He traversed the steps and knocked on the door. It opened seconds later, and a putrid smell assaulted his nostrils. He did not move.
“What do you want?” Eyes peered at him through the door that hung chained to the inside of the wall.
“I was told you could point me in the direction of a cult that worships the Spider,” Kurt said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away before I call the cops!” The door slammed in Kurt’s face.
His inner fire erupted; his anger could no longer be contained. He gritted his teeth and kicked the door off its joining points with no more effort than it would take for him to buckle his own belt.
It was late enough that few would notice what he’d done, and he had the sense that a man like this would not be missed. The man in question was doubled over, grumbling to himself on the floor next to some scattered dirty needles—like ones he’d seen in the asylum. Kurt let his mental trickery subside as the bearded mess of a man rose to face him.
The man’s eyes went wide, and a great wet spot formed in his pants. “You’re—”
“I’m here for directions,” Kurt said.
The man shook his head, stepping away from the stain that his own piss had made on the dirty brown carpet. “No, no. You’re not real! I saw you in a nightmare!”
“Real or not, I need to find your friends.”
“They’re not my fucking friends!” The man gestured wide with his reddened arms, his eyes wild. “And your Spider can go fuck himself. I’m done. I said I was done, and I don’t want anything to do with this occult shit anymore!”
The man had clearly not realized how far past giving a shit about his wants Kurt was. He grabbed and lifted the soiled man into the air.
“You will take me there,” Kurt said. “Or I’ll kill you.”
The man spat at the floor. “Fuck you!”
Kurt barely realized his own strength when he chucked the old sack of bones at the wall. The man let out a whimper as he slid down to rest on his rump, a large hole in the drywall crumbling from where his body had hit the wall.
“You will take me there.” Kurt approached him; flames danced around his hands.
“Yeah, you got magic, or whatever the hell it is,” the old man said. “You’ve got strength too. But I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been dying for years, you’d be doing me a goddamn favor.”
“And what about your family? Would you subject them to your rank foolishness as well?”
“Good luck finding them.”
“I will. And when I do, I’ll cleanse them from this world.”
The dirty man fell silent at that. His eyes wandered around the house. There were skewed, dusty pictures scattered throughout the living room. Kurt picked one up. A beardless man in a striped shirt and a young boy were the focus of the photo.
“Your son?” Kurt asked.
“Fuck you.”
Kurt bent into a crouch, holding the picture frame before the man’s eyes. “This can go easily.” His glowing blue hands twisted the frame into broken pieces of wood and glass, tearing the photo to shreds. “Or, not so easily.”
The man’s eyes softened somewhat, and Kurt knew that he’d broken him.
CHAPTER FIVE
REYSHA
The dread of the next moon had come, as had Reysha’s lessons, like a blur. The class was much more focused than she had ever seen it before. Even Captain Padros seemed to be a changed man, standing stoic at the front of the chamber, shouting with authority which forms to use and when.
Padros was a Valier, and was very secretive about what his life outside teaching entailed. Usually, he’d wear training robes when he taught lessons, and more often than not his dull, unamused expression suggested that he’d rather be anywhere but here, with brats like her.
Today they saw an entirely different side to Padros; Reysha wasn’t sure she liked it.
He was wearing leather bracers, a black tunic which made his amethyst skin seem to glow, Masku-styled trousers and brown all-purpose boots meant to endure the harshest of elements. With each shifting movement, his Sulen crackled around his body, reflecting off of his short golden hair. His stamina and Sulen seemed endless, even as some of the student’s grew tired from their efforts.
“I feel you tiring!” Padros shouted. “Pick up the goddamned pace! In battle, your enemies will not allow you to take breaks! If you don’t have perfect control over your Sulen, then you will have zero chance of succeeding in the Trials, and even less of a chance of surviving a fight with a Shar!”
Usually, there would be one or two students lagging behind or trying to hold conversations while Padros did his best to pretend he didn’t notice, but even with the few that Reysha could sense growing weary, most of the class was keeping pace. Even Liyo, the biggest slouch training under Padros, seemed as sharp as a dagger.
Reysha should have been excited for the Trials. The chance to prove herself and avenge her father! But all she could manage to do was keep pace with the rest of the class.
As a child, she’d had particular difficulty with the diagrams in the tomes Padros had forced them to read in preparing them to learn how to use their Sulen. She hadn’t understood how looking at ink drawings of people making lighting or anything else would help her do those things, but Padros had persisted in telling them all to study and ingrain those images in their minds. It had been Father who had put context to those images, showing her what each form represented, and the brilliance of fire and lightning that flowed from those efforts.
A part of her felt like that again now, wished Father were here to put everything in perspective again...
For hours, their unit summoned barriers of all sizes and shapes, balanced balls of lightning in their palms, and created waves of flames. And then they repeated those forms again, and again, and again.
The exercises left Reysha’s muscles and her essence spent, and she was still dreading the punishment that was going to come in the Hall of Trials.
2
After her lessons, Reysha headed for the Hall of Trials. It wasn’t far from the training caverns, so she took her time walking there.
Mother had chastised her for what she’d done yesterday.
“Honestly, Reysha,” Mother had said. “I don’t understand why you would risk ruining your reputation! I don’t slave all day cleaning the Elders’ towers for you to just throw all the progress we’ve made to the razor-raptors!”
Mother didn’t understand. And what the hell was a razor-raptor?
She hadn’t meant to interrupt Geidra’s big ceremony.
At first, it had irritated her that Kirana had rushed out of the cathedral, thinking that she alone had the right among the tens of thousands of Sulekiel there. And then, later, when Kirana had returned through the cathedral’s vaulted doors, something inside her had snapped...
Still. She’d never seen the Elders’ Quarter before. Those towers...the Elders really did live above the rest of them. Mother constantly complained about how much better their accommodations were, and part of Reysha always thought she had to be exaggerating.
But Mother had been right. Not only did the Council of Elders live better than the rest of the Sulekiel, they lived apart from them.
The doors to the Hall of Trials were large, composed of a silver metal with all kinds of sigils carved into its surface. There was a lever off to the side which would open them. Reysha pulled the lever and the doors ground open along an embedded track in the floor.
The Hall of Trials was absolutely oppressive in scale.The ceiling reached such a height that the Olloketh crystals looked like paintings of the cloudless night sky she’d seen in the history tomes. Each chamber was its own cavern, stretching deep into the mountain that consisted of four different areas used for testing one’s skill and determining whether they were worthy of gaining rank as a Valier. All Sulekiel had to become Valier if they wanted to leave the city and travel the world of the Masku.
Sulekiel that didn’t pass the
Trials were assigned a job within the city that they had to perform. Some became farmers; some became cooks, cleaners, or masons, tasked with further expanding the city, creating new, artificial caverns for their growing population. And some died.
Reysha was surprised to find a familiar boy with blue hair sitting before the ever-burning fires and the Pillars of Thought. Kirana was sitting all the way by the third pit, glaring at him.
“Well, you’re early,” Reysha said, approaching the three pits containing the fires. The closer she got to the fires, the more she noticed a strange, sharp smell that permeated the air. Like burning coal, but worse.
The boy turned around and seemed startled to see her. Mother had warned her to stay away from him. Reysha grinned, taking a seat next to him.
“Hi,” Reysha said.
The boy shifted his fierce emerald eyes away from her. He seemed nervous. “I’m not sure we’re supposed to talk.”
“You most definitely aren’t!” Kirana said. She was kneeling before the three fires and the three giant pillars that stood at each one’s center. “The ever-burning fires is a sacred training space, and it must be respected.”
“Right,” Reysha said, turning back to the boy. “My name’s Reysha. You’re Sage, right?”
Sage nodded. “Yeah.”
Kirana sighed, loudly.
“Pay no attention to her,” Reysha said. “She’s just mad cause she’s gonna have to face me in the Trials...” She grinned. “If she gets that far.”
Kirana scoffed but kept her focus on the smoldering embers in the pits that contained the ornately carved stone pillars which so many would-be Valier had fallen from. Maybe she’d learned her lesson?
The Hall of Trials had been constructed around the natural pits. They were fueled by some kind of gas that came from deep within the mountain. Their ancestors had thought they held some kind of mystical significance, since the fires never went out, giving the pits their namesake.
Boots fell at their backs, echoing in that great chamber.
High Elder Geidra and the short Valier with pale silvery skin called Dirkus approached them.
“You may stand,” Geidra said.
Reysha and the others turned.
“Well, you’re all here on time,” Geidra said, glancing at Sage. “I was worried some of you would not take this seriously.”
“I’ve taken it very seriously,” Kirana said.
Reysha rolled her eyes.
“Right, well, unfortunately I cannot stay to supervise your punishment,” Geidra said. “So I’ve entrusted the task to Captain Dirkus.”
Dirkus’ sour expression did not change.
“You will do everything he says,” Geidra said. “And you are not to leave these grounds until he gives you leave. I trust that’s understood?”
Reysha and the others nodded. No one was going to question the Elder. Reysha’s legs still hurt from where Geidra had swept her feet out from under her. She’d never thought an old woman like her would be so powerful...
High Elder Geidra left the chamber, and the doors ground shut. They were alone with Dirkus.
Dirkus’s sour expression twisted into a grin as his dark eyes swept over them. “All three of you are soft.”
“Thanks?” Reysha said.
“You will speak when spoken to,” Dirkus said, pacing back and forth before them. “It does not surprise me that you also lack the discipline to know your place. It is to be my job to straighten you lot out.”
Reysha knew she should be taking him more seriously, but he was...so small. Maybe she wouldn’t be so tempted to laugh every time he insulted them if he went and got some stilts?
“Is something funny?” Dirkus’s eyes were focused on her.
Crap.
“No, why?” Reysha said.
“You are smiling,” Dirkus said. She could feel his Sulen growing, swelling. He stopped pacing, reaching for the crescent-shaped clasp that held his cloak. “I assume you must find something I’ve said to be amusing.”
Dirkus’s cloak fell into a puddle around his feet and his fists tightened. For a man of his stature, he was quite muscular. “Would you care to share your thoughts with us?”
Compared to Reysha’s Sulen, his felt like she was at the bottom of Geidra’s tower, staring up at its many floors and extravagant golden statues.
“No,” Reysha said.
“I thought so,” Dirkus said. “Step forward.”
“She didn’t say anything,” Sage said.
Dirkus’s anger flashed at Sage. “Did I say you could speak?”
The anger...it welled within the boy like a storm. There was something about the way his Sulen felt. It reminded her of...of her own anger.
“Well?” Dirkus said.
Sage shook his head. He wasn’t making eye contact with Dirkus. “No.”
Dirkus turned his attention back to Reysha. “Correction. Reysha, you will stay where you are.” His eyes fell back on Sage. “And the son of Kyrties will step forward instead.”
Sage seemed reluctant to do as Dirkus said. “Why?”
“Do as you are told,” Dirkus said.
With his fists at his sides, the boy did as commanded. He was far taller than she thought, and handsome. Her mother had always described him like a daemon.
“Okay,” Sage said. “What now?”
Dirkus grinned. “Now, attack me.”
Sage glanced back at Reysha, confusion written on his face. “What?”
“Did I stutter?” Dirkus said. “Do as I say! Attack me with everything you have!”
Still, Sage hesitated. And why shouldn’t he? It was taboo to attack one’s own teacher.
Then a violent shout cleaved through the air of the entirety of the vast chamber that surrounded them. Without warning, Dirkus had slammed Sage with a lightning bolt and sent him flying across the stone floor.
Part of Reysha feared that Dirkus had killed him, but when she turned around, she saw that he’d rolled into a crouch, trails of smoke drifting into the air from where he had blocked the attack with his palms.
“You should have put up a barrier, boy,” Dirkus said.
“I didn’t think you were going to attack me,” Sage said, standing up. “Guess I know better now. Is this our punishment? Are you just going to beat us until we can no longer stand?”
“If that is what it takes!” Dirkus vanished from where he was standing. He moved so fast she didn’t even see him grab Sage from behind. “Why won’t you fight back, boy? I have the power to kill you! You should be fighting with every fiber of your being!”
Sage’s eyes. They were closed; he was screaming. It looked like Dirkus was crushing him to death.
“Fine!” Sage shouted.
There was a brilliant flash of blue light, and a spherical barrier formed around the boy’s body, but Dirkus was too fast. He doubled back, skidding to a stop, and chambered another attack.
“Not bad,” Dirkus said. “But you’re still hesitating.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” Sage said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t!”
Dirkus charged at him again. His limbs moved so fast, it was hard to tell what he was even doing. Flashes of light exploded over Sage’s barrier, shattering it like glass. Then Dirkus hammered the boy’s body with a series of blows that seemed to blur together. The captain’s attacks created gusts of wind that grabbed at their clothes and hair. He was like a force of nature. It looked like Sage was trying to block and strike at the Valier, but he was too slow to do much more than let his body be pummeled.
“You’re going to kill him!” Reysha screamed.And then Sage was lying was on the ground, his own blood dotting the stone tiles around him. But he was still breathing.
“Just as I thought,” Dirkus said. “Weak.”
Even Kirana was speechless, whether because she was in awe of Dirkus’s power, or terrified of what he’d do to her, Reysha couldn’t be sure.
The boy bared his teeth, his muscles quaked, and
he slowly got back to his feet.
No, Reysha thought. Stay down!
“You should give up any hope of becoming a Valier,” Dirkus said.
Sage turned back to Dirkus. Flames licked at the air around him. His emerald eyes and ear length flowing navy-blue hair took on a hellish glow. How was he not at his limit after being beaten so badly?
Still...even if he had the stamina...he couldn’t possibly last much longer.
“You’d like that,” Sage said, his voice booming through the chamber. “Wouldn’t you?”
Dirkus grinned, stopping several feet before the boy. “Yes. It would give me great satisfaction to see you relegated to a lowly farmer. You should be made to serve your betters for what your father did.”
“There it is,” Sage said. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”
“One cannot trust tainted blood,” Dirkus said.
“I never even knew him!” Sage shouted, charging in. His legs moved at surprising speed, kicking up gale-like winds as he closed the distance between himself and Dirkus. Shock waves burst through the air as the boy thrust his palms into his opponent’s barrier, and great lightning bolts caressed its transparent blue surface like fire embracing the top of a river.
But Dirkus’s barrier held strong and his grin did not fade. “Pathetic!”
Dirkus thrust his bare fist through the air, but Sage dodged it, grabbed it, and, with a great shout, tossed Dirkus through the air. The Valier landed on his feet and came back at Sage.
Nothing Sage was capable of, not lightning and not fire, seemed to be able to shake Dirkus’s barrier. Still...it was clear that the Valier was holding back. He was telegraphing his blows so Sage would see them coming, allowing him to dodge his attacks. Why? If the Valier hated him so damn much, why draw the battle out?
Unless he was testing more than the boy’s Sulen Tukar, but also his resolve?
Sage’s Sulen was starting to waver, and he was panting.
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