It was locked. He fumbled with the knob. Nothing. Someone had locked it from the outside. But why?
The smoke was so thick now that it hid the ceiling. There was no bathroom in his room, and with the locked door barring him from the bathroom down the hall, no way could he get water to douse the fire. He hoped an alarm would go off, or that Emmanuel was close enough to smell the smoke.
He got down on his stomach. The fire was a rippling, blurry thing getting fatter and fatter by the second. He realized what he had to do.
“Extinguish it. That’s it. I can do that.”
He reached out across the floor toward the flames.
“Die,” he said, coughing. “Extinguish!”
Again, nothing. The fire seemed to be growing. All those notes he had copied by hand were lost.
“Die, die! Extinguish! Get out of here!”
He curled his arm against the floor and buried his face in it. The smoke was too much, and as he coughed into his arm, the thought entered his mind that he was going to die in this tiny room without ever seeing his sister again.
Then, as the world went dark around him, he heard his mother’s voice in his head.
Earth to Milo. Your brain’s in outer space again…
Armed with a new idea, he squinted at the fire, reached out one arm, and imagined a cooling wind sliding across his face, a trigger he had been practicing for a while, though he had never tried to cast this spell before now. He had never been scared enough to do it.
He whispered a single word.
“Void.”
A black dot appeared in the smoke. It hung suspended above the flames, darker than black, the color of pure nothingness. Milo watched, smoke stinging his eyes and burning his lungs, as the dot grew larger and larger and became a ball that rapidly inhaled the smoke. A void spell was dangerous; his uncle had warned him never to cast it unless he was sure he could control it.
He wasn’t sure he could, but what other option did he have?
“Oh no.”
The void grew until it was the size of a bowling ball. With a howling roar, it sucked up the burning books and notebooks and all the smoke. Then Milo felt himself being pulled toward it. He grabbed on to the leg of his bed, glad that it had been bolted to the floor.
He screamed.
“Help!”
His fingers began to slip, one by one. The void was a rift in the fabric of reality, and beyond it was pure nothingness. If Milo were to enter this void, he would be killed instantly, his body dissolved into millions of billions of particles.
This had been a bad idea. He was such an idiot. What had possessed him to start all this in the first place?
He was on his last few fingers when the void closed with a sharp hiss.
His body slammed onto the floor. Milo ignored the pain shooting up his side and raked air into his lungs. He looked around and saw that the void had sucked in everything not bolted to the floor. All his notebooks and books were gone.
Emmanuel’s voice boomed through speakers Milo had never noticed before.
“Milo, what in the fiery hell are you doing? You could have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“I just cast a Tier Two spell followed by a Tier Three spell.”
He could hear his uncle sighing in frustration. The man appeared to be at a loss for words. Hopefully, he was impressed.
“I want out of this room,” Milo said. He wiped sweat off his brow. “I need to reproduce this.”
“You still have a few months to go, Milo. Get some sleep. And don’t try that again without my supervision.”
“I won’t be able to sleep tonight, and you know that as well as I do.” Milo looked up at the ceiling as if he could see his uncle. He narrowed his eyes and said, in a calm voice: “Show me the fireball spell. Tonight.”
The room was silent for several seconds except for the fuzzy hum of the speakers. Then the hum died away, and the door opened with a click.
CHAPTER 63
Rain drizzled over the darkened castle grounds.
Kovax ordered his soldiers to clear the courtyard. He ran to his wife and son, slipping on wet stone along the way, using his staff to balance himself. When he reached them, he tossed aside the staff and rolled his son onto his side so the boy wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Then he rolled his wife over, cupping her face with one hand. She and the boy were soaked by the slimy fluid that had preserved them all these years. Kovax patted his wife on the back as she coughed.
The courtyard was empty now of all except a few of Kovax’s men.
“Will you look at that?” one of the men said, gazing down at Samara and Kofi with the stunned expression of a man at a circus freak show.
Kovax felt the urge to rip out his throat.
“The two of you”—he pointed at two men—“stay. The rest of you, leave!”
Boots and shoes clapped as the soldiers cleared everyone out.
Kovax looked down at his wife’s face. She coughed, her forehead and cheeks slick with rainwater. Next to her, Kofi made retching sounds as he vomited. There was no food in the boy’s stomach, and only a stringy discharge came out. Samara saw her son and reached out to him.
“Wait,” Kovax said. He cupped her face, his hands hard and white like albino crabs. What would she think upon seeing his f—
Samara looked at him and screamed.
“Gods, no!” she cried out, filling the courtyard with the sound of her ragged voice. “Get away from me! Get away!”
“Dearest, wait…”
But Samara had already made her judgment. Standing up, she regarded her husband with a look of utmost disgust.
“You called Risen Ones. You promised me. You promised our son!”
The rain had thickened, flattening Samara’s hair and running down her face in streaks. Anguish twisted her features. Kovax had never felt so small in his life. He was going to lose everything.
“Dearest, wait. I—I had to. You’ll see. I can explain.”
Samara had always been fast—physically as well as mentally—and Kovax was not prepared for what happened next.
She flashed toward one of the soldiers. Kovax heard the slicing sound of a sword pulled from its scabbard. The blade shimmered in her hand. In that single, brief instant before penetration, Kovax saw up close her expression of rage. Then he looked down to see the sword’s hilt sticking from his belly.
“No,” he said.
Samara pulled the sword back. It felt like ice coming out.
“Samara.”
He could taste his own blood. She put the blade up to her throat. Lightning flashed, followed by thunder.
“You should have let me go,” she said, pulling the blade across her skin. The lower half of her neck became black in the flashing light as a curtain of blood descended. She gave him a single, sad look before she collapsed.
Kofi grabbed the sides of his head and screamed. “Maaa-maaaa!”
“Damn it,” Kovax said, clenching his teeth as he tried to plug his wound. In his condition, it would surely kill him.
The soldiers were dumbfounded. When they saw Kovax’s rage, they turned and fled. He cursed them under his breath.
He bent over his wife as the life drained out of her.
“I can bring you back,” he said. She let out a gasp and shook a little. A moment later, she was dead. Could he bring her back again? Was it possible?
No. It didn’t matter. She would never love him as she once had.
“Oh, gods,” he said, clasping her hands. “I can fix this. I promise you, I can!”
Kofi was by his side a moment later. The boy’s face was glazed with rain. His water-darkened hair fell in straight sweeps down to his shoulders. His eyes were wide and vulnerable—his mother’s eyes, clearly.
“Can you, Papa? Can you bring her back?”
Kovax wrapped his arms around his son and pressed his face into the boy’s soft neck.
&nb
sp; “I can fix everything, Kofi. I just need your help, okay?”
“Okay,” the boy said, responding with a mighty hug of his own. “Anything, Papa.”
Kovax grunted in pain. He could feel the blood leaking out of him. He sank to his knees, tightening his embrace on the boy.
“That hurts,” Kofi said.
“I need you to do something, my boy. If you want to help your mother, I need you to be a hero.”
Kofi’s voice came out high and thin. “A hero? But how?”
Kovax knelt in a puddle of rainwater, face to face with his son. He could feel death’s icy grip around his heart.
“The same way everyone becomes a hero. By sacrificing himself.”
“But I don’t want to,” Kofi said, whining now. He stepped away from his father.
“You have to. It’s for the good of the empire, and our family.”
Kovax saw that his son’s eyes were puffy and wet, and that he was sucking his lower lip in and out of his mouth like a blubbering baby, and despite his love for the boy, he found himself growing angry. This was no time for weakness or hesitation.
He had to act fast.
“If you love your mother, boy, you’ll come with me into that tower.”
“But, why?”
Kovax was minutes away from death. He could feel it. “You have to step into that tower and await my instructions.”
“And what’s going to happen?”
“You’ll go to sleep.” He led his son by the hand.
“You mean I’ll die?”
“No, no. You’ll go to sleep and then you’ll wake up. And you’ll be with your mother in a peaceful place full of light.”
“Will there be other people? Will you be there?”
“Of course other people will be there. And they’ll love you as they love the Champions—because you weren’t selfish. And someday, I’ll be there, too. But not yet.”
Kovax picked up his staff and used it and the boy’s shoulder to make his way toward the tower.
“It’s okay, Papa. I’ve got you.”
Kovax almost cried out. Those words were another blade piercing his withered heart. He wanted to stop, but it was too late. This was no longer a matter of stopping or continuing, but of ensuring that it would work.
It wasn’t a question of right or wrong, either. Kovax had given up on morality when he had started summoning Risen Ones again. It was more a question of the boy’s potential. He was a Savant sorcerer like Iolus, like Milo Banks, but unlike those two, Kofi had damaged a part of his brain when he was young by casting a spell too powerful for him. The damage had been severe enough to slow the boy’s cognitive functions and make spellcasting impossible. It had also cursed Kovax with a dim-witted son that had always brought him shame.
But still—the boy gathered luminether automatically, like Iolus, like Milo Banks. He would serve as a battery, if nothing else. A fountain of blood ether.
“You’ll make your family proud,” Kovax said.
He opened the metal door and ushered the boy forward. Kofi, seeing the all-encompassing darkness inside—a darkness so thick it was like an endless pit—squealed and backed away.
“Don’t be a ninny, Kofi. Get in there.”
The boy hid his face behind his hands. “But I don’t want to.”
“I love you. If you love me back, you’ll do it.”
Kofi looked up at his father, eyes wide and swollen. “Can you hold my hand, Papa?”
The rain thrashed against the courtyard. Thunder boomed in the distance, the voices of the gods urging Kovax forward. He was sure of it. What he was about to do would change Astros forever.
“Your mother would want you to go inside. Remember that talk she had with you? She said that you were a Savant, which means you can cast powerful magical spells. And remember what else she said? ‘With the power of a god comes…’”
Kofi lifted his chin and spoke into the darkness. “‘…the responsibility of a saint.’”
Another clash of thunder. Kofi shuddered but kept his eyes on the darkness before him.
“She was right, Kofi. Make her proud.”
The boy marched into the darkness. He stopped only once to look back at his father. Kovax nodded at his son and used a vile human gesture—the thumbs-up—to reassure him.
A realization flashed in Kovax’s mind. His face and eyes had changed after he had begun summoning Risen Ones again, yet despite his monstrous appearance—the telltale sign of a low mage who works closely with blood ether—Kofi had not shown a single sign of fear or disgust, as his mother had done. The boy had accepted his father’s physical corruption like it was nothing. He truly loved his father.
But that was no reason to stop. This had to be done. The end always justified the means.
Kovax gave his son a solemn nod.
Kofi smiled back, and his last words were lost in a boom of thunder. What could he have possibly wanted to say?
Minutes later, atop the lonely tower, the low mage known as Kovax Leonaryx tapped into a power he had never tasted. He became something more than Godkin—something so powerful that only one of the ancient gods would have understood the feeling.
It wouldn’t last. As the blood ether swirled around his body and collected inside Duo, he felt his son’s life force drain. Kovax directed every last bit of energy into the blood crystal on his staff, and then he cast a difficult spell that directed that energy harmlessly into his brain. New nerve systems grew like vines, and old ones were reinforced; a billion tiny lightning storms as synapses fired faster than ever. His memory, his cognition, his intuitive and sensory capabilities—it was like upgrading a mosquito into a levathon.
Pure ecstasy. He rose into the sky, holding Duo with both hands, a black shape against the white-flashing expanse. He rose until he hovered above the castle, and then he directed his body toward the courtyard, where he landed harmlessly.
He looked back at the tower.
“I’m sorry, Kofi. I’ll make it up to you someday.”
Then he closed his eyes and cast a teleportation spell he’d never been able to pull off. He knew exactly where he had to go, and what he needed to do.
He had an emperor to kill, a new world order to create.
CHAPTER 64
Emma awoke to an unknown day.
Sunlight poured in through her window, silhouetting a half-dozen figures around her bed. She blinked to clear the gumminess out of her eyes. Strangely, she wasn’t on her bed but suspended over someone else’s in a room she had never visited before, one much bigger than her own.
Something held her in place over the mattress by her shoulders, abdomen, and legs—straps, by the feel of it. They had hung her, like a sheet, out to dry.
“Wha…” she said, struggling to move her lips.
“You’re okay,” a voice said. It was Ascher, though her vision was so blurred she could barely see him. “You’re safe. You feel drowsy and numb because of the pain medicine.”
Slowly, like vapor lifting off a pane of glass, her vision sharpened. Blurry lines became more definite, more human.
Ascher stood by the side of her bed, his face glossy and pink as if he had just run here. Sevarin, Lily, Coral, and a tired, scruffy-looking soldier each occupied different positions against the walls. Oscar sat to her left in a wooden chair, his tail snaking out from under him. He was biting his lower lip and looking at her. She wondered if it hurt to sit on one’s tail.
“Emma,” Sevarin said, stepping forward with his arms crossed. He gave her a gentle look and his arms dropped to his sides.
“Careful, Sev.” Ascher reached out to hold him back. “There’ll be time later.”
Sevarin, looking a little hurt and not as tough as usual, drew back. He didn’t look away from Emma’s eyes. She sensed that he was deeply worried about her. He also probably felt a little guilty, since Emma had fallen during his watch.
“Sis,” Lily said, coming forward to stand by the corner of the bed. “I’m glad you’re oka
y.”
She took Emma’s left hand, which hung suspended by the wrist, and kissed it. Then Coral pulled her back, saying, “The pain will pass. It happens to all Acolytes.” Her voice trembled with an emotion Emma couldn’t name. “Golden wings—I’ve never seen such a beautiful thing.”
Then it was Ascher who spoke. “It might be difficult to understand, Emma, but we have you strapped like this because, at the moment, your wings are very fragile. The bones haven’t hardened yet and can easily break if you’re not careful. It’s going to hurt for a few days, but like Coral said, the pain will pass sooner than you think.
“And there’s more. Your wings”—he gazed at them, mystified—“your wings aren’t white. They’re—they’re golden. I’m not sure what that means. Many Acolytes dye their wings gold—or blue or green, for that matter—but yours are naturally that way. According to Acolyte legend, that makes you very special.”
Coral made a tsk sound at her husband. “Shouldn’t we let her rest?”
“You’re right,” Ascher said, “Of course.”
“Wait.” Emma looked around the room. She saw Lily, Oscar, and Sevarin—and Barrel, Gunner, and Owen were probably nearby—but there was one person missing, and his absence was like a gaping hole in her heart.
“Where’s Milo? I want to see him.”
Ascher put a big, warm hand over hers.
“You have to be calm, Emma. No one has seen him in several hours, but you know how he likes to slip away sometimes to be alone, no matter how often I warn him against it. I have about twenty men scouring the ranch and the surrounding forest in search of him. I’m sure he’s all right.”
Emma looked out the window at the morning sky. “I hope so.”
“Are you comfortable?”
She nodded, and it was true; the straps weren’t very tight, and they supported just the right parts of her body to keep her from feeling suffocated.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 37