“It’s okay,” Kovax said. “We’re in Theus.”
“But this is where the enemy lives, isn’t it?”
Kovax placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. His newfound affection for his son was a strange, yet pleasant, feeling.
“Yes,” he answered. “The enemy lives here, and now, so do we. It’s the only place Iolus can’t touch.”
“He’s scary, Papa.”
Kovax scoffed. “He’s a coward.”
Footsteps rose in the avenue. An alarm began to wail across the city.
Kovax approached the geyser of healing energy shooting up from the ground. It was blue instead of blood red—a clever disguise by the Archon. He slid a hand into its tingling coolness.
“What have I done?” he said.
More importantly, he wondered, what did Milo Banks do to me?
Whatever had changed in Kovax’s mind and soul, his reign was over.
“You, there,” a man shouted at him. “Put up your hands.”
Wardens.
They were everywhere. Dozens of them, beamcasters aimed.
Kovax lifted his arms. Kofi did the same.
“Identify yourself,” the head warden shouted. He was a barrel-chested man with gray streaking his black hair and beard. “At once or I’ll shoot!”
Kovax smiled at him. The man was about to enter a world of utter confusion.
“My name is Kovax Leonaryx, Emperor of the nations of Leonaryx. King of Taradyn.”
There was a moment of silence in which the only sound was the gushing of energy. Then, the wardens all began to chuckle, except for the head warden, who grimaced.
“Mock me,” he said, “and see what happens, low mage. Now step out of the smoke. Keep your hands up.”
Kovax obeyed. He stepped over chunks of stone, broken crusts that had once been the fountain’s various basins.
Within seconds, the men were upon him. They pushed him to his knees—Kofi remaining by his father’s side, invisible to the wardens—and aimed their casters at his head. The luminether currents in the battery packs made his hair tingle.
“Identify yourself,” the head warden said. “Lie, and I’ll slam the butt of this caster into your ugly old skull.”
Kovax peered into the rifle’s barrel and saw the crackling blue current at the other end, waiting to jump out at him. He looked up at the man’s eyes and saw scars on his face from some battle he had fought in his youth. None of this frightened Kovax; he found it oddly exciting.
“You were in the Forge,” Kovax remarked. “Do you not recognize one of your greatest enemies?”
The man’s frown deepened, and then his eyebrows shot up in amazement.
“By the gods,” he said. “It is you.” He glanced at the fountain. “You did this?”
“I did, indeed.”
“Witnesses saw a boy wearing an eye patch.”
“An illusion,” Kovax said, “meant to frame a student at your academy. Milo Banks. You’ve probably heard of him.”
The head warden punched Kovax across the face, toppling him.
“You lying old bastard,” he said. “Why would you be telling the truth now?”
With help from his son, Kovax got back on his knees. He licked the corner of his mouth and tasted blood.
Good. The man was a buffoon. He wouldn’t press the issue about illusions and blind teenage sorcerers. He would only succumb to his rage.
“Why give yourself up?” the man said.
Kovax shrugged. “I lost my way home.”
The head warden scoffed and looked around at his men, who could only stand there stupidly. Then he did the only thing he knew how to do.
“You are under arrest,” he said. “As a non-citizen, you possess no rights within our borders. You will be confined, interrogated, and judged without trial—”
“Yes, yes,” Kovax said, fluttering one hand dismissively. “Get to it already.”
The man stiffened. Kovax expected another blow, but the man sighed and shook his head instead. He motioned at the others, who quickly arrested Kovax using a black coil that shaped itself around his wrists and wove strands between his fingers. A magnetic lock made it go rigid and tight. Magic combined with machine.
“Very nice,” Kovax told the head warden. “Your society has come a long way.”
The head warden gave him a smug look. “You haven’t seen anything yet, Emperor of Ruins.”
Kovax closed his eyes right before the beamcaster’s heavy stock slammed at full force into his cranium, knocking him out cold.
CHAPTER 42
C alista flew out of the tower and was greeted by a smoky sky streaked with the fires of battle. Men shouted and ran down below. Her feathers shivered in the heat of spells being launched against—could it be?
Orglots.
One end of the coliseum now lay in ruins from where the creatures had smashed their way through. They resembled barbarian humans grotesquely enhanced into bulky, muscular giants. Eyes blinked on their foreheads—one per creature, instead of two.
Calista’s heart quickened its beat. Whose side were they on? Had the Forge somehow managed to recruit these monsters against a common enemy?
They looked just like they did in the pictures. Straight out of the comic books Owen had always pressed her to read.
The Berserkers had met their match, and then some. It took two to engage each Orglot, and then the enemy was still at a disadvantage, because of all the Feral soldiers whipping around them, slashing them with Tiberian Steel razors and injecting Artemis’s “nerve killer” into the wounds. They were the Forge techniques Calista had witnessed in training, now being executed perfectly.
She let herself glide over the scene and felt a vengeful pleasure at the sight of Orglot clubs smashing Berserkers into the ground and flinging them aside like dolls.
The Orglots weren’t the only strange creatures present and, apparently, fighting on her side. Humongous birds with talons dwarfing her own swooped down from the smoke to grab low mages, lift them into the air, and drop them to their deaths. The mages were divided between flinging spells at the shrieking birds and engaging the Orglots.
Did Artemis have anything to do with all this? And if so, where was he?
Her wings took her in a wide arc above the battle, her hawk eyes searching. Then her heart swelled. At the tower’s base, Forge soldiers dressed in chainmail armor took cover behind chunks of stone ripped from the coliseum walls. Among them was Artemis.
“Calista,” he yelled at her approach. “You’re alive.”
She wanted to ask him about the creeper—had they brought it?—but all she could do was caw at him. Artemis nodded.
“It’s here,” he said and motioned at the device lying next to his feet. Two engineers were working on it. “We have to push back their men!” He ducked as a bolt of lightning stabbed the tower with an earth-shattering crack. A Forge soldier, charred black from the waist up, fell face-forward to the ground. “Now!” Artemis grabbed the device. “While they’re distracted!”
Five of their men had engaged a roaring Berserker swinging a deathmace. One of them swung his blade at the Berserker’s knee just as Calista was flying down, and the smell of fresh blood told her they had brought Tiberian-edged swords from the shipment they’d been expecting.
But the Berserkers were too hardy to topple using only those methods. Calista offered support the only way she could fathom—by flying into the Berserker’s eyes, scratching and cawing loudly. The Berserker responded by swinging his deathmace more quickly than she had expected. The spiked ball missed her by a few inches, and only because she had tilted her wings at the right moment. Below her, the soldiers took the opportunity and cut into the Berserker’s legs, toppling him finally.
Calista whirled around. She watched Artemis engage a soldier who had approached wielding a crossbow, electricity sizzling from the weapon’s magic-infused bolt. Artemis had to drop the creeper to fight him.
The creeper was their mission. Attach
ing it to the tower was their goal, no matter who died in the process. Calista became human again and landed, slamming her knees against the packed earth. She bit back a scream of agony, the wound in her side shooting currents of pain through her entire body. The blood trapped in her lungs made her cough.
Artemis noticed Calista pick up the creeper. “Protect her,” he shouted.
He slashed an electric bolt out of the air with his sword, then leaped toward the man who had fired and chopped him practically in two. From the other direction, to Calista’s right, three Forge soldiers approached her, running and shouting. They formed a defensive half-circle around Calista, and with good reason. A massive stomping noise called her attention. Calista turned, hugging the creeper, in time to see an unusually large Berserker running toward them, flanked by four others. Blood coated the heads of their deathmaces.
“Run,” she told the soldiers.
“Never,” one replied.
They raised their swords. Before they could engage the brute, an enormous animal with fur the color of a wheat field slammed into the lead Berserker. The animal tipped its head back and released a violent roar.
Tomin.
Calista watched as her friend clamped his massive jaws around the brute’s throat and tossed him over the heads of the others. But it was futile. She knew the lion’s teeth would never penetrate the Berserker’s skin, nor was he a match for the other four charging toward him.
Tomin wasn’t trying to kill them. He was simply buying her time.
The creeper almost slid from her grasp. Mustering all her strength, Calista grabbed hold of it anew. She managed to heave the spider-like device against the tower’s wall and fix it in place. The crystal embedded in its back began to glow. Fighting dizziness, Calista flipped the necessary switches to release the current that would unleash the explosion.
Ghostly numbers appeared above the crystal, hovering in the air like misty projections of a holograph.
5:00, they read.
Then, 4:59, 4:58…
They had less than five minutes. The explosion would take out everyone within a half-mile radius. Gripping her wounds, Calista swallowed a mouthful of blood. Each breath was a ragged, gurgling pull. She turned her attention back to Tomin.
Run, she wanted to shout at him. Get out of here.
But she was too weak, not that he would have listened anyway. Still in his impressive lion form, Tomin fought the Berserkers, aided by a few soldiers. His animal agility allowed him to jump and duck in time to avoid swings from their deathmaces. One caught him in the ribs and sent him sliding across the packed earth. He thrashed in an attempt to get back up, but another deathmace took him in the skull, crushing it.
Calista tried to scream for help. They were killing him. But all she could muster was a pathetic whimper. Her own wounds were too great. Her body slid against the wall of the tower. They were all going to die anyway. The bomb was minutes away from leveling the place.
She managed one final glance at the creeper and saw the numbers counting down as they were designed to do.
3:48…
3:47…
She lay on her back, looking up at the sky.
3:46…
The blood tasted like iron inside her mouth.
3:45…
A triangular shape appeared in the sky. It swooped down, leaving trails of smoke curling in its wake. Calista saw that the creature had not one, but two faces. A bird and a rider, flying at a downward angle toward her, their intentions unclear.
Stranger still was the rider—not a man, but a boy.
A dark-skinned boy.
Her vision blurred again. Hard to see anything now, but her ears still worked…
“Calista,” the rider called down to her.
She knew that voice. Before she could respond with his name, death rolled her eyes up into her skull, blackening the world. She fell beneath the ticking time bomb that would wipe all of them out of existence.
Her last thought was, He came all this way…
CHAPTER 43
“ C alista!”
Oscar dove toward her, unfolding the hermon’s talons, keeping himself low against the creature’s feathers as colorful spells fizzled over his head.
She lay on her back now, eyes shut. The pool of blood at her side flashed with assorted colors. A pair of low mages had taken cover in the seating area, both blasting spells at the airborne hermons. Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed Oscar. Not yet.
Without words, he ordered two hermons to engage them. To his left, another mage appeared. Oscar almost didn’t see the man in the black robe until it was too late.
The spell flipped Oscar off the hermon’s back, a blast that was like being hit by a tornado. He fell spinning through the air and hit the dirt a few seconds later. The impact took the wind out of him, though the break from his connection with the hermon was more painful. The bird veered upward and was lost in the smoke overhead.
The low mage cackled, his old, sour face set in a vicious grin. His hands worked furiously to ready the next spell. Oscar saw a burning red blood crystal hanging from a bracelet around his wrist.
“No!” He sprang away at the last second, narrowly avoiding a concentrated shower of green thorns the mage had shot from his fingertips.
He landed next to Calista. That was a bad idea. It would only call the low mage’s attention to them both. She looked so lifeless it almost broke Oscar’s heart. He noticed a black, spider-like device attached to the wall of the tower, right above her slumped head.
A charged luminether crystal was embedded in its back. Numbers blinked above it like an ever-shifting hologram, counting down.
3:25…
3:24…
“A bomb,” he whispered, awestruck.
It all made sense now. Calista had come here to plant this device, which would certainly kill everyone in the arena once it took out the tower.
She had come here to save the day—and most certainly die in the process.
He clenched his teeth. A sudden wash of hatred blurred his thoughts. Instinct sprang into action. He lunged at the low mage, growling, but the man was ready. The next spell, a screaming pillar of wind, caught him mid-air and sent him backward. Oscar slammed into the tower. The pain was vicious, like being snapped in half.
He landed on hands and knees, raking in each breath, watching the low mage. What to do next? He had no idea.
Or…
He could ask for help.
“Cawww!” The avian shriek erupted from his mouth, startling the mage. Oscar had sounded so much like a hermon that even he was surprised.
The low mage looked up at the sky. Oscar followed his gaze. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of them; dozens of hermons, swooping through the air, diving now and then to grab enemies and lift them into the sky only to drop them to their deaths.
The only problem was, they hadn’t obeyed Oscar’s order. He had to try again.
He looked back down to find the low mage grinning at him.
“You’re done for,” he told Oscar.
He grabbed a handful of dirt, tossed it up, and blew his cruel magic into the cloud, turning it into a swarm of stinging hornets. Oscar put his arms up to block his face.
Two things happened at once—his hermon dove toward him, and, behind the low mage, an Orglot landed after an impressive jump.
The hermon’s wing fell like a dropped curtain, separating Oscar from the insects. The spell would have adapted and attacked both human and bird—and Oscar indeed saw the cloud growing, beginning to swarm—but luckily that never happened. The insects turned back into dirt and fell instead, their summoner now too busy studying his approaching enemy to keep the spell going.
As the hermon pulled back its wing, Oscar found himself stunned by what was happening. Ruk, with his swinging grey beard, his ancient eye crinkled in anger, and his right hand gripping a dagger, unleashed a mighty roar down at the mage.
The elder swung his dagger. The low mage was prepare
d and immediately cast a spell that became a sizzling, protective dome. Encased in its center, he was momentarily safe. The dome sent an electric current up through the blade, and Ruk roared as the dagger flew from his hand. Oscar caught sight of the weapon as it flew tumbling into the smoke of battle.
The dome vanished after sending out its current. Defenseless now, the low mage tried to run. Oscar sent the hermon after him, and the bird was quick enough to avoid another of the man’s spells. It grabbed his cloaked body with one talon and his head with the other, then twisted. The man died in a way Oscar knew he would never be able to erase from memory.
“Thank you,” he told Ruk.
Ruk nodded, unaware of the four Berserkers sprinting toward him. Two came from the left and two from the back. Even Oscar didn’t see them until it was too late. He had thought the pounding of their steps was an earthquake.
“Look out!”
Ruk spun around. Immediately he fell back, pummeled by two deathmaces at once. Dust rose around the spot where his massive body hit the ground. Oscar lost sight of what was happening.
“Ruk!”
As the dust cleared, he witnessed the spiked balls of metal swinging at the end of their chains, whipping against the fleshy, twitching mound that was Ruk’s enormous body. He kept trying to get up, but the Berserkers had overwhelmed him. There was nothing Oscar could do.
There was nothing any of them could do if the explosion turned them all to dust.
1:30…
1:29…
He focused on the bomb and then Calista. Next to him, the hermon’s marble-black eyes darted, alarmed.
What next? it asked without words. What is your command?
“Let’s get her out of here,” Oscar told the creature.
He hopped onto its back and watched it gather Calista into its talons. A new and terrifying sound made him flinch. He looked over to see Berserkers smashing the heads of their deathmaces into Ruk’s battered body.
Someone help Ruk!
The wordless cry shot from his mind like bullets. He felt them lodge into the minds of Orglots further down the arena. The smoke made it tough to see if they had responded, but the hermons received the call. Dozens of them cut across the sky to fend off the attacking Berserkers, helping the Orglots gain the upper hand.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 101