by Azalea Ellis
She gestured behind her, to the Estreyans who hadn’t yet called attention to themselves. “These warriors are bound to me in blood-covenant. They are loyal to me, and me alone. They will be your new guards and escorts, along with my son Reglium. You will do my bidding as loyally as they, or I will be forced to kill you all. First, I will reveal to the public that the Sickness has infested members of your team.” She let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Ironically, that is even the truth. I will show the public your crazed frenzy as it takes over your minds and bodies, just as I showed them your calm acceptance of my leadership today. That is, if you do not succumb to the Sickness on your own. Each of these warriors has been picked specifically, their abilities chosen to ensure you will not defy me. Ni,” she pointed to the woman, “will keep track of you at all times, San and Shi are fighters so mighty you will not stand against them long, if you manage to somehow escape immediate death in an attempt to defy me. And Ichi…”
One of the Estreyans, a man slightly paler than seemed healthy, stepped forward.
“He has the ability to transport any living being he can see to any point within the many levels of Estreyer.” She snapped her fingers.
Ichi nodded, and in the space of a blink, I was underwater, pressure crushing down on me. The breath left my lungs, drifting away in bubbles barely visible in the darkness. Wraith pushed out sluggishly through the liquid, and found my teammates around me.
Torliam’s blue mist expanded to wrap around us, and ink spilled into the water around Adam, and then we were back in the stone-walled room.
I dropped to my knees, gasping for air. The water dripped onto the stones beneath me.
Gregor was in his Shadow state, and he pushed forward to stand beside me, his daggers held threateningly above me.
I rose back to my feet, letting Chaos boil out an inch or so over my skin and armor, the tendrils of smoke-like darkness writhing like angry snakes. “Sam?” I said, grabbing Gregor’s shoulder and urging him back. He didn’t need to protect me.
Zed’s fingers disappeared into the air and the water on his hand turned to ice, but he glared at the four guards and Queen Mardinest, then withdrew his hand, letting the rip to the Other Place close.
Jacky had grown until her head brushed against the ceiling. She snarled, and Ichi raised his hand to her.
I placed a hand on her side and shook my head silently. We couldn’t afford to turn this into a real fight.
Jacky turned and smashed her fist into the wall. Stone flew outward from the small impact crater, the sound thunderously loud in the small room.
Queen Mardinest still stood where she’d been before the threatening display of power. “You are cunning, Eve-Redding, and you are all very resourceful as a group. Perhaps you will find a way to survive that. So I won’t take any chances, if I need to kill you. Ichi will transport you directly into the Voids of Tartarus. Since you are an Earthling, you may not know what that is. Suffice it to say, nothing that enters has ever left.”
Sam touched the others, and after a short second of examination each, sent a single nod my way. At least no one had been seriously hurt by that little stunt, though I noted that Sam returned to Adam, who was white-faced and trembling. The crushing pressure of the ocean depths on Adam’s mangled spine must have hurt like hell.
“My people may cry your names in the streets now, but if they knew you harbored the Sickness, they would call instead for your bodies to be cleansed beyond ash with a fire as hot as the sun. If you force my hand against you, I will ensure they mourn only the loss of a few more victims of the Sickness.”
“And if we comply?” My voice was hoarse.
She gave the most humorless of smiles. “I will allow you to be your own destruction, over time. You will be seen continuing your attempts to cure the Sickness. You will act as diplomatic envoys to those who wish to meet the godslayer. You may even petition the minor gods for Bestowals, though no more of my warriors will die on your behalf while you do so. However, do not think I am unaware of your true nature, Eve-Redding. You will plot and scheme within your heart, seeking to sting me with deadly poison when my attention is diverted. I know this, because I can sense it within you even now.”
She stepped forward. “The line of Aethezriel did not always rule. Did you know that? I wrested this crown, and my seat of power, from another family before me. They had many secrets. Now, I am known as a warrior-queen, and the blood-borne ability the people know is my godlike skill with the blade and bow. Yet the ability that gained me this crown, and allows me to keep it among the skirling-infested court members who wish it for themselves, is my sense for the secrets of others.”
I did not step back from her, even as I sensed the glow of her power tugging at my body and repressed a shudder.
“It is necessary that I keep this power secret, both so that it might be used against those who are unaware, and so that my enemies cannot use the instinctive fear of one’s secrets being revealed against me. I can smell the things you keep hidden like the misty ghost of an idea. It has always been enough. If I believe you plan to become my enemy in any way, I will be forced to act against you.” She stepped back, and didn’t bother to smile toothily like I might have done. She was serene, confident in her own power without the need to revel in it.
“Mother. We need not be enemies.” Torliam’s words were choked, but he held himself straight and with dignity despite the water still dripping from his hair. “Even if you do not believe in us, or that the prophesied cure exists, we might still prove you to be wrong. Let us go to Earth, so that Eve may find the Champion, and bring him back to Estreyer.”
She scoffed. “This one,” she pointed to me, “is only using you. The Champion is not on Earth. He is dead, and has been for thousands of cycles. I will not allow one as treacherous as her the potential to ally with our enemies, which she has already done once, before she discovered the power you might provide her in their stead. You will remain on Estreyer. I will give you time to reconcile yourselves with the new order of things. I have many demands on my time. Return to your assigned quarters. Ichi may relate to you your duties henceforth as you walk.”
One of the other Estreyans stepped forward and opened the door behind us, seemingly unperturbed by the threatening stares of my teammates.
When the queen motioned dismissively toward the open doorway, they glanced at me. I nodded, and they filed out, along with three of our four new guards.
Jacky glared at one of the guards and feigned a lunge toward him, grinning when he flinched, and then swaggered off down the hallway.
I moved to go with them, but the queen placed her hand on my shoulder.
Torliam stopped, frowning, but she waved him on. “Go. Eve-Redding will not be harmed,” she said. “I merely wish to speak with her a short while longer.”
“I am in blood-covenant with her,” he said, the words heavy with an insinuation I didn’t quite understand. “It is the duty of the line of Aethezriel to guard and serve the line of Matrix.”
Her hand tightened on my shoulder, and before she could retort, I spoke. “It’s alright. I’ll speak with her, and meet you in a little while.”
I could almost hear the creak of his jaw as he clenched his teeth together, but he nodded and walked off after the others.
Queen Mardinest waited an uncomfortably long time with her hand silently on my shoulder, undoubtedly used to the superior eavesdropping senses of the Estreyans. Then, she leaned in and murmured into my ear, the warmth of her breath tickling me. “I know your secret. You are a desperate liar and a charlatan.” She breathed in deep, an exaggerated sniff. “I do not know how you managed to convince my son these sparkling gifts mean you are all tied into the destiny of a savior, but I know that you came to the both of us with lies. Every time someone spoke of curing the Sickness in your presence, I smelt the hint of it. When you returned, I understood. You meant all along to kill a god, but it was never anything to do with altruism. There was never any Bestowal offered
, either of a cure or information leading to one. There is no cure for the Sickness. We are in agreement on that, I believe. But if your precious teammates, and my son, were to learn of your duplicity, I do not think they would be so understanding as I.”
Chapter 2
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
— Michel de Montaigne
The hallways, normally spacious and bright, seemed to close in on me. I walked with the remaining guard, one of the warriors, following the same path the others had traveled ahead of me. I took deep breaths, but it didn’t feel like I was getting enough air. The world spun, and I reached out to brace myself on the wall.
I found myself staring at my left hand. It was an alien thing. The fingers were a little too long, and one too many of them grew out from my palm. If it were just the darkened skin, or the hardened, scale-like segments stretching out from under the armor at my wrist, I would have still been able to look at the hand and think of it as my own. But the shape of it had changed altogether.
I clenched my fist and brought it down to my side, closing my eyes. “Get it together,” I mouthed to myself, hoping the guard hadn’t taken too much note of my moment of weakness. I’d still been adjusting to the changes in myself and my life after successfully surviving the fight with the God of Knowledge. I hadn’t yet figured out my new path going forward. This new development, and its possible ramifications, had given me whiplash when I was already struggling for balance. But I was adaptable. I had to be.
Queen Mardinest’s threat to reveal my duplicity was meant as another layer of binding around me, but it was only effective if I gave it power. If she tried to expose me to my teammates, I could just lie. After today, they wouldn’t trust her over me without damning proof, especially with so much evidence to the contrary. Even if the original quest had mentioned nothing about curing the Sickness, after that it was like the world was bending itself into contortions trying to make my lie into truth. Even if it hadn’t succeeded, I wasn’t going to let my teammates die to a curable disease. She’d been wrong. I believed in a cure to the Sickness. I’d create one, even if I had to form it out of the very ether, or the bones of my enemies.
Unfortunately, things had just gotten a lot more difficult. If the god with the cure was on Earth and not Estreyer, we’d need to bypass the queen’s new authority over us. Without getting tossed into the Voids of Tartarus.
The image of ships flying through the array asserted itself in my mind again. War on Earth? What did that even really mean? If she was trying to eradicate the meningolycanosis, Queen Mardinest would go after NIX, right? Except I knew they had more than the one base, and other countries might even have their own versions. And NIX was part of the government, at least to some degree. One which had been preparing for just such an invasion for the last seven or eight years.
This couldn’t end well.
A small “Mrrp?” drew my eyes, and I saw Birch peeking his head around the corner ahead. He padded over to me, bumping his head into my knee.
“You waited for me.” I reached down and ran a hand over his head, giving him a few scratches behind the ears and at the base of his wings. When the guard motioned impatiently at me, I started to walk again.
Birch kept his shoulder pressed to the side of my leg in silent support.
He let out a grumble that was half growl, ears flicking around alertly while keeping his hostile gaze on the warrior walking slightly ahead of us.
“Yes. This was a very unfortunate development,” I said. I couldn’t understand cat speech, but his body language and tone of voice were usually enough to get a good idea what he was trying to communicate. When they weren’t, he could communicate telepathically with skin contact.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I hadn’t yet met a truly unsolvable problem. This would be no different.
We couldn’t trust Queen Mardinest. We were a threat to her, and would become even more of one if we made progress in curing the Sickness. If we stayed under her control, there was no future for us. Some of my team would die from the Sickness, and once the rest of us weren’t so beloved, it wouldn’t be so hard for an “accident” to kill us all. She’d insinuated as much to our faces.
She’d gotten too used to getting what she wanted. It was time we served her a healthy dose of disappointment.
We arrived at a part of the palace I hadn’t explored before, on ground level. I pushed Wraith ahead to sense my teammates, who milled like a small swarm of angry ants outside a door with runes carved into it, across from an open room with metal melted into the floor in a complicated diagram and some lounge-type furniture. I could hear them arguing in semi-hushed voices before I even turned the corner.
"I am not responsible for my mother's actions," Torliam growled.
"You're the freaking prince! You can't do anything about this?" Adam said.
"I am the youngest, I am a son, and I am not even favored enough for my mother to attempt to rescue from imprisonment and torture! Only people too ignorant to know better think I have any political power!"
“If not for you, pushing Eve to be your ‘chosen one’ and then telling your mother all about her and that people tried to kill the kids, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all!”
“If not for me, Eve would be dead!”
I turned the corner to see blue mist rise and lash at the air around Torliam futilely. Both he and Adam turned to look when I arrived, and I wasn’t sure if Gregor’s huge sigh of relief was for my wellbeing, or for the end of the argument. I frowned at them, and Torliam, at least, seemed abashed.
The queen’s new watchdog Estreyans stood in the open room across from the door, doing something with the rune-carved floor. If I had to guess, it had something to do with locking us into the adjacent room, which was undoubtedly a cell to keep us from escaping or doing anything rash. So much for the new, fancy bedroom I’d been assigned.
Adam’s ink carriage skittered around on its legs, turning him to face me. “What did she keep you behind for?”
Torliam scanned me with his eyes. “Are you unharmed?”
“How can she do this?” Kris said. “Earth is our home. She knows we’re from there, and she acts all supportive to our face, then suddenly—”
Gregor squeezed her hand, and she cut off.
I resisted the urge to let my claws slip out and bare my teeth at my guard as he moved past me to join the others. I settled instead on a stony glare. It wouldn’t do to seem too complacent, after all.
I rubbed my neck, trying to release some of the tension there. “She took the opportunity to threaten me in some more detail.”
One of our guards opened the door and shooed us into the large, windowless room. It had a few bed mats spread directly onto the floor, and there was a small walled-off area I assumed to be a bathroom. The ceiling glowed, mimicking the brightness of the world outside.
I noted more metal runes and designs sunk into the stone and felt the muscles around my eyes tighten with stress. I let my awareness swirl out into the open room behind us. When the female guard, Ni, who now sat in the middle of the design carved into the floor let out a slow breath, I felt the buzzing barrier in our new windowless cell snap to life and couldn’t help but flinch.
Displayed on the surface of one of the tables outside I caught a blurry image of the room and us within it. They weren’t incompetent, it seems.
Adam paced back and forth on his ink spider. “Is the Estreyan justice system corrupt enough that she can really get away with this?”
“Well, obviously she can,” I said, flopping onto one of the thin bed mats and rubbing my palms across my face.
He moved to loom over me like some horror-film amalgamation of spider and man. “What are we going to do?”
“There’s nothing we can do. Just try to get some rest while we have the opportunity. I know I need it.”
Adam frowned, exchanging a look with Zed. “We just got threatened and blackmailed into servitude, and yo
u’re too tired to talk about it?” His eyebrows raised high, and his voice tightened, growing angrier as he spoke.
—They’re watching?—
-Adam-
I suppressed my smile as I read the Window message. He’d understood exactly what I was going for. I sent my response to everyone who had a VR chip, and hoped that Torliam, who didn’t, wouldn’t push the issue.
—Yes. We’ll talk when it’s too dark for them to see, since we’ll need Torliam’s input on this.—
-Eve-
Outwardly, I pressed my lips together in an expression that reminded me of my mother. “There’s nothing we can do about it, is there? We can talk in a couple hours, once I’ve had some time to wind down. If you want to keep that stick up your ass till it gives you a heart attack, be my guest.”
Sam’s eyes were wide. “Guys, uh, we’re all a little on edge right now. Let’s just take a deep—”
Adam rolled his eyes and whipped off toward the other corner of the room, lowering his body onto another of the bed mats while pointedly not looking at me.
Chanelle sat next to me, her gaze tracking with the lucidity it sometimes lacked. “Do you have any food?” she said in a small voice.
I dug some fruit and dried meat out of my pack, grateful that I’d carried it with me even to the queen’s announcement out of ingrained, paranoid habit. As she began to eat, I took out the Oracle’s final gift and fiddled with it. With mental commands, I sent Zed a Window.
—We’re trapped in here by some sort of energy barrier that’s flush with the walls. Investigate it, as innocently as you can. It’s okay to act curious, that’s normal, but they’ll be watching me specifically to make sure I’m not planning an escape.—
-Eve-
Zed moved to the wall and pressed his hands against it. It produced an audible zap, and he jerked back in surprise, shaking his hands.