious and aggressive. I focused on Oriphiel, eager to put my words into action.

  She gave me a cold smirk, then kicked Kallisto while she was still down. I heard her bones break from the hit. She was pretty much disabled and was likely to die soon if I didn’t do something.

  “You know, I’m not her biggest fan, but what you did was downright despicable,” I hissed.

  Loaded with plenty of energy from Elyon’s blood, I sprang toward Oriphiel, raising my soul-eater and aiming straight for her neck. I slashed once and missed her by inches. She seemed alarmed but unwilling to back down. Not like she has a choice, anyway.

  I kept trying to get to Oriphiel, but she expertly avoided all my attacks—however, it was only a matter of time before I’d cut her. She knew it, too. There were threads of yellow in her aura.

  “I smell fear,” I said to her, grinning.

  “And I smell your death,” Oriphiel said. “It’s just around the corner.”

  I lunged at her again, but something tripped me. I fell forward, catching a glimpse of Nevis as he came up behind Oriphiel. I landed on the soft ground with a thud, then looked back to find Elyon lying a couple of feet from me—he’d been the one to trip me. He wasn’t going to get up anytime soon, but he’d still found one last ounce of strength to move his leg at the right time.

  I cursed under my breath, then grabbed my soul-eater and swung it downward with all my might. The blade sliced through flesh and bone, separating his head from his body.

  “Elyon!” Oriphiel screamed.

  Just as she moved to retaliate, Nevis grabbed her by the back of her neck. Frost spread out quickly and swallowed her body whole. She gasped and grunted as she tried to move, but it didn’t work. Behind me, Araquiel was coming. He’d left Dmitri alive so he could get me first, while the other Perfects were struggling with Rose, Ben, Vesta, Zeriel, Kailani, and Hunter.

  I didn’t wait another second. I jumped up and cut Oriphiel’s head off.

  “I’ll skin you alive!” Araquiel snarled, then moved as fast as lightning.

  I had Perfect blood coursing through my veins, though, and I could actually see him coming. I dodged his claws, then brought my soul-eater up in an arched motion. The first drops of Araquiel’s blood were drawn, as I managed to slice through his stomach.

  It wasn’t enough. I swerved around him, and Nevis stayed close and moved with us, looking for another attack angle. Two of us against one. Two Perfects down, six to go.

  “You’ll have to catch me first,” I replied, grinning.

  That made him even angrier. He lunged at me. I swayed to the left, his claws cutting strands of my hair as he missed me. I immediately reacted and swung my sword around. The soul-eating blade nicked his arm. A couple more cuts, and Araquiel would be slower than me.

  Nevis moved in to grab and freeze him, like he’d done with Oriphiel, but Araquiel’s wings sprang out once more and practically swatted the Dhaxanian prince away. He fell backward, groaning from the pain.

  I caught a glimpse of Kailani running around our scattered brawls, with two Perfects chasing her and Hunter right behind them. “Duck!” she shouted.

  Explosions tore through the ground in a circular pattern. The force of the blasts threw the two Perfects to the side, and temporarily disabled the others, as well. Araquiel wasn’t close enough to get hit. However, the red flashes were blinding—our crew knew to look away and shield our faces from her swamp witch gimmicks. Araquiel was unaware. A red flash blinded him. He yelped, then covered his eyes, giving me the second I needed to ram my sword through his spine. Red fires then spread all around, a blazing curtain practically closing us off from the rest of the jungle.

  I heard Araquiel’s vertebrae crack as the blade went through. He cried out in agony, then fell to his knees. I pulled my sword back, preparing to cut his head off and be done with it. Nearby, Rose and the others had managed to take two more Perfects down.

  Just then, Amane jumped through the fire, holding two long knives made of pure diamond. She slit another Perfect’s throat before he could sneak up on Vesta and Zeriel, who’d just finished off the second to last one.

  I stilled, Araquiel still paralyzed in front of me. Douma managed to get up after her scuffle with Kallisto, but Amane ran toward her at high speed, then slid down the layer of grass and leaves and sliced through the Perfect’s ankles. Douma screamed and fell back down. Amane stabbed her wrists with the diamond blades, then looked up at us.

  “We need to go!” she said firmly.

  Boy, did I have a lot of questions for her.

  But I was still reeling from the shock of seeing her again. She’d come back to help us. I’d begun to think we’d have to hunt her down and compel her to do so.

  “Now!” she added, noticing the surprised looks on everyone’s faces.

  We were all stunned—even Ridan, who’d just regained consciousness. Amane was a complete game-changer. Not just because of her presence and interesting new weapons, but also because of her knowledge.

  With Amane on our side, we were one step closer to finding Derek and the others.

  Kailani

  I definitely needed to sit down in peace, at some point, and focus on my connection with the Word. Most importantly, I had to understand the spells it was whispering to me. Simply knowing what they were wasn’t enough. I had to remember the incantations, word by word. This whole fight had been quite sloppy, where my involvement was concerned.

  My natural witch abilities were inadequate. I couldn’t even teleport, since the Perfects had come back not only fully regenerated, but also with new disruptor devices. The bombs I’d released around our fighting perimeter were a temporary fix, and the fires were beginning to die out already—the fumes helped daze our opponents. Most of them had already gone down, with just Araquiel and Douma still breathing, but they were all going to regenerate soon en
ough. That much we knew.

  The most confusing part of all this was seeing Amane.

  “You came back,” I breathed.

  Elonora had her soul-eater blade against Araquiel’s throat. He’d been severely injured and couldn’t move fast enough to escape her this time around. Douma’s wrists and ankles had been sliced through with what looked like diamond blades. She’d been crippled, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the peculiar crystal knives that Amane had brought into the mix.

  “We can talk later!” Amane urged us. “Cut his head off, and let’s go!” she said, pointing at Araquiel.

  “I wouldn’t rush to trust her, if I were you.” Araquiel snickered. “She’s not just any Faulty, after all. She and her sister are responsible for creating us.”

  “Astonished” didn’t even begin to describe our expressions. My mind went blank for a second. We all looked at Amane next, frowning in confusion.

  “What is he talking about?” Elonora hissed, extremely angered as she pressed the soul-eater blade against Araquiel’s throat.

  Amane opened her mouth to reply, but changed her mind and chose to help Ridan get back up on his feet, instead. The dragon, however, despite his condition, wasn’t willing to let her off the hook so easily. Well, none of us were, for that matter.

  “Answer the question!” Ridan demanded of her.

  Amane bit her lower lip, then scowled at Araquiel, who responded with a sly grin. “They didn’t know,” he said. “They had no idea. Amane, you’ve been keeping secrets! Bad, bad little Faulty!”

  Douma groaned from the pain, but managed to speak up. “Amane and Amal helped Ta’Zan with the design of the final genetic blueprint that created us,” she added, giving Amane a contemptuous glare.

  “No wonder Ta’Zan wants you back,” Rose croaked. “You… You helped make them.”

  “What are those knives, Amane?” I asked, unwilling to let that go.

  The Faulty wore a pained expression, combining something akin to guilt and frustration. I couldn’t read her as well as Elonora, but I could tell that all of this bothered her. Just because she’d helped us just now, it didn’t give her a pass for what she’d failed to divulge.

  “They’re diamond blades,” she finally replied. “There’s something in the molecular composition of the diamond that hurts Perfects more than any other material. The cuts take longer to heal, and the pain is more intense. But they’re extremely rare and difficult to craft.”

  “You have a lot of explaining to do,” Ben said.

  “Yes. Just not here. Not now,” Amane retorted, then spotted Douma moving, despite her bleeding wrists. She rushed to her side and slapped a small metallic device on the Perfect’s back. Douma groaned from the pain. Blood trickled from beneath the device. “This will stop her from taking flight.”

  Douma opened her mouth, releasing a very strange sound—a low-frequency hum that made my spine tingle. Amane was quick to react and punched Douma’s lights out.

  “What the hell was that?” I managed.

  “The Perfects’ call.” Araquiel sneered. “More will come. They’ve already heard it.”

  “I didn’t know she had enough strength left to do that,” Amane whispered, staring at Douma. “The diamond blades take a heavy toll, in general.”

  “You’re screwed,” Araquiel replied.

  Elonora groaned and rolled her eyes, then brought her soul-eater down and cut off his head. We all stilled, watching it roll on the ground. “Sorry. I just couldn’t take his crap anymore.”

  “We need to go!” Amane insisted.

  Rose and Ben nodded in agreement. “Zeriel, take Kallisto. She needs treatment,” Rose instructed. Zeriel did as told, while Dmitri tied Douma’s bleeding wrists and ankles with strips of gauze, serving as both bandages and restraints. Rose cocked her head to the side, watching Dmitri with curious eyes.

  Dmitri noticed her expression and shrugged, then picked Douma up and threw her over his shoulder. “What? She could be useful, if we keep her tied up.”

  “Fair enough.” Rose sighed, then looked at me. “Beam us out of here?”

  “I can’t,” I replied. “They have those weird devices on them. Again!” I added, then looked at Amane. “I thought you destroyed those!”

  “I did. They got more. My guess is they flashed back to the base and geared up again. But it’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got a spot on the other side of the mountain. It’s secluded.”

  I shook my head. “We should destroy the devices and just zap out of here. Go elsewhere. They’ll track us.”

  Amane grinned, then showed us a leather satchel she had tied to her belt. “I agree with destroying the disruptors. But they won’t be able to track us.”

  Vesta, Hunter, Nevis, and Ben checked every Perfect, removing their disruptor devices and crushing them with stones. Amane loosened the satchel. It was filled with a shimmering black dust. She sprinkled some on the Perfects’ faces, including Douma’s.

  “And what is that, pray tell?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have it with me earlier,” she said. “I’ve got a limited supply of things to use effectively against the Perfects, and I keep it all in my safe spot on the other side of the mountain, the blades included. I usually steer clear of Araquiel and the others, but I’ve had to go back and get my stuff, now that you’re in the picture. I may be a magnet for Perfects, but I know my way around these parts. You’re extra weight, though.”

  “That didn’t answer my question,” I said, downright aggravated.

  “It renders their tracking abilities useless for up to forty-eight hours.” She sighed. “It clogs their noses; it numbs their tongues and mildly irritates their eyes and eardrums. They can still function, of course, but they can’t use their sight, smell, hearing, and taste like they usually do—which is how they track you.”

  Nevis cleared his throat, his gaze fixed on Araquiel. “From what they’ve seen us do so far, and given that they’ll wake up to find their disruptors damaged, chances are they’ll assume we’ve teleported off the island completely. They won’t be looking for us on the other side of the mountain.”

  “Yeah, but what about her connection to them? They can sense her, can’t they?” Elonora replied, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not when I’m close to a body of water,” Amane said. “When I stay near a flowing river or a waterfall, for example, they lose me, even if they’re less than a mile away. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t work.”

  “That’s weird,” I murmured, putting my sword away.

  “Believe it or not, there are still plenty of things I’m just figuring out—about myself and the Perfects,” Amane replied, then pointed behind her. “Now, let’s go. The quicker we’re out of here, the better for all of us.”

  She led the way into the woods, going around the mountain’s base. We followed, albeit reluctantly. My heart felt heavy. My stomach was tied up in knots. Hunter moved to walk by my side, and we stayed behind Elonora and Nevis. With Dmitri carrying an unconscious Douma and Kallisto piggybacking on Zeriel, we were slower than usual. However, the black powder and destroyed disruptors were bound to help with our disappearance, even if only for a little while.

  We all needed to just sit down and recover. We’d been fighting like crazy for hours. Dawn was less than an hour away. I, for one, felt drained. This was too much. I needed to rest my eyes and commune with the Word, to eat, and to replenish my energy.

  All this was weighing on me. Nothing had prepared me for any of it.

  But we had no choice but to keep going.

  Elonora

  We rushed through the jungle, putting distance between us and the decapitated Perfects. I was still reeling from the concept itself, and I kept my True Sight on at all times. I couldn’t help but complain about it.

  “Seriously, though. Cutting off a creature’s head used to be a permanent solution,” I said. “What the hell is this world coming to, huh?”

  I caught Nevis smirking. “Ta’Zan wanted to m
ake his creatures invincible. Top of the food chain.”

  “And he succeeded. The Perfects are almost impossible to kill,” Amane replied, leading our group deeper into the woods, without moving away from the mountain’s base. “The only one who knows how to kill them for good is Ta’Zan, and he never shared that knowledge with Amal or me. Call him paranoid, if you will, but his secrecy clearly came in handy.”

  Behind us, Kailani and Hunter watched our backs. I could hear Hunter sniffing the air once every five minutes. His heartrate was stable, despite the adrenaline rush. His aura was just as telling—he was on edge, but with no response to any immediate danger. No one was tailing us.

  “Well, you obviously played a part in that!” I snapped.

  The tension was high. I could feel it eroding the last ounce of patience I had left. We deserved answers, and Amane owed us plenty! She tried not to talk about it, but Rose wasn’t having any of it.

  “You need to start talking, Amane,” she said. “First of all, why did you leave us? And why did you come back?”

  Amane gave her a brief glance, then shifted her focus back to what lay ahead. Gnarled trees with swirling branches and rich foliage, wildflowers and shrubs that slowed us down more, on top of Kallisto and Douma, unconscious on Zeriel’s and Dmitri’s backs. Kallisto’s injuries had knocked her out at some point. Animals fled from our path, but I could see them hidden behind trees and bushes, watching us curiously with big eyes.

  Rose and I pulled our hoods over our heads, preparing for the morning sun to come out.

  “I was too much of a liability for you,” Amane replied, her voice low. “I had to get my gear if I wanted to stick around you for any longer. After I picked up what I needed from one of my safe spots, I came looking for you. Imagine my surprise when I found you all just a couple of miles from my backyard.”

  “You could’ve said something, you know,” Ridan retorted. “Like, ‘Hey, guys, sorry, but I’ve got some stuff to pick up. See you later,’” he added, softening his voice to a more feminine tone. “You know, the basics.”