Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  “Why do you renounce me? Huh? Tell me! Why am I cast aside? Why do you hate me?”

  Nariko rose to her feet and grabbed the arms of the oversized traitor. He grunted and strained with his titanic muscles to drop the stone on top of her, but she held his wrists tight matching him.

  Nariko turned her head toward the gap in the barrier. The crowd of civilians and shrine maidens parted slightly and she could see the Luminarch’s oathstone, glimmering brightly inside.

  “I HATE YOU!” Nariko roared, she squeezed with all her rage and the wrists of the oversized traitor shattered in her grip. The man grunted in pain and the stone slid from his grip, crushing two of his companions behind him.

  Nariko turned around and began striding toward the gab in the barrier, her eyes fixed on the oathstone inside.

  “Was I really born just to become a demon?!” She yelled.

  A traitor jumped onto her back, knife drawn, but Nariko just reached up and twisted his head clean off.

  “Is that my fate? Huh?”

  A traitor swung his axe at Nariko from behind, but she caught it with her fingers and yanked tearing his arm out of its socket.

  “Why did you even create me, then?”

  A traitor fired his rifle at her, but she grabbed the bullet out of the air and threw it back at him piercing him through the eye and killing him.

  “Why even allow me to be born in the first place if this is what you knew I would become?”

  A pair of traitors ran up alongside her, weapons drawn, but she grabbed hold of them and smashed them together, their bodies shattering.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me when I was a kid, then? Huh?”

  A traitor fired a white-hot bolt of plasma at her, but Nariko held out her palm and bounced it back incinerating the man.

  “Why didn’t you just let me die on Correll? At least then I could have died as a human.”

  Nariko stopped at the gap and screamed. “I know you can hear me, Luminarch! Just what am I supposed to do?”

  Nariko waited for an answer, but none came.

  “Tell meeeeeeee!!!”

  Nariko’s voice echoed through the Cathedral. Throughout the plaza, Confederate reinforcements began pouring in, smashing into the traitor lines. Another lance of pure silver struck out from the west hills, tearing a gash right through the retreating traitor tank column. Somewhere distantly Sakurako was yelling for her, but Nariko paid her no heed.

  Nariko stood there at the gap, blood and ichor dripping off her hands. The civilians inside backed away from her in dismay.

  They seem so tiny and frail now.

  Two of the shrine-maidens stepped forward and fired their rifles, but Nariko snatched every bullet out of the air.

  They seem so weak; I pity them, she thought as she rolled the steaming bullets back and forth in her hand thoughtfully.

  I almost feel like I need to watch my footing, as if I might accidentally crush one of them as one might a bug.

  Nariko looked up and saw the oathstone at the center of the Cathedral. In that moment, somehow she knew that she was strong enough to enter now, that she could push past the wards and barriers and force her way into this holy place.

  “Perhaps I should stride into your private place and tear it apart. Eh? Smash your altars and mutilate your statue. What do you think? Perhaps I should crush these little insects that you care for so much right in front of you. How about that, Lightbringer? Maybe then you will regret having ever created me. Maybe then you will regret throwing me away.”

  Nariko smiled wickedly and took a step forward.

  I am tired of being ignored by you. If you will not look at me in love then I will force you to look at me in fear, but you WILL look at me.

  At that moment a child started crying. Nariko’s eyes fell upon the sound, as her mother frantically tried to quiet her. It was the child Nariko had rescued earlier. The child screamed in terror when she looked at Nariko.

  Nariko paused. She saw the child’s eyes, looking at her in fear.

  Nariko took a step back. She saw all their eyes, thousands of eyes looking at her in horror.

  Nariko took another step back and held up her bloody hands.

  I...am not in there because I don’t belong in there. I...don’t belong...anywhere...

  Nariko felt heat and turned her head to the side. Sakurako was there, her face cold and resolute. In her hands formed a ball of blue witch fire. Something about that flame terrified Nariko. Just looking at it made her shrink with pain. Sakurako released the blast and Nariko was thrown to the ground and all went dark.

  Deep in the catacombs beneath the Mausoleum, a short and twisted man shifted his weight apprehensively from side to side. His name was Hurdilica, personal sorcerer to Yar’Katah and he licked his black lips in anticipation as his soldiers threw all their weight into the diamond cutters that pierced deeper and deeper into the seemingly featureless wall of the tunnel.

  Immediately behind them stood great stone doors, carved with powerful wards of protection and litanies of purity, but the decoy had not fooled Hurdilica. He had already scryed that the true eternity vault was hidden behind this simple unmarked wall of rock and its protective spells were more subtle and powerful than anything he had ever encountered before. Already, three of his apprentices had perished while dismantling them, the dried husks of their bodies lying on the ground where they had stood.

  The remaining apprentices stood in a semi-circle, their guttural chants reaching a crescendo, their dark magic energies swirling about the room in a rush of wind and mist. The wall before them creaked and groaned, alive with glowing and twisting symbols.

  Hurdilica raised his staff of pure black crystal and released a blast of aphotic power that bored deeply into the weakened surface. The wall concussed and wailed, fine lines and cracks appearing all over its surface.

  With a final shriek, the wall shattered. Several of the soldiers flew backward, their bodies reduced to dust that hit the false vault door, then poured slowly down to the ground.

  Hurdilica stood his ground, a bubble of nebulous energy protecting him from the final spell.

  Hurdilica pushed his apprentices aside and entered the Eternity Vault triumphantly. The walls were covered with the unmistakable engravings of the Marshals. The floor and shelves were dusted with salt. Salt taken from the very tears of the Luminarch himself. Everything in this vault was designed to suppress and nullify the powers of the Eagalo Stone kept within.

  Hurdilica licked his lips and looked around impatiently. With the Eagalo Stone his master’s weapon would be complete. The thought of watching Terra burn and shatter made him so feverish that he began to lose his normal calmness. His eyes darted this way and that, looking for the stone.

  “We’re finally here, after all these months and in this vault...”

  Gunfire erupted in the tunnel outside the vault. Hurdilicia’s warriors were skewered by strange silver energy beams that passed straight through their mighty armor without damaging it, yet the men inside crumbled to the ground like puppets whose strings had been cut.

  Hurdilica gripped his staff tightly and stepped out into the hallway. His attackers wore the crimson red armor of the Archfiend of Tauros.

  “The cowards who abandoned this world,” Hurdilica said in amazement. “We have been betrayed!” Hurdilica slashed his staff sideways, releasing a black sickle of energy that carved its way down the corridor. While others ducked beneath it his lead opponent leapt into the air, knocking the staff from his hands with a swift kick with an armored foot. Hurdilica drew out a dagger made from carved obsidian, but his attacker had already spun into an elegant high-kick aimed at the back of his head. The heavy metallic boot landed true and Hurdilica fell unconscious to the floor.

  As his opponent landed, the last of the apprentices were dispatched in similar fashion. With a hiss the lead attacker removed her helmet and twitched her feline ears back and forth searching for any remaining signs of consciousness.

  S
atisfied, Reika motioned to the others and the half-demon from Pirané was brought forward, kicking and screaming in its bloody armor. Reika took out a special pistol and touched the barrel to the creature’s neck. Its screams finally ended when the specially designed venom tore through its nervous system and collapsed it.

  Several hours later, in the throne room of Bael’Eth, the majority of the eyes on Yar’Katah’s immortal body were closed. The process of gathering together countless worshipers of Bra’Neish from all parts of the Uragan here to his demon world had left his mind listless and only the eyes on his face remained open.

  The eyes on his neck half-opened as his favorite servant was brought before him. An archway of entwined living tissue that at one time was a sorcerer who had attempted to turn against him. Yar’Katah had long forgotten the woman’s name, but he would never forget the punishment he created for her. A warping cancerous malady that had eaten and twisted her body for centuries.

  On one side of the fleshy archway a pair of eyes looked out fearfully and a pair of fingers twitched and flexed as Yar’Katah waved his taloned paw. Light formed in the center of the archway, which broke into fragments of colors and patterns. The patterns formed into the image of Hurdilica, whose face was covered with blood.

  “The Archfiend of Tauros...he has betrayed us,” Hurdilica reported, spitting blood out of his mouth. “Their retreat from Kall was just a feint. They ambushed us as we entered the vault and took the Eagalo stone for themselves.”

  Every single eye on Yar’Katah’s jackal-like body opened and grew wide with rage, giving him the appearance of being completely white. He gripped the arms of his bronze throne, the metal creaking under his grip. He could not recall the last time he had felt such frustration.

  “How could I not have seen this coming?” he wondered aloud. His eyes on his body darted back and forth as he recalled the events of the past years, reviewing the actions of the Archfiend in this new light, reinterpreting every phrase, reassessing every action.

  “Are you sure?” he growled.

  Hurdilica coughed and held up the dead body of one of the Archfiend’s sickly half-demons, clad in his signature crimson red armor.

  Yar’Katah roared and the floor of the throne room folded in on itself, crushing the living archway with a sickly crunch and a sigh of relief. At the edges of the throne room his lieutenants retreated a step, but tried to hide their fear.

  Yar’Katah saw plots within plots surrounding him. He was being subverted by his enemies, both from within and from without.

  “No one is above suspicion,” he announced. He decided he had been far too careless, far too trusting. He would not make that mistake again. There would be a purging of his ranks so brutal that the image of it would be burned into the eyes of the survivors till the end of time.

  “Gather our forces together.”

  “Of course sire, which battle groups would you like to...?” began a furtive lieutenant.

  “ALL OF THEM! Every soldier, every sorcerer! Every ship! We are going to the Archfiend’s home world of Korr’Use and we are going to reduce it to ash! Sound to all my holdings, we are at war.”

  From somewhere in the room, slaves and servants began chanting. “War...war...war...” The Lieutenants joined in, then the slaves in the nearby halls. The foundries and factories took up the call, millions of half-beast workers chanting as they slaved away in the endless construction lines chained to their machines. Eventually even the walls, the air, and the continents themselves joined in, the chanting reverberating through the very core of the living planet. From there the call spread to dozens of other worlds, the entire empire within the Uragan that Yar’Katah had carved out for himself, all speaking with a single voice, his voice.

  “War...war...war...”

  Chapter Twenty One

  The Oathstone

  The fear of the unknown is a holy instinct granted us by the Man of Light. Pray that your children will possess it strongly, for they will be less likely to encounter that which is poisonous, violent, and beguiling. Look at the stars in the sky above you. Each one represents a life that was saved by their fear of the unknown.

  - Cardinal Fredrin Alchem of Dajina 5982-6059rl

  The people of Kall celebrated the complete withdrawal of the traitor forces as a modern miracle. As the rest of the Tyrant sector was slowly collapsing, the liberation of Kall was a speck of sorely needed good news and the five abbots of Kall were declared living saints by the Council of Terra. Although the people of Kall celebrated, their leaders were apprehensive for a Confederate Marshal had come to Kall.

  Marshal Rochestri touched a small ball of crystal underneath his gray long coat and communed with the bound spirit within it. Although the exact ceremony varied from world to world, every planet in the Confederacy practiced the Devobind, a ceremonial rite of passage when a child first swears an oath of loyalty to the Interstellar Confederacy and the Luminarch. The ceremony is always performed with both hands placed on the oathstone. Unbeknown to anyone outside his order, the ceremony served as a screening process to find those rare individuals whose souls resonated with the oathstone.

  The dull material world around Rochestri faded away and the brilliant dimensions of the ether were revealed to him. Thoughts and emotions created tangible connections between individuals and the oathstone allowed a Marshal to perceive the connections of those nearby and with themselves. Aggression, in particular, is an easily detectable connection. If someone were planning to harm Rochestri he would be able to sense it, even over great distances. It was this ability that kept the Marshals immune from harm. It was better protection than any armor could ever provide.

  As he focused, he could sense a vague aggression directed generally at him.

  “That is to be expected,” he grumbled through his yellow teeth. There was always distrust toward the Marshals. It would be an exceptional individual indeed who would not fear an organization that could strip him of every material possession and title for any reason that a Marshal deemed valid.

  What was troubling him was the lack of any specific aggression directed specifically against him. This situation stunk of a trap or a plot in every other way. It did not make sense and made him feel somewhat uneasy, a sensation he was not accustomed to feeling.

  Rochestri leaned back the tip of his wide-brimmed hat and took a step inside the Eternity Vault, the grains of salt crunching under his feet. There were so many things that did not add up. First of all, the traitors should not have known where the vault was located and second of all, they should not have known what was kept within it.

  Normally this was not something that Rochestri would have dealt with personally. He had several Deputies under him that could have been sent. But this was different. This was an investigation that Rochestri could not afford to let anyone else handle. For three hundred years he had been the only person in the galaxy who knew that the Eagalo Stone was not in the Eternity Vault. Now there were others who knew and that would have to be dealt with.

  Rochestri stood before the small pedestal where the Eagalo Stone was meant to rest

  “If this was a trap for me, there could not be a more perfect bait,” Rochestri growled, chewing on his cigar butt.

  Rochestri’s oracle walked into the room to join him. He was the oldest member of his staff, a cyber-priest whose brain had been enhanced to the highest degree. He could cut through the hardest encryptions and process astonishing amounts of information. His closed eyes flicked from side to side as he combed through the classified data archives here on Kall.

  Rochestri always had his staff check on the planetary officials wherever they went; opening up vaults and warehouses and engaging in long interrogation sessions that normally involved physical torture. This was done whether or not any specific crime was suspected.

  “You never know which stone you overturn might hide something underneath it,” Rochestri mused. He always preferred to cast as wide a net as possible. The oracle reported on various unrel
ated issues, such as tithing funds being diverted to private accounts of Abbot Mencia, illegal nerve gas agents being used by security forces in the capital to remove protestors from a faulty water treatment plant, and a small underground religious sect that was actually a cover for Ashtari worship.

  “The sect will have to be put down of course,” Rochestri mentioned to his adjunct. “Something public to put some fear into the rest of them for a spell so we don’t have to come back in five years and do it all over again. What do they find distasteful around here?

  “Flaying, I would say,” his adjunct responded.

  Rochestri grinned with yellow teeth. “You always did like that one, didn’t cha?”

  “Nothing wrong with enjoying your work, is there?”

  “Nothing at all,” Rochestri said, clucking his tongue.

  “And Abbot Mencia? Are we to replace him?”

  “I’d rather not. I have often found it far more prudent to not punish an offender once the transgression is discovered. The threat of punishment, when properly applied, will force even the most dishonest man to behave flawlessly for years or even decades, so long as you make note to remind them every so often that you are still keeping an eye on them.”

  Rochestri stood there for a moment deep in thought. “It’s also occasionally useful to have a favor or two to call in when you don’t want other Marshals snooping around too closely.”

  “You mean Marshal Odamas.”

  Rochestri sighed to himself. “Yes, Marshal Odamas is becoming far too influential within the Second Council,” he groused. “He will have to be brought down a notch once this current problem is contained.”

  Rochestri’s soothsayer was touching the edges of the fallen vault door. She was the newest member of his staff, but she was rapidly becoming one of his most trusted. A natural-born psychic of unparalleled strength. Rochestri could not guess at how she had managed to stave off demonic possession without training, but somehow she had.

  “They spoke Quentia in addition to Common,” she mused, running her delicate fingers along the stones. “Their satisfaction saturates the hall, but not the vault itself. Rage and betrayal sticks to the blood stains in the hallway.”