by Alyssa Day
The monster shrieked and swung out with a stick the size of a tree trunk, deflecting the blade, smashing into Justice’s side and possibly cracking ribs. But ribs would heal if death were defeated, so Justice pressed forward, putting his full weight behind the pressure he brought to bear on his sword, trying to pierce his opponent.
Bellowing sharp cries that burned like acid in Justice’s ears, the creature switched tactics. Fetid breath his only warning, Justice leapt back and away a moment before the monster’s teeth clashed shut.
A shiver of humor snaked through him, in spite of death and dark and Void. A shadow of the man he’d been before all three. “Brings a whole new meaning to ‘don’t bite my head off,’ doesn’t it?” he said, and then he laughed.
In spite of madness and impending death, he laughed.
As if in response to the forbidden sound of joy, silver-blue sigils on his sword—symbols he’d never seen on it before—appeared and began to glow. First faintly, and then with increasing power, until a circle some dozen feet in diameter shone with the crystalline light of a moonlit night.
The creature screamed and dropped the stick. Shielding its face, it cringed from the light, and the sight of it twisted something deep inside Justice. The creature was humanoid, had perhaps even been human, once. Eons ago, before darkness and madness had taken it. Its ropy, muscled form twisted and bulged with pockets of barnacle-like encrustation, and the edge of the single eye that Justice could see was staring white and blind. The light from the sword seemed to be burning it, and it shrieked and shrieked for long minutes until its wild cries subsided into sobs.
Justice could not bring himself to execute it. He lowered his sword, which still glowed with the force of a new moon, though in a place where no moon had ever shone. “How long, then? How long since you have seen light?”
The hoarse sobs paused, then haltingly came to a complete stop. “I do not know. Anubisa found me on a battlefield, near to death, when my lord Alexander defeated Thebes.”
Justice rocked back a step, the force of the admission more powerful than the pain in his ribs. “More than two thousand years? All here, trapped in the Void?”
A long, shuddering sigh greeted his words. But he waited, and finally the creature spoke. “I was near death from my wounds, and she promised eternal life. I did not know I would be damned for all eternity if I accepted. When I . . . refused her embrace, in fear for my soul, she cast me here, to become a worse monster than even she was.”
Harsh, cawing sobs shook the creature again. “I have not seen light once in that time. Yet she will not let me die. Only a weapon wielded by a champion will release me, by the words of her curse. But no champion will ever find himself in the Void. So here I remain, for more than two millennia, as you tell me. Undying and never to find my eternal rest.”
Pity and revulsion, both, combined in Justice, and he made a rash oath, not knowing how—or if—he could fulfill it. “I am a Warrior of Poseidon, creature, and by some measure all such stand as champions to earth’s humans. We will escape this hell together.” He lifted his sword again, to use as a beacon instead of as a weapon, and scanned the edges of the dark surrounding them, then turned his attention to his adversary. “If we are to fight together, I cannot call you creature. What is your name?”
The creature—no, the man—lowered his arm and squinted up at Justice, his face twisted painfully with what might have been hope. “My name? I have had no name for so long . . .” He wrapped his arms around bony knees and, keening softly, rocked back and forth on the ground until Justice feared the man had once again succumbed to madness.
“If you have no name—”
“Pharnatus,” the man said, mouth falling open as one having a revelation. “My name was Pharnatus. I was foot soldier to Alexander of Macedon.”
Justice inclined his head. “These thousands of years later, Alexander is still recognized as one of the greatest military leaders of all time. So you are no creature but a true warrior. I am Justice, of Atlantis, Pharnatus. Let us conquer the Void together, in the name of Alexander and Atlantis.”
He held out his hand, and Pharnatus stared at it for a long moment. Then the Greek reached up with his own torturously gnarled hand and Justice gently grasped it and pulled him up to his feet.
Pharnatus inhaled a long, shuddering breath, then shook his head and stepped back, his white eyes flaring in the gleaming sword light. “The scent of your blood. It still pulls at me. I have only a phantom memory of being a man, but centuries of existing as a monster. What if—”
“You are a champion in your own right, Pharnatus. Remember Alexander and gain strength from his example,” Justice commanded.
Command. Yes. It was coming back to him. He was Justice of Atlantis, and he had friends. Brother warriors. Home. Pain sliced through his soul as he remembered the geas he had broken. The truth he’d finally revealed.
Family. He had family. Brothers. Ven and Conlan were his brothers, and he must return to Atlantis. To his family. Yet another misted memory returned to him, breaking through the shrouds in his mind as the light from his sword broke through the darkness of the Void. He shouted out a laugh, and as Pharnatus flinched back from him, the sword’s brightness gleamed even stronger.
“The baby! Pharnatus, I will be an uncle! We must find a way out of here. Now.” He suddenly stopped, a face—her face—flashing into his mind. Keely. A tidal wave of renewed strength coursed through his body.
“I must find the woman I am destined to meet.”
Chapter 10
Atlantis
The last shimmers of light from the portal flickered out as it closed behind what Alexios thought must be the oddest group ever to have entered Atlantis. He felt his lungs expand, as if the air itself were telling him he could relax now.
He was home.
The ornate marble platform they’d stepped onto was bordered by the thickest profusion of trees, plants, and flowers he’d seen outside of the Amazon jungle. Delicate orchids in colors never seen anywhere else grew to heights of four feet or more, impossible masses of blooms in so many shades of purple that only the palace gardeners could name them all. Trees topped with a symphony of blossoms, cascading through warm brown and shining silvery branches.
The gardens had been a touchstone for him during the worst of the torture. He’d leave his body and imagine walking through the paths of the palace gardens, and nothing they did to his body could reach him.
“You with us, Alexios?” Christophe’s sarcastic voice snapped him out of memories he had no desire to revisit, and he realized that he still held the sheet-clad, bruised human woman in his arms.
Alaric stood, face grim, one hand held out toward Brennan, who floated unmoving beside him. Christophe smirked at the six portal guards, who crouched slightly, swords held at battle ready, awaiting command.
“You may stand down,” Alaric said, voice quiet but resonating with authority. “Lord Brennan has been temporarily . . . incapacitated.”
The more senior of the guards bowed to the priest. “As you say, then. Shall we notify the prince?”
Alaric gazed into the distance for a moment and then made a slight motion with his shoulders that may have been a shrug. “Prince Conlan is on his way with the Lord Vengeance.” He turned his glowing green gaze to the captive warrior beside him. “Perhaps now, on the soil of Atlantis, Brennan will regain his faculties.”
Alexios stepped back two quick paces, still holding Tiernan, as Alaric moved his hand in a small semicircle and spoke a word under his breath. Brennan’s eyes snapped open, and he also dropped into a stance of battle readiness, scanning the area as if for danger.
“Atlantis? How am I here? Xinon—the humans—the woman—”
Alaric smoothly stepped between Brennan and Alexios. “Yes, Atlantis. Perhaps you would care to explain your actions in regard to the human female?”
Brennan slowly shook his head. “I know not to what you refer. There were many human females among the
Apostates. Was there one in particular that required my assistance?”
Alexios stepped out from behind Alaric, but remained at a safe distance from Brennan. Tiernan was beginning to rouse from unconsciousness, shifting restlessly in his arms. “Yeah, you could say that, Brennan. This one in particular. The one you claimed for yourself and threatened to kill us over? Ringing any bells?”
Christophe casually rolled a green sphere of pure energy from palm to palm and shot a glare at Brennan. “Bells, hells. It should be ringing a big freaking gong in that tiny emotionless brain of yours, Brennan. Let’s not forget the humans you tried to kill for no reason. Not that I’m not down with that; the only good human is a dead human and all that. Bunch of damn sheep. But, oh, yeah, sacred mission, duty as warriors, blah, blah, blah. Right?”
Before Alexios could snarl a reprimand at Christophe’s insolence, Tiernan opened her eyes and stared up at him. “What—Oh. Right.” She took a deep breath, which did interesting things to the curves concealed by the sheet, and then she spoke again, rather calmly, considering the situation. “Will you please put me down? I think I’m going to be sick.”
Alexios hastily lowered her to her feet, and she took a shaky step and then crouched down, resting one hand on the grass and clutching the sheet to her breasts with the other. She drew in several deep, shuddering breaths, but apparently managed to calm her unsettled stomach. Finally, she looked up and stared around at the ring of warriors who watched her. Slowly, she rose, shaking her head at the hand Alexios held out to assist her. Her chin lifted as she stared up and up and up, and her mouth dropped open in an expression of utter awe.
Alexios followed her gaze and realized she was staring at the nearly transparent, faintly glowing dome that surrounded Atlantis. Or beyond it, at the deep, dark currents of the ocean under which the Seven Isles rested.
Finally, she spoke, her voice husky and richly compelling. “Holy Pulitzer, Batman. This is the story of a lifetime.”
The priest’s eyes narrowed. “It is a story you may not yet live to tell—” he began, before he was interrupted by a deep, almost animalistic growling sound.
“Harm her and die, Priest!” Brennan shouted, even as he sprang forward toward Alaric, unsheathed daggers in his hands. “She is mine.”
In the space measured by Brennan’s leap, three things occurred simultaneously. First, Tiernan fell back onto the ground, dark eyes gone enormous in her white face. Second, Alaric held up a hand and again captured Brennan, freezing him in place. Third, and most unexpected, a portal that was not the portal, but more like a window, shimmered into existence, no larger than a single pane of glass.
As they all watched, however, the window or portal expanded until it was the height and breadth of a man. It was transparent in a darkling manner and opened to a view that must be located in one of the nine hells. Reddish-orange light pulsed sullenly over a rocky, barren landscape that twisted as though formed from volcanic eruption or a game of boulder hurling played by bored gods. Nothing living existed within it—neither tree nor plant nor creature.
They stared at it and each warrior drew his weapons, prepared for the worst. Alexios tightened his hands on the hilts of his daggers. Always prepared for the worst, even in a life lived through centuries. Unfortunately, the measure of worst only stretched and enlarged as the years passed.
“It’s like a window looking out onto insanity itself,” Christophe muttered, shaking his head in apparent disbelief.
“Yet if it is insanity, at least two inhabit therein,” Alaric replied, pointing to the upper-left corner of the transparency.
Alexios caught sight of two figures, tiny and moving slowly in the far distance as viewed through the distorted window. Light gleamed from an object held by the first of the two, who shuffled forward almost painfully.
“It’s a sword,” Alexios said. “And look. Look at the braid swinging behind him. It’s Justice! It’s got to be Justice!”
Alaric whipped around and pointed to the portal guards. “You two. Take Brennan to the palace. Carry him on your back if you have to. Install him in the healing rooms, and do not, under any circumstances, let him out.” He snapped out a word and Brennan collapsed into an unconscious heap on the ground.
The guards rushed forward to gather him up, but Alaric didn’t wait to see that they complied with his orders. “If that is truly Justice, then we are looking directly into the Void. Again, if what this human female tells us is correct. There is far too much supposition in the situation to make me comfortable.”
“What if he’s compromised?” Christophe asked, his hands on the hilts of his daggers. “What if he’s leading some sort of army for Anubisa? How can he have opened a window directly into Atlantis? The wards protect the Seven Isles from any dark magic.”
The female interrupted their speculation, rising to her feet from where she’d fallen on the grass. “He’s in the Void,” Tiernan said. “I saw someone die giving that information. A good man, who didn’t deserve what they did to him.” Tears rolled down her face, but she ignored them. “Your warrior is in the Void, and if that’s him, you’d better prepare for some serious bad.”
Christophe sneered at her. “Yeah, like we believe you, Apostate.”
Alaric cut him off with a single raised hand. “As he says, female, we have no reason to trust you. When this situation is resolved, we will learn more of each other. Until then, unless you have further information that can help us seal this breach, remain silent.”
“My name is Tiernan, not female,” she said, defiance in her tone. But then, murmuring something that sounded like “Pulitzer, Pulitzer, Pulitzer,” she inclined her head to Alaric. “Only one more thing, and you probably know this, since you seem to be the big boss around here. The only way in and out of the Void is with death magic, and I’m not talking animals,” she said, adding a crucial fact to what Alaric had told them earlier. “A person has to die for someone to escape—a life for a life. So unless either you or he plan to sacrifice someone, neither of you is getting through that entryway.”
Christophe raised one of his daggers and took a step toward Tiernan, a dangerous smile spreading across his face. “Well, how convenient that we have a sacrifice all dressed up and with no place to go.”
Alexios unsheathed his own sword and stepped in front of Tiernan. “I know you’re kidding, but she doesn’t. Shut up and step away from the human, unless you want to seriously piss me off. Because, Christophe, I’m having what some might call a tragically bad day.”
Laughing, Christophe whirled around to look through the entryway again. The figures had moved closer, and they could almost catch sight of the features on the man in the lead.
“It can’t be Justice,” Alexios said. “I can tell Justice from much farther away than this, simply by the way he walks. Nobody else strides along with that inborn arrogance, as though he owns the world. This man may sport his hair in a braid, but that shuffling walk cannot belong to Lord Justice.”
Alaric, never looking away from the view, replied quietly. “And yet you yourself walked in just such a manner when you were healing from what Anubisa did to you. Near-fatal injuries can stamp out even the most determined arrogance.”
Unable to form a coherent response to Alaric’s truth, Alexios clenched his jaw and considered their options. As they watched, the figures trudged closer and closer to the shimmering distortion of the window. “Well, don’t you always tell us that the simplest solution is usually correct?” he finally managed.
“Occam may have a prior claim on that teaching, but yes,” Alaric answered. “Your point?”
“My point is that we haven’t even tried to get through this yet. Maybe it’s as simple as walking right through.”
“Sure. Because there’s no chance this could be a trap, right?” Christophe said, rolling his eyes. “No chance that this could be a ‘fry the Atlanteans’ game on Anubisa’s part.”
“The female—Tiernan—is correct. If this is a view onto the Void, it c
annot be entered without death magic. I have no desire for my own death to become the platform for that entry, by way of touching one of Anubisa’s constructs,” Alaric said.
Alexios was tempted, in spite of the fact that he had never known the priest to be wrong. Justice was more than friend, more than brother.
They were the Warriors of Poseidon, and they did not leave a man behind.
Alexios had spent much of the past months, while ceaselessly searching for Justice, considering what the long centuries of silence must have cost the warrior. What breaking the geas must’ve done to erode his mind.
What Anubisa had done to further torment him. The shields Alexios had erected in his own mind to block those memories wavered, and he clenched his hands into fists as he built his shields back into impenetrable walls. “I will make the attempt, Alaric. I will test this barrier.”
Before Alaric could stop him, Alexios placed a hand flat against the wavering surface of the window. An enormously powerful energy spike slammed into him, knocking him back nearly a dozen feet. As he lay on the ground, blinking, he noticed the smoke before he saw its origin. Stunned and speechless, with the air smashed out of his lungs, Alexios held up that same hand that had touched the barrier. The nerve endings screamed in pain as though he held his hand inside the hottest fires of the deepest of the nine hells. Yet the only residual damage was blackened fingertips and smoking fingernails. Still, though, the smell of smoke grew stronger.
“Fool,” snarled Alaric. “Must I talk to you as though you were the rawest of untrained warriors?” The priest raised a hand, and then sliced it through the air toward Alexios, as though throwing an object. Instead, a stream of icy water arrowed through the air and slapped Alexios in the face, drenching his head.
He leapt up off the ground, spluttering and wiping water out of his face. “What was that for?”
Christophe started laughing. “Your hair was on fire, man. Alaric probably didn’t want you to scar the other side of your pretty face, too.”