It wasn’t long before we reached the intersection we were looking for. A rough wooden sign had been posted at one of the street corners, painted with a large arrow pointing to the right along with what I now knew was the Unbound symbol. “I get the feeling we should go right,” I chuckled to myself. In response, Val turned the wagon to the left, driving us in the opposite direction. “Uhm, Val? Where are we going?”
“I have been to the city many times. This direction will also lead us to the docks, but will also give us an opportunity to observe the Council district along the way.” There was a distant quality to her voice as she spoke, and her eyes were intently locked on some faraway point I couldn’t see.
“While I’m certainly curious about why the Council district is locked down, I don’t know that this is the best time to be going off-book.” Something about Val’s shift in demeanor had me suspicious, but I couldn’t pin down what it was. “Once we get our ‘official’ rebel badges, it’ll be safer for us to travel around the city, right?” Her jaw clenched at the question, but she remained silent as the wagon continued down the wrong path. “Val, answer me. What are we doing?”
“Do you trust me?” she answered softly. The response set me off balance; her tone was uncharacteristically vulnerable. Whatever had prompted her to talk with me at the inn was clearly still on her mind.
After a long pause, I nodded. “Yes, I do. Even though you’re making it a bit difficult at the moment,” I said with a slight grimace. Spinning around on the bench, I stood and crouched my way back into the wagon. “I’m going to check on Lia,” I called back over my shoulder, “let me know if you need me.”
“Thank you. I will,” she replied with a quick look back into the wagon. Her brow, usually furrowed and serious, was raised with faint concern, but I saw the hint of a thankful smile on her lips as she turned away.
Shaking away my anxiety about her strange behavior, I turned back to the shaded interior of the wagon. Lia lay on the side bench, clutching a waterskin in one hand and covering her eyes with the other. She let out a long groan as I sat down next to her and lightly scratched the top of her head. “How are you feeling?”
She took a long drink from the skin, then laid back down and stared up at me through squinted eyes. “It feels like I got kicked in the head.”
“That sounds about right,” I snickered. “Have you been meditating the way I taught you this morning?”
“Yeah, sure,” she puffed dismissively. “You failed to mention that it would be way harder to control my mana like this, though. It makes me feel like my head’s gonna explode.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you drink too much.”
“I know, I know,” she grumbled. “I am doing it, at least a little. It’s keeping me from feeling sick, which is better than nothing.”
“That’s good,” I said, lowering my voice both for her benefit and to exclude Val from the conversation. “With practice, you can use your mana to push through exhaustion, pain, sickness...pretty much anything. As long as you have the energy, you can keep going.”
“How about I just sleep, instead?” she asked with a weak smile, wiggling her way up to rest her head in my lap.
“You can sleep for now, but I expect you to be up and ready to go if the situation calls for it. Deal?” I asked as I gently cupped her cheek and smiled down to her.
“Deal,” she agreed, nuzzling against my hand. “Wake me up if you need me...but try not to need me, okay?”
“Sure, sure,” I chuckled. She rolled onto her side as she snuggled herself into a comfortable position and quickly fell asleep. As I sat absentmindedly twirling a lock of her hair in my fingers, I scanned out to the surrounding buildings with Detection. To my surprise, I found the majority of them to be occupied with families going about their daily routines. Having not seen a single civilian out on the street since we entered the city, I had incorrectly assumed that the Noble’s district had been evacuated like most of the houses we had passed earlier.
The detail struck me as particularly odd. Why would the commoners evacuate the city when the high class citizens stayed? This was clearly a working class revolution. The back of my brain itched as I tried to piece together the details into a picture that was just out of focus. If this really is just a revolution, maybe the Company is holding the nobles hostage. Once they’ve secured their position of control of Attetsia, they’ll send a message to Virram to negotiate new diplomatic terms.
But it’s more than that. It’s always more. The Dominion needed Thralls, and Kalateth needed disciples. I shuddered at the thought. It would be easier to lock down the most centralized districts of the city during a coup. That would explain the abandoned outskirts, and the hostage nobles. My imagination took the assumptions and ran wild, painting nightmare scenarios of the Dominion taking control of the city and spreading across the countryside. The beasts that the refugees reported, what if they were—
Our wagon rattled to an abrupt halt and relieved me from my nightmares. Nothing seemed out of place as I swept the perimeter for trouble: The street was empty, and the nearby buildings looked to be the same residential style we had passed thus far. “What’s going on, Val?” I called up to the front of the wagon. Lia cracked an eye open and looked for the source of the disturbance.
“There is a matter I must attend to. It will only take a moment, please stay here,” Val replied as she stood to disembark the wagon.
“Hey, wait!” I shouted, carefully sliding out from beneath Lia’s head. “Lia, something’s up. Come with me.” She looked momentarily alarmed, but quickly gained her bearings and nodded. I hopped down from the wagon and circled around to find Val holding out her hand and shaking her head.
“Please, Lux, stay here. This is a...personal matter,” she said quietly, looking away.
“Cut the shit, Val,” I snapped. “We’re in a hostile city with almost no intel, and you’re trying to head off alone with no explanation as to what’s going on? No, no way.” I poked out an accusatory finger at her chest. “Trust only goes so far.”.
She stared at the ground in silence for a long time. “I understand. Follow me if you must,” she said suddenly, turning on her heel and heading across the street.
Lia appeared at my side and watched her go, confused. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I growled as I followed Val. The building she approached had a large painted sign hanging over the door, but I couldn’t read most of the symbols; I understood the word “store” at the bottom, but the rest of the characters were foreign to me. “Lia, what does that sign say?”
“I know it’s a store, but otherwise I’m not sure. It’s mostly written in Lybesian,” she answered.
“Great. More mystery,” I grumbled. We caught up to Val as she opened the door, and entered the building behind her. The storefront before us was split in half: One side looked to be a general store, with mostly empty shelves for food and other goods, while the other half was stacked with shipping crates and barrels. A long counter stretched across both sections at the back of the room with an open door behind it.
At the sound of the door opening, a shout rang out from the back of the store. “Hey! You know we’re closed, so stop bothering me!” A young woman appeared from the door behind the counter, and I experienced a sudden moment of clarity. The shopkeeper had deep bronze skin, a wide nose, and drab olive eyes that looked exactly like Val’s. She wore a simple green dress underneath a thick, well-worn brown apron. Two rounded, fuzzy ears poked out of the thick mane of cherry red hair that cascaded down past her shoulders.
When she spotted us, the girl dropped the bowl she was carrying onto the shop counter, where it shattered and sent a thin wave of soup out in all directions. “Sister!” she cried out with delight, vaulting over the waist-high counter with ease. Val charged forward to meet her, violently shaking the wooden floor with each heavily armored footfall. When they met, Val scooped her up into a tight hug, and the girl nearly disappeared from v
iew; while it was clear by their features they were sisters, the girl was over a head shorter than Val and had a delicate, slender figure.
I couldn’t help but smile at the reunion unfolding before us. Val’s sister had tears running down her face as she laughed while Val spun her around with a shining smile. “I was so worried, Marin. Thank the Primes you are safe,” Val said as she continued to swing her sister around.
“I’ve been praying that you’d come every night...and now you’re actually here!” Marin exclaimed, burying her face in her sister’s hair. “Did the King send you?”
“Yes,” Val answered as she stroked Marin’s hair, “we are here at the King’s request.”
Marin pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “We?” She poked her head up from behind Val’s shoulder and spotted Lia and me standing awkwardly at the entrance to the store. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t even see you come in!” She turned back to Val with a laugh. “You’ve never brought friends to visit me before!”
“This is not a leisure visit, Marin,” Val chided softly. “We are here to gather intel on—”
“Bah!” Marin interrupted, dropping out of the embrace and rushing over towards us. “You’ll have to forgive my sister; she forgets about social cues sometimes, like introducing new people to each other!” she said, raising her voice so Val could clearly hear her. “I’m Marin Sesaude, Valandra’s younger sister. It’s nice to meet you!” She smiled and extended her hand.
“Likewise. I’m Lux, and this is Lia,” I said, shaking her hand. “So you’re Val’s sister, huh? That is simultaneously obvious and incredibly difficult to believe.”
Marin stifled a laugh and slowly turned her head back to her sister. “Val?” she asked with disbelief.
“That is my nickname. It is short for Valandra,” she replied with a straight face. Marin doubled over with laughter and slapped her knee for emphasis. “I do not see why that is funny,” Val said.
“Oh, I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time,” Marin said as she straightened and wiped a tear from her eye. “So, you’re Val’s friends, right? How did that happen?”
“We’re both from Yoria,” Lia answered. “The King asked us to help Val investigate what was going on in Attetsia.” While it wasn’t necessarily a lie, I found the lack of details in Lia’s explanation amusing.
“You might be able to help us with that,” I chimed in. “We still don’t have a clear grasp on what happened here.”
“It’s been awful! I should’ve left when everyone else did, but I couldn’t just up and leave my store behind,” Marin lamented, wringing her hands.
“Why not leave Daeron with the store?” Val asked. “You always have a place at home with us in Yoria.”
“Oh, screw Daeron!” she yelled, stomping her foot. “He got all caught up in that stupid Unbound nonsense, so I kicked him out. Besides, it’s my store! I made it!” Based on the way Marin bounced between emotions so quickly, Val’s apparent lack of emotions suddenly made more sense. “I can’t believe I moved down here for him.”
“The Unbound? That’s the local faction of rebels, right?” I asked, trying to piece together the scattered information we had so far. “Why do they call themselves that?”
“I don’t know, some Strategist guy from that mercenary company came up with it when he organized them all together. They’re just people that didn’t like the way the Council ran the city.” Marin waved a hand dismissively. “I served everybody at my store, from nobles to farmhands, and I saw how things really were. It wasn’t great in Attetsia before, but it wasn’t bad enough to start stealing stuff and killing people, either!”
“Do you know why the Unbound and the Company kept everybody here in the city? The farms are all abandoned out in the country, but all of the houses up in the city are still full.” Even though all of the information pointed to a typical worker’s revolt, my lingering feeling of dread wouldn’t fade away.
“I have no idea. We’re only allowed outside at certain times, and we can only go to specific places to buy food and other supplies,” she answered, shaking her head. “The Company told me that they would be my sole customers from now on. I thought it would be great to supply such a large organization, but they only pay half for everything! Bunch of thugs.” Marin crossed her arms and pouted. “I hardly have anything left to sell, what with the gates and the harbor closed for ‘Company business’, whatever that means.”
“Do you know where the leaders of the Company are now?” Val asked, joining the rest of us near the door.
“Well, they’ve got their whole fleet filling up the harbor, so they could be on one of the ships. The Council district is all locked down, too.” Marin put a finger to her lips and thought for a moment. “If I had to guess, that’s where they are. They probably took over the statehouse after they overthrew the Council. Plus, they have the building guarded with a bunch of men and those...those, uhm, things.”
My stomach flipped, and I felt my face go pale. “What do you mean, ‘those things’?”
“Well, they’re like…” Marin made a few hand gestures that did little to clear up her lack of explanation. “They’re like dogs, but bigger and the wrong color. Some of the guards with them are like that, too: big muscles, weird purple color around their eyes.
Although it was quite cool in the store, I felt sweat start to bead on my forehead as my heart attempted to escape my chest. They’re here.
“I guess that means the stories those refugees told about monsters were true, huh?” Lia asked, looking up at me. “Lux? Are you okay?” She took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
For a brief moment my vision went black, replaced by a memory from my time in Hedaat. I was in the narrow stone hallways of Jaren’s lab, staring through the dim light at a lumbering shadow. A hand with pale, elongated fingers curled around the corner, followed quickly by two glowing purple eyes. The sight activated a primal part of my brain and sent adrenaline coursing through my veins, setting me on to a singular purpose: kill.
The vision faded as quickly as it had appeared, and I was back in the store once again, though I now held my sword tightly in my hand. Marin jumped behind Val in alarm, and Lia watched me with concern. While I knew it had just been a memory, the sense of danger still lingered in my mind, so I scanned out with Detection to confirm my suspicion.
Two men in Company garb stood at the side of our wagon, rummaging through the sparse supplies left in the back, while a third approached the door. One of the men at the wagon had an aura I had never seen before; his mana seemed to be pulsing wildly, as though he were exerting himself in a life or death situation, even though he was idly picking through a storage crate. “Someone’s coming,” I whispered as I shifted to one side of the door.
There was a loud knock at the door a moment later, followed by a loud, gruff yell. “Marin! Marin, you got our supplies?”
“You know I don't!” she shouted back. “I told you the last time you asked, I won’t get more supplies until you open the gates again!”
“Stop holding out on us! The supply wagon is parked right outside your shop,” the guard said as the door began to open. “We’ll dock your pay if you don’t—” His voice gave out as I grabbed him by the throat and swung him against the wall behind me. He kicked impotently and scrabbled at the iron grip I held on his throat until I bashed him into the wall a second time, which knocked him unconscious.
I dropped the guard and turned back to the group at the entrance to the shop; Marin stood frozen with her mouth agape, while Lia and Val drew their weapons. “Stay here,” I rasped, gripping my sword in both hands as I moved to the doorway. The two guards left outside were approaching the building as I appeared in the exit. A wave of pure rage washed over me when I saw the man with the strange mana for the first time; he had a faint purple glow around his irises, and a dark violet scarring snaking its way out his eyes and across his face.
“NO!” I bellowed, launching down from the small stoop at the store’s entranc
e. My shoulder connected with the sternum of the normal looking guard and drove him down against the street with a sickening crunch. “You will not take this world!” I pointed my sword at the remaining guard’s face. “Do you hear me? The Dominion WILL NOT take this world!”
The man’s brow furrowed as he reached for the heavy mace at his belt, but he gave no reply apart from a low grunt. “What, nothing to say? You don’t remember me?” I spat at him. “Maybe this will jog your memory.” My sword drove forward into the guard’s chest far too fast for him to react, piercing through his Company standard armor to crack his ribs and spine. His body gave a single, violent shake before sliding limply from my blade into a rapidly growing pool of blood on the ground.
I could feel the world spinning out of control beneath my feet as I turned and walked back to Marin’s store. How could this happen again? Is this my punishment for abandoning Hedaat? The possibility of the Dominion causing the Attetsian situation had been on my mind the entire journey, but I had tried to convince myself it was only paranoia. The dead man on the stone behind me said otherwise.
“We have to go, now,” I said brusquely as I reentered the building. “Val, load the Company men into the back of the wagon. Lia, come with me; we need to talk.” Without waiting for a response, I made my way towards the back of the store.
“Lux, wait. You need to explain what is going on,” Val called after me. “Why did you kill that man?” I heard a soft sniveling coming from behind her, and turned to find one of Marin’s ears quivering just behind Val’s shoulder.
Restart Again: Volume 2 Page 21