Romney Balvance and the Katarin Stone

by J Jordan

  “No,” said Rella, her voice just above a croak. “Look around you. It was happening long before you came into the picture.”

  Then her face hardened. She wiped the tears from her cheek and looked Romney in the eye.

  “I don’t know how you came across this game, but now that you’re here, we need your help to end it. We have to stop this tonight.”

  Romney looked over the cases. For once since his adventure began, the gravity of his situation had muscled its way in. This really was a dangerous game, a game that played with the fates of good people. Those players, like Rella and Rikka, had given up much to be a part of it. Each case, and each magical artifact within, represented a person who had lost everything to keep its secrets. Kedro Kyro had lost everything, and he hardly even knew he was playing. Somehow, the goal seemed far out of reach now. Who was he kidding? They had no use for an accountant and a CPA. They needed someone bigger to save them.

  “No. You guys need a knight in shining armor, or a clandestine warrior, or something.”

  He backed away from the Reymus Collection.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You were right. I don’t belong in this game. I shouldn’t have been playing. I’m not a hero. I’m just an accountant.”

  Rella caught his shoulder as he turned to leave.

  “No, Romney. You’re a rogue. A sneak thief and a cutpurse. And you are exactly what we need right now. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

  Romney’s chest swelled with pride. Somehow, this sentiment was comforting to him. She had a point. He wasn’t the little accountant anymore, the thing others stepped over on the way to the top. He was an antihero now. An integral part of their story. It was a truly wonderful thing. It was the first time in his life that Romney Balvance was needed.

  Sure, it wasn’t saving a kingdom from an evil knight or defeating roving bands of thugs. It was considered felony theft, destruction of property, and possession of an unlicensed firearm. But it was still save-the-world kind of stuff. He took a moment to gather himself, and to choke back a tear of joy. The world needed a rogue, and he was going to be the best and most dastardly of all. He stepped back from the case and leveled his pistol at the glass. Rella moved behind him.

  The glass caved around the bullet hole, then fell in clumps onto the velvet fabric. Rella plucked the Teeth of Ira from the wreckage.

  ◆◆◆

  Devon heard the second muted shot from his desk and frowned. Romney had been a useful pawn, and he had liked the little man’s bravado. But he had become unpredictable and that was a big problem. A good pawn did what they were told, and did it the way you expected them to, and they never questioned their orders. There were other, better pawns in the game than Romney. But losing him was still sad. He was beginning to like the little man. Devon took up the walkie-talkie and, in a crestfallen tone, spoke into the receiver.

  “We’ll worry about the cleanup later. Find Mila. We’ll need her for the next step.”

  He looked down at the floodlights gathered in the parking lot below. They were joined by more flashing red-and-blue lights.

  “Make sure to fill her in on the situation downstairs. Maybe she can get our PR guys to spin this. I’m thinking hostage situation, former employees with a vendetta. A tragedy that has rocked the foundation of our company, brought to an end by the courageous acts of the Reymus Industries private security force. Something like that. Mila can spin it the right way. Maybe shoot some people in marketing, for effect.”

  He paused and listened to the soft crackle of static on the other end. Devon thought he was doing a pretty good job with this commanding thing. He would make a fine god.

  “Ask Mila first. There should be marketing people somewhere in the building. Don’t call anybody in to shoot them. They can trace that stuff back to us.”

  He waited for Lorna’s typical “affirmative” or some other military lingo she picked up. The static continued its crackle.

  “Lorna? Did you get that?”

  What was the phrase for this? Devon rubbed his brow in agitation. It was like copying something. Or pasting. Fax?

  “Do you receive?”

  He heard a third muted gunshot. And then a fourth. And a fifth.

  ◆◆◆

  The elevator opened into the dim library of Mila Rin. Three armed shadows crept into the center of the room, weaving around the shapes of a couch and a coffee table. One shadow detached from the others, moved to the desk, and rummaged for something. The glow from a VoPad illuminated Cora’s face. She examined the screen for a moment, then tapped at one of the options. The ceiling lights revealed Rikka and Tykeso, standing amid the coffee table and the leather couch. They were glaring at her.

  “I watched her type it in. It’s ‘Monarch’ with a zero for the ‘o,’ if you need it.”

  Tykeso’s grimace indicated he wasn’t impressed by this. At least, not at the moment.

  “Is there anything on that tablet that stops them from seeing us?”

  Cora flipped through a few apps, then tapped a few more options.

  “I can shut down all the cameras on this floor. And it looks like we have full access to the elevator now.”

  Rikka looked surprised by this.

  “Great. Good work, Lady Cora.”

  Cora glared.

  “Please don’t call me that. Cora works. Just Cora.”

  “You’ve both done a commendable job so far,” said Rikka, undeterred. “I don’t have the authority to formally invite you, but I can recommend you to the guild master. Assuming we survive, of course. Our order could always use resourceful people like you.”

  “You keep bringing that up,” said Tykeso, “but you never explain what it is. What is your ‘order?’”

  Rikka was prepared to give him the entire summary of their clandestine order, but she froze in place. Her eyes moved with her gun to the far corner of the room. Something had dropped to the floor. It was too heavy to be a book.

  A figure rose and stalked toward the center of the room. Tykeso and Rikka backed away as it approached. The dim light of the ceiling lamps revealed the new Mila Rin.

  The new Mila Rin was much like the old Mila in terms of physical appearance, with a few noticeable differences to her demeanor. For one, her strained, upright composure had been thrown out a high window and onto a passing car. This new Mila crouched as she walked, as if hefting a large object behind her. Her breathing was ragged, her entire frame rising and falling to the rhythm. She held her jaw out, revealing a row of lower teeth and tendrils of saliva. It reminded Cora of the kids in grade school who pretended to be monsters, but it had a creepy effect when a grown woman did it in harsh lighting.

  Even more creepy, the floor appeared to shiver with each step. Mila crept forward and snarled at them. Another tendril of drool rolled off her lips and sagged to the floor. Her teeth shined in the light. They were polished, pristine, and much sharper than before. When she spoke, her voice came in a low growl. It resonated from wall to wall.

  “The charade is over. The dawn approaches.”

  She slithered to a nearby leather couch and leaned against it. The frame bowed under her weight. The Katarin stone dangled loosely from her neck, sparking blue in the shade.

  “You fools. No chain could hold us forever. The monarchs of old have returned.”

  Rikka flinched at Mila’s snarl. Tykeso took a step back into a fashionable chair. Cora didn’t budge from her place behind Mila’s desk. Her eyes narrowed.

  “I see what’s going on here. You want to be a dragon, don’t you?”

  Mila’s grin stretched gruesomely across her face, releasing more drool onto the expensive leather.

  “You’ve done all kinds of research on the subject,” Cora pressed on. “You know that Camerran tribes referred to old kings and queens in their early writings. They were supposed to be giant scaled creatures with wings and teeth, and fire breath. Dragons.”

  Mila nodded. She snarled again, causing Rikka
to retreat into the coffee table. It moved an inch out of its perfect squared position. Mila paid no mind to this.

  “Humans and elves. Tiny people with tiny kingdoms, and trite little lives. Carving out your minor domains with your castles, your keeps, your cottages, your high-rise apartments. Pathetic. A dragon’s domain has no boundary. We have no age. All eras belong to us.”

  “So, you want to be a dragon,” said Cora, unimpressed by the display. “Burning villages and eating heroes in one gulp. Claws and scales. And fire breath. A dragon. Is that what this was all about? You think these things are going to make you into a dragon?”

  Mila’s next spiel was answer enough. Cora didn’t listen to her fevered ranting this time. Tykeso and Rikka were too afraid to remember. When Mila finished, Cora leveled with her.

  “Was it a long week for you, Mila?”

  Mila’s chuckle came from a throat as old as words. The sound churned like seafoam in her mouth.

  “Know me, elf. For I am the maker of kings, builder of the world throne. And I am stronger than any mortal, greater than any ruler, and more powerful than any god. I am Milarin the Enchanter. Kneel before me!”

  Cora was finished with all of this nonsense. It had already been a long night. There was more talk of magic on the way in, and again in the lobby, and again in the elevator ride up. And now, Mila Rin, one of the saner people in her life, had just admitted to being an ancient beast. The magic, the myth, and the overactive imaginations. She raised her assault rifle to her shoulder and took aim at Mila’s arm. It was probably a nonlethal spot.

  The blast sent Mila spinning to the ground. She landed with a thundering tremor behind the couch.

  “It’s been a long week for everybody. I’ve been in a bank robbery and a plane crash, nearly blinded by a paranoid internet troll, party to a revolution. I’ve fought my way through a military base, lost my way through an ancient temple, and escaped a secret OIB detainment facility, all over someone’s deluded fantasy that magic is a real thing. Magic is not real. Pure and simple. All of your lunatic ravings are based on the hearsay of an uncivilized society. There are no spells or enchantments. There were never any dragons. They were apex predators dreamed up by a species that had just reached the top of the food chain.”

  Cora waved the gun over her head to prove her point. Her nostrils were still flaring, her eyes ablaze.

  “Dragons are folktales. If I hear anybody else bring up magic or dragons or any other folk myth, real or otherwise, they’re getting the rest of what’s in this gun. Now, if you’re quite finished with your delusion, I would ask my colleagues to treat your new flesh wound. Mr. Vandesko, if you please.”

  Tykeso and Rikka were frozen on the spot. Mila stood on her own. Her arm was unscathed. Cora watched apprehensively. Maybe she didn’t hit her.

  Mila reared back and sucked in a deep breath. The air rippled with heat around her mouth, and the smell of burnt lumber pervaded the air. Rikka dove for cover. Tykeso followed close behind, a mere second later. Cora watched in stunned silence from behind the desk. It looked awfully convincing for a special effect.

  Milarin the Enchanter doubled over the couch and blew a gout of fire. It whipped across the library, splitting the coffee table in two, bursting the fancy leather chair on the opposite end, and cutting a charred fissure through the carpet. Cora watched in disbelief as the flame approached.

  So, she thought, this is how it works. Mila had somehow rigged a tiny flamethrower inside of her mouth, with a miniature butane canister embedded in her neck. The sparking element was probably somewhere in her teeth. This explained the fire breath. And the drooling. This was what overworked assistants did with their millions.

  Or, the better answer, Cora had passed out in the OIB holding cell and this was all a dream.

  The flame parted in front of Cora, as if blocked by an invisible wedge. The two streams crashed into bookshelves on either side of the desk. In an instant, they were piles of burning wood and paper. Cora looked back at the maniacal lady as she crawled over the couch. It buckled under her weight.

  “You need help.”

  Mila drew another heavy breath and released a second fiery gust. This one forked into more bookcases on either side the desk. Cora raised the rifle to her shoulder and fired another burst. Mila reeled back and landed on the ruined couch, crushing it completely. The impact shook the entire library, toppling a bookcase into the wreckage of its burning neighbor. The tremors shifted Mila’s desk an inch to the left, its flanks now singed by dragon fire or surgically implanted mouth flamethrower fire, depending on your point of view. Cora wheeled around to see the double doors open. Three guns trained on Devon Reymus as he entered. His smirk was well played.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t our uninvited . . . ”

  The smirk dropped as he took in the scene. Mila scrabbled onto all fours and snarled at Cora. Devon flinched at this.

  “Mila,” he said, “what did you do?”

  Mila hissed, projecting a cascade of drool onto the scorched carpet. Cora’s disgust was quickly turning to pity.

  “We were going to do it together,” said Devon, approaching slowly. “You and me, against the world. King and queen.”

  “I waited two thousand years for this day,” said Milarin the dragon. “Your pathetic mewling is nothing to me.”

  Devon’s face hardened at this answer. He held out his hand.

  “We do it together. That was the deal. Give me the stone, Mila.”

  Mila shoved past him into the double doors. The force ripped them off their hinges.

  “Mila, no!”

  Devon chased after her, stepping over the remnants of his grand entrance.

  The three guns were trained on the doorway, their owners still processing the events that had just unfolded. Cora was first to draw a conclusion.

  “We should follow them,” she said, “after giving them an adequate head start.”

  “Tactical advance,” said Tykeso. “Good strategy.”

  “A sound plan indeed,” added Rikka. “Excellent idea, Lady Cora.”

  They heard a frustrated yelp echo from within, followed by a thundering crash. The accompanying shock wave brought the mixed sounds of more destruction. Another of Mila’s bookcases leaned forward and toppled to the floor. Cora stepped up to the doorway and peered inside. The disarray of broken glass and trampled furniture forged a clear path toward Devon’s gallery. It was baffling that a billionaire and his secretary could do so much damage in so little time. But stranger things have happened. You could never underestimate the destructive power of a captain of industry. Cora turned to her associates.

  “Anyone else care to take the lead?”

  Their path of destruction ended in a gaping hole right through the false wall leading into the Reymus Collection. The new opening was a whole foot taller than Tykeso, and just as wide. He took a defensive position on the left side, while Rikka took the right. Both had their weapons at the ready. But Cora didn’t join them. They both turned to see her in the gallery on her hands and knees, carefully searching the debris. A painting once covered the false wall, and she was looking for pieces of it. Cora managed to free a scrap of canvas pinched between bits of crumbled wall. She held it up to the remaining light fixtures to see it. This was the crest of the black dragon. She found more scraps from the rubble as she continued her search. A bit of chain mail. A fragment of mouth and nose. The corner of a forehead and eye. She held them in her hands and looked at them.

  “Cora?”

  Tykeso was standing at the edge of the opening. He motioned to the wall beside him.

  She looked back down at the pieces in her hands.

  Many believe that history is an immortal thing, that truly great events can never be forgotten. Art, stories, factual accounts—these things will always be preserved. But historians, like Cora Queldin, know better. History can die. An event can be forgotten, its details misremembered, the ideals lost, misconstrued, or carefully swept under the rug.
r />   Cora held the remnant of the paladin, the savior of Camerra, from the jaws of the Atterusian Empire. These scraps were the only detailed account of him, the only indisputable facts of his existence. All the world had left were the myths of a hero and those shreds of canvas. Cora stowed them in her pocket, picked up her rifle, and moved for the hole in the wall. Tykeso and Rikka watched her approach.

  “Cora, what are you doing?”

  Cora pushed past him and moved through the opening. Tykeso moved in after her, then Rikka followed after him.

  “That’s not a tactical advance.”

  The Reymus Collection had been looted. Several displays were up, their glass shattered and their contents missing. The two semi-dragons were at the center of the carnage, struggling over the Katarin stone. Devon was wrapped around Mila’s back, trying to pry the stone from her neck. His one hand clutched the leather strap, while the other tried pushing at her shoulder for leverage. Mila twisted in his grasp and aimed a spout of flame at his face. The column of fire went wild, shaving the top of an open display case on its way to the westward corner of the room. He tried kneeing her in the back, but the attack didn’t faze her. With a shifting of her frame, Devon was unseated and thrown to the granite floor. The tile cracked beneath him. He was up in an instant, charging Mila again.

  “It’s my turn!”

  Mila met him head on, planting her shoulder into his gut. She crouched, sprang upward, and sent him crashing once more into the opposite wall. He left an imprint in the steel wall, like a cartoon character. Devon recovered, but only in time to catch the full force of Mila’s fire breath. When the flames cleared, he was on his knees, curls of smoke rising from his suit. Mila screeched with glee, the sound tying a knot in Cora’s stomach.

  “Bring me more,” said Mila.

  Devon grimaced.

  “But it’s my turn,” he said.

  “You will have your chance once my transformation is complete. And not a moment sooner. Bring me the Jade Scar.”