Origins

by A D Starrling

  They had abandoned their horses and fought on the desert sand while their men clashed violently around them. Kronos let out an incoherent roar and stabbed at him once more.

  Aäron blocked the blade before it could pierce his skin, muscles burning as he strained to push the Immortal’s sword down. Their blades clashed again and again, Kronos’s anger visibly rising as he failed to cut him.

  He had just deflected another blow when pain suddenly bloomed on his right flank, wrenching a gasp from his lips. Aäron glanced from the dagger that had slipped under his armor to the grinning man who held it. It was the troop commander from Kadavan.

  Abu swooped down from the sky, an angry shriek leaving his chest as he clawed and pecked at the soldier’s head and face.

  Aäron jumped back just as Kronos knocked the hawk out of the air, his broadsword carving through the bird’s armor and breaking his left wing before sending him crashing into the ground some dozen feet away.

  Despite the knife in his flank tearing across his flesh, Aäron raised his sword and blocked strikes from human and Immortal soldier alike.

  Then he saw her. She raced across the plains toward them, her blades striking the men in her path in lightning-fast moves, red hair streaming behind her, rage and panic painted across her beautiful features.

  He gripped the dagger buried in his waist, ripped it out, and slashed the Kadavan troop commander across the neck.

  Fire bloomed in his back in the next moment, robbing him of his breath. It seared straight through his body and out his chest, paralyzing him.

  Mila watched Aäron turn and slash the Kadavan troop commander’s throat with the dagger that had been lodged in his flank.

  Then, as the giant soldier gargled and choked around the red flood fountaining from his neck, Kronos’s broadsword entered Aäron’s back in a violent thrust. Aäron gasped, eyes widening and body stiffening as the blade tore through flesh and bone and exited the left side of his chest.

  Mila stumbled, shock causing her to falter for a heartbeat.

  A scream left her lips with her next breath. ‘Noooooo!’

  Navia looked around as the agonizing cry tore through her mind and echoed in her ears. Her eyes widened as she beheld the scene several hundred feet to her left.

  Aäron slowly collapsed to his knees, his blade falling at his side. He barely felt any pain when Kronos yanked the broadsword out of his back.

  The Immortal’s shadow engulfed him and the faint hum of the blade came again as he swung it down to cleave Aäron’s head from his body.

  It never touched his skin.

  Metal clashed as Mila blocked Kronos’s sword with a trident dagger a foot from Aäron’s neck. Her own broadsword found her former mate’s flesh in the next moment, carving through bone and gristle, slicing through his right forearm just above the wrist.

  Kronos screamed, his sword thudding onto the sand, still gripped in a hand that was no longer attached to his body. He stumbled backward, fingers clutching at the scarlet jets spurting from his severed flesh.

  Mila followed, dropping her broadsword and reaching for the second trident dagger in the sheath on her right thigh. She crossed the twin blades across his neck and slashed his throat.

  Kronos’s eyes widened above her, disbelief overshadowing his fear and rage. Then he fell to the desert, his blood staining the sand beneath him.

  Mila turned without a backward glance and rushed to the side of the man who lay dying a few feet away.

  ‘Watch out!’ someone shouted nearby.

  She dimly recognized Governor Tanis’s voice as she dropped to her knees beside Aäron. His eyes were closed and his face pale. Blood gushed from his wounds.

  ‘For the love of the gods, Red Queen, get a hold of yourself!’ roared Tanis, blocking two soldiers’ blades before they could reach her.

  Mila ignored him and lifted Aäron’s head onto her lap, her tears spilling over and landing on his face, the agony searing through her body a wound that would never heal.

  Tanis gasped as the soldiers converging on them suddenly froze in their tracks. In her mind, Mila felt the Seer’s power and knew her cousin would stop anyone who got too close to her in this timeless moment of loss.

  Aäron’s lashes fluttered as her tears landed on his lids. He opened his eyes a heartbeat later, dilated pupils constricting as he focused on her face.

  ‘Do not cry,’ he said in a low voice.

  His face blurred as more tears filled Mila’s vision. She wiped them away angrily, not wanting to miss a single instant of this precious time she had left with him.

  Blood spilled past Aäron’s lips as he took a rasping breath. They curved in a gentle smile and his gaze roamed her face, as eager as she to carve this moment in his mind.

  ‘Find me in our next lives,’ he whispered. He raised bloodied fingers to her cheek and stroked her skin for the last time. ‘I will give you my heart a thousand times over.’

  Mila clutched his hand, engraving his features in her memory and absorbing his fading heat into her body as he went limp in her hold, his blue eyes closing for the last time, his face relaxing as death claimed him.

  ‘And I will give you mine a thousand times more,’ she murmured brokenly.

  She brought her lips to his, stealing his last breath, sealing it deep inside her.

  Mila held him for a while longer as the war raged around them, until Megash reached her side. The younger prince collapsed to the ground with a tortured sob, fingers moving frantically across the gaping wound in his dead brother’s chest.

  She kissed Aäron’s eyes and placed his head in Megash’s lap. ‘Protect him.’

  ‘What?’ Megash mumbled, tears streaming down his face.

  Mila rose and walked over to her wounded hawk. She gathered the squeaking bird gently in her hands and left him by Megash before collecting her sword and trident daggers from where they lay in the sand by Kronos’s body.

  As she turned to face the battlefield, the ground split at her feet.

  Then a terrible blast erupted from her body, throwing men to the ground a hundred feet around them. She advanced across the plains, the power of her steps cracking the earth and making it tremble, her rage causing the very air to shimmer and sending sand spiraling in angry, twisting funnels, her eyes seeking the masses before her for the one she truly wanted.

  It ends now.

  Navia gasped as the dreadful force washed over her. She reached out and steadied the minds of her kin and as many of the alliance as she could with her own, protecting them from the paralyzing effect of Mila’s wrath. Never before had she witnessed such violent energy from the Red Queen. She leaned against the physical pressure buffeting them, struggling to maintain her balance.

  To her right, Jared anchored himself to the ground with one hand and held on to the other Immortals with his elemental powers. Soon, the only ones left standing in the middle of the battlefield were them.

  As Jared’s walls of sand came crashing down, Navia finally saw Crovir up ahead, on the eastern edge of the plains. The Immortal king had been driven to his knees by the weight of his daughter’s fury.

  Mila started to run, fissures spreading across the ground in her path, her gaze focused unblinkingly on the monster who had given her life, fire filling her veins and heart.

  Crovir fought the sandstorm lashing at him and slowly crawled to his feet, his broadsword held in a white-knuckled grip. His face paled when he saw her and he turned to run. He was too late. He twisted at the last moment to block her strike.

  An inhuman roar left Mila’s lips as she leapt in the air and brought her broadsword down, cleaving his blade in two when she landed in front of him. As her father stared numbly at his shattered weapon, she spun and slashed through his armor, the edge of her sword carving a red trail across his body from his left shoulder to his right hip.

  Crovir cried out and stumbled back, hand fumbling for the dagger at his waist. Mila swung her blade around again.

  It clashed aga
inst another, sparks erupting in the air where metal met metal, the sound ringing in her ears and echoing across the battlefield.

  She turned her head and met Bastian’s gaze.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ snarled Mila.

  She slid her sword down his in a flash of sparks, sidestepped around him, and brought her blade up to slash Crovir’s neck.

  Bastian blocked her attack again, his movement lightning fast despite the pressure of her rage, his agony painted across his face.

  ‘Stop, I am begging you,’ he said brokenly. ‘He is my other half. Let me be the one who ends this.’

  ‘What?!’ gasped Crovir, ashen-faced. ‘You would—you would kill me, brother?’

  Mila shook her head, blood roaring in her ears, heart burning with incandescent fury. ‘I cannot. I will not.’

  She met Bastian’s tortured gaze. The Immortal king suddenly gasped and stiffened.

  In her mind and from across the battlefield, Mila heard Navia’s terrible scream. Her own pulse stuttered, shock overcoming her rage for an instant.

  Crovir grimaced behind Bastian, hands locked around the broken sword he had used to stab his brother in the back.

  Bastian gazed blindly at Mila for a timeless moment. A defeated expression washed across his face. He closed his eyes briefly before turning and taking Crovir in his arms, the shattered blade still embedded in his flesh.

  Crovir cried out and struggled in Bastian’s hold.

  The younger king gripped his brother firmly and looked at Mila over his shoulder. ‘Do it now.’ His gaze shifted to his children and those of Crovir where they raced across the battlefield toward them, love and sadness reflected in his eyes. ‘They will not let you kill us again. You must remove our hearts while we still breathe, so we can never rise from death.’

  Mila blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Let me go!’ screamed Crovir. Terror twisted his features as he fought his brother’s embrace. He gave Mila a frantic look. ‘Do not do this, daughter! I will forgive you your sins! We can start over again! It will be as if nothing happened—’

  Rage surged through Mila at his lies.

  ‘Now, Red Queen!’ roared Bastian, tightening his hold.

  ‘No! Mila, stop!’ screamed Navia from across the plains. ‘Do not do as he asks of you, please! There has to be another way! There has—’

  Mila closed her eyes for a moment and felt Navia’s powers wash over her in a desperate attempt to stop her. Then, tears spilling down her cheeks, her own unearthly energy overcoming that of her cousin, she drove her sword into Bastian’s back, through his heart and into that of her father.

  She ignored the other Immortals’ cries of horror as she yanked her blade out of the kings’ bodies. She dropped to their side when they fell to the ground and carved their beating hearts out of their chests, the organs heavy in her hands before she cast them to the sand.

  Then she released the sword and looked up at the sky, a howl of rage and pain erupting from the depths of her soul and rendering the air, her kin falling to their knees around her, their anger and sorrow sweeping over her.

  And all around them came a faint smell of spices carried on a warm breeze that coursed across the battleground.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  From the time of Romerus’s murder to the end of the war at Eridug, a hundred days passed in all.

  Of Kronos they found no sign, though his bloodied hand remained where Mila had left it.

  As for the ones who had died in the battles that had raged across the Empire, be they friend or foe, their remains burned on giant pyres that turned the skies above the land dark with smoke from Qataara all the way to the South Sea.

  And in the plaza of the kings, in Uryl, the remains of Aäron, general of the human alliance and prince of Parsah, were given a royal funeral.

  The queens returned from the desert with the children. Although Mila’s heart rejoiced at holding Eleaza and Kaleb in her arms once more, she had to tell them the truth about what had happened to their father. Kaleb was the angriest of the two and it was a long time before he came to forgive her.

  In the days that followed the passing of the Immortal kings, the Empire was officially disbanded and Megash was crowned the new ruler of the human nation that occupied the lands between and around the two great rivers.

  Shortly after his coronation, the Immortals and the long-lived queens prepared to leave Uryl with the bodies of Crovir and Bastian.

  ‘Will we see you again?’ said Megash at the gates of the capital when they departed that evening, a solemn Gilgamesh and Nisuna at his side, the baby quiet for once as she stared wide-eyed from her mother’s arms.

  Tobias glanced at his siblings and cousins, his gaze lingering on Mila’s empty face for the briefest of moments. The anger he felt toward her had started to abate and he knew Bastian’s children felt the same way, especially after Navia had described what had happened in the moments before Mila killed the Immortal kings. For the Seer was the only one who had heard the words spoken by her father and the terrible request he had made of Mila.

  Still, Tobias shuddered when he recalled what she had done. He did not know whether he would have had the courage to do the same.

  He had told his kin so the day after Crovir and Bastian’s deaths. ‘However much you disapprove of her actions, Mila knew what needed to be done. And Bastian realized she was the only one fearless enough to do it.’ He had turned to Baruch. ‘You heard what your father said on the hill near the citadel. That he could not live without Crovir. That they were two halves, unable to survive without the other. So he chose to die with his brother.’

  A muscle had jumped in Baruch’s cheek. Hosanna had laid a hand on his shoulder, tears swimming in her eyes.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Ysa had murmured.

  It was Navia who had replied. ‘We bury them. In the deserts to the west, where none may find their resting place. This is why I requested their remains not be cremated.’

  Tobias had stared at her. ‘Why do you—?’

  ‘Because I have seen it,’ Navia had said, her green gaze hard. ‘I have seen what must be done.’ She had glanced at the other Immortals. ‘And it requires all of us to do it.’

  Tobias gazed at Megash presently in the flickering light of the flaming torches framing the gates and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘No, I do not think you will see us again, my friend.’

  The newly crowned king released a sigh.

  ‘There is no need to look that relieved,’ muttered Baruch.

  Guilt flashed across Megash’s face. ‘I am sorry. It is just that chaos tends to follow in your steps.’

  Nisuna slapped her husband on the back, a scowl darkening her features. Tanis chortled behind her.

  Tobias smiled. ‘We shall attempt not to interfere in the matters of humans from now on.’

  ‘Ha! That I cannot wait to see!’ said Tanis.

  Baruch sighed. ‘You doubt us still, governor of Cayon?’

  ‘Do not worry,’ Hosanna muttered acerbically, ‘we will outlive him over a hundred times.’

  Tanis glowered. ‘Well, I cannot help being human.’

  ‘Nor can we help being Immortal,’ said Tobias.

  He offered his hand to Tanis. The governor hesitated, then shook it, all the while muttering under his breath.

  Mila walked over to Gilgamesh and crouched before the boy. ‘Be as good a king as your father will be and lead your people well, young prince.’

  Gilgamesh swallowed and dipped his chin, giving her a grave look. He reached out and petted the hawk on her shoulder. Broken wing long healed by Rafael, Abu stirred and butted his head against the boy’s hand.

  Then, the Immortals turned and disappeared into the night.

  ‘Here?’ said Jared. ‘Are you sure?’

  Navia nodded. Jared stared warily at the mountain before them.

  Over a month had passed since they left Uryl with the bodies of the dead kings and crossed
the South Desert. Surprisingly, the corpses had remained as fresh as the day the Immortals fell at Eridug, although their hearts had started to change color slightly. In order to protect them from decay, Rafael had created a strange mixture of oils and herbs and preserved the remains inside two large clay pots.

  It was the Seer who guided them to the massifs that bordered the Red Sea, some forty leagues east of the city of Nuburu on the Nahal River. After leaving their children with the queens at an oasis in the desert, they proceeded east toward the towering range filling the horizon.

  ‘There is a pair of natural caves that we can use for our purposes,’ said Navia, indicating the peak above them. ‘They are some thousand feet above us though.’

  And so, while Jared used his elemental powers to create an ascending tunnel from the base of the mountain, his siblings and cousins carved two gigantic tombs from a large block of granite Mila found on the other side of the mountain.

  It took a Half Moon for them to complete what would be the final resting place of Crovir and Bastian’s bodies. During that time, when they were not working and sleeping, they sat around fires and reminisced about their childhoods, focusing on the happy occasions that had marked them. It was a bonding experience they very much needed to heal the scars left over from the war.

  After Jared breached the first cave and enlarged it, smoothing the walls and ceiling out to make a perfect, domed-shaped chamber, they carried the tombs up the tunnel and placed them in the center of the floor, arranging the stone coffins so the heads faced the west and the feet the east, the brothers forever gazing in the direction of the rising sun. Under Navia’s mysterious directions, Jared also created a complex closing mechanism in each casket.

  They dug an opening in the ground near the southwest wall of the chamber and fashioned steps that spiraled down to the smaller cave below. There, Jared smoothed out the walls as per Navia’s instructions and fashioned two giant pillars in the middle of the chamber, directly beneath the dead kings’ tombs. Within each column, he sculpted an alcove and in them they laid the clay pots containing the hearts.