by Chris Fox
Predates the Cycle itself. Can only be entered by invitation. Current caretakers are Ptah and Hotep. These sub-titan class deities welcome all in need, but no violence may be committed in the city itself. Unclear if this Greater Geas was created by the gods or the city.
The note hadn’t been signed, but it had been dated. A hundred and nine thousand years before the present. Well before the fall of the dragonflights. So at some point between this record and the present a storm had been created to hide the city.
Who’d done that? These gods, Hotep and Ptah? It gave me a starting point, but meant I’d probably have to head back to Quantum to research it. I was already getting tired of going back and forth between terminals, and wished I had one of the fancy Inuran ones that could handle both. Maybe we could have one installed. I’d have to ask Pickus. That seemed greedy.
“Jerek?” Miri’s soft voice came from the doorway, and I glanced up to see her wearing a…a dress. A—wow—dress. “You’re heading out, right? To meet with the Confederate goddess? I thought you might want backup, and Vee is working on a schematic.”
A flowing red garment perfectly matched her lipstick, and contrasted nicely with her hair. She stepped into the room, threw a leg up on a chair, and tightened the strap on a concealed holster she’d affixed to her inner thigh. It contained a tiny Mark IX spellpistol, a nasty surprise for anyone that underestimated her.
She’d been gorgeous before, but the pistol ratcheted it up to another level. I caught her eyeing me sidelong, clearly measuring my reaction. A sly smirk grew. Guilt bubbled up and my cheeks heated.
Vee and I had only been a thing for a few days, and we hadn’t talked about boundaries, but I already knew where she’d land on me flirting with Miri. She deserved better. Miri was crew, and while she might be interested, I needed to keep it professional.
Of course, I’d never have asked her to join if I didn’t think she was capable of it. Miri was nothing if not professional once the op started.
“Yeah, I was about to leave.” I waved a hand and shut down the missive terminal, then concentrated on the Quantum terminal and willed it to shut off. “I’ve done the research I can. May as well get this over with.”
I rose and started for the door, surprised to find my hand wrapped around Dez’s grip. The pistol thrummed her anticipation. She spoiled for a fight, and welcomed the violence that would follow. Not a bad trait in a weapon, I guess, but she was definitely more bloodthirsty than Ariela had been.
No thirst. Cannot drink blood.
I didn’t bother explaining the concept of an analogy. I didn’t need to. She got smarter every day, more in tune with what was going on around us. She was the childhood attack dog I’d always wanted, but far more lethal. I patted her grip affectionately as I left the mess and threaded through the Remora toward the airlock.
“Oh, yeah!” Rava’s voice echoed from the level below where she and Briff were predictably involved in an Arena match. To my surprise I realized they’d pulled Kurz in, and the studious lurker’s face was tuned to grim determination as his heavy advanced behind Briff’s.
You didn’t see two heavies often, because while they could soak up damage they were too slow to dish it out effectively unless their opponents had already been immobilized. It spoke to Rava’s skill that they seemed to be winning anyway.
I continued past with a wave, which Briff enthusiastically returned. He paused the match, and rose to his feet with a flap of his scaled wings. “Jer, you guys good or you need some muscle? I want to test out this life magic.”
“Miri’s got me. Non-combat op,” I called back with a wave. “I don’t think Lady Voria is a threat. Quite the opposite. This is the goddess who bailed us out when Bortel assaulted us. She sent Crewes and Xal’Aran.”
“Oh.” Briff’s snout split into a toothy grin. “I’m gonna head into their marketplace later and see if I can get a void pocket mounted. You’re good at the negotiation stuff. Will you go with me?”
“Yeah, grab me when I get back. I’ve got some shopping to do too.” I didn’t bother hiding my own grin as Miri and I entered the cargo hold, and then trotted down the ramp and into one of the Spellship’s massive cargo bays.
“What are you so happy about?” Miri twirled around. “If it’s the dress I’ve got a black one that’s even better.”
I laughed in spite of myself, and it warmed me. “I’m just happy to have credits in my pocket, is all. Selling the scales we got on the Flame netted a lot more than I expected. We can actually afford real meat. And to refill the empty mats for the forge.”
We strode down a corridor with impractically high ceilings for a starship, and it spilled into a kilometer-high chamber lined with hundreds of levels. Mages flitted between them, from libraries to restaurants, or back to their quarters. It was the strangest traffic I’d ever seen, but made complete sense from a magical perspective. I could feel the ship powering their flight, not any personal spell.
It afforded a glimpse of what the Word of Xal could one day be, when the corridors weren’t overrun with wights…and worse. This place contrasted sharply with the slums back on Kemet. I’d had no idea people could live like this, with magic interwoven into their lives.
“This place is incredible,” I murmured, though I noted from Miri’s bored expression that she didn’t share the sentiment.
“It’s just another power structure, on another magic ship.” She shrugged, and nodded at some of the people on the lowest level who walked from shop to shop. “There’s always a group at the bottom. You can pretty it up as much as you want, and maybe these people are better than the Inurans, but I’m not impressed by magitech, or even divinity.”
I nodded to show I’d heard, but didn’t reply. Not immediately at least. Her skepticism was a good reminder that I needed to temper my wonder and awe of this place. Inura had constructed it, but having seen the god for what he was, I believed Miri had likely landed on the truth.
“Jerek!” Pickus’s voice rang out through the crowd, and I scanned until I saw the good-natured ginger waving from across the hall.
The people around the mousy administrator seemed to recognize his bright red hair, but didn’t give him any particular respect or honorific, which seemed odd given that he basically ran the ship for Lady Voria. Not if you asked him, of course. He’d claim he did almost nothing, and got paid too much for it.
The moment fell to ashes as buzzing swelled in the back of my head, and I instinctively gripped Dez. Someone or something intended me harm, but as I scanned the crowd I couldn’t detect anyone staring in my direction.
My sight didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary, though the amount of overlapping magical signatures did trigger a migraine so quickly I shut it off.
The buzzing grew to a crescendo as Pickus approached.
I sensed a bit of fire, and a lot more void, and then a wave of destruction erupted from the sushi place we were standing outside of. The wave of voidflame boiled all around me, and Miri, and Pickus, and everyone else outside the restaurant, before we could react.
The blast knocked me from my feet, and I tumbled along the pavement, with no idea which way was up. Thank the gods I’d worn my helmet. Had I not and the spell hadn’t cooked my face off, then the pavement wouldn’t have improved whatever remained.
As it was, a yellow spot bloomed on the paper doll over the helmet, and that was the good news. The voidflame painted the entire left side of the doll red, as layer after layer ceased to exist. My armor hadn’t awoken with any sort of voice, but it was alive, and I sensed the agony as it endured the beating that would have killed me.
I rose shakily to my feet, and surveyed the wreckage. Bodies were strewn everywhere, and only a few stirred. No one had risen to their feet.
Oh my gods. Miri.
2
Miri’s body had been knocked into a parked hover transport, and she lay unmoving next to the rear wheel, either unconscious or dead. I raced to her side, and pressed two fingers to her throa
t.
No pulse. Emotional agony surged through me, of the same sort I’d experienced when we’d lost my father. Did I care that much for her? Or was I just tired of losing people?
I closed my eyes and forced deep calming breaths. I had life magic. She’d just been killed. She wasn’t dead yet, necessarily. Theoretically I could pump magic into her, and her body would recover. It happened all the time in the holos.
I pressed Dez’s barrel gently against her shoulder, and winced as the skin sizzled. The dress had been burned away, as had most of her skin. Warmth surged in my chest, then white-gold life burst from Dez’s barrel, and for the first time the weapon healed instead of harmed.
The flesh around the barrel knit back together, and the magic rippled outwards. Miri awoke with a gasp, coughing weakly as her eyes focused, and her body repaired itself. “My…hair.”
Pain flared in my back even as my ears registered the report of a high caliber rifle punching clean through me, and then through my armor. The round pinged off the ground millimeters from Miri’s outstretched hand, and she snatched the appendage back as if burned.
“I’m getting really tired of this shit.” I concentrated on the armor, and willed a healing beer to flow into me from one of the potion loaders. The angry wound in my chest faded to sullen, and by the time I’d turned to scan for the sniper I was in full command of my faculties, if you didn’t count the light buzz.
I raised Dez as I activated my sight and scanned the upper tiers of the mezzanine. I knew the shot had come from there. Any sniper worth their salt would be as far away as possible, and this had clearly been premeditated to take either me or Pickus out of the equation.
There.
High above us, behind a bookshelf, an Inuran woman stashed her spellrifle in a void pocket, straightened her uniform, then rapidly exited the library she’d fired from. Without my sight there was no way I’d have spotted her. It would have been the perfect crime—well, if it had succeeded anyway. I’d seen her, which meant I could scry the area later for more details.
“Jer?” Miri rasped, gathering my attention from the retreating assassin. She pulled Pickus’s limp body into cover, and cradled his blackened scalp as gently as she could. “He’s gone, Jer. I can’t bring him back.”
“No…” I sank to my knees next to them.
I’d only just gotten to know Pickus, but he’d been generous to a fault, and I could tell that everyone around him knew it. Everyone liked him. He’d been one of the rare leaders that people followed because they wanted to. Because they knew Pickus worked even harder than they did.
And now he was gone. Just like my dad. Just like our world.
Adrenaline faded and the pain crept in. The beer had taken away the worst of the damage, but I still felt like I’d been used as a drum stick and bashed against the sector’s largest drum for about four hours.
What did I do now? I couldn’t just go to my meeting with Voria as if nothing had happened. She’d want to know about it though, right? Maybe going was exactly the right thing to do.
I was saved from the decision when a divine figure in a blue and gold Confederate uniform appeared next to me, already kneeling next to Pickus to take his pulse. Lady Voria’s chestnut hair smelled faintly of lavender, and her uniform of starch, as she pushed Miri gently away.
“This has my mother’s fingerprints all over it. Well she won’t win today.” She closed her eyes and rested a hand on Pickus’s unmoving chest.
I don’t know what I expected. The man was clearly dead, and you couldn’t fix death, whatever the holos said.
Then Voria fixed death.
A river of power flowed from her into the mousy man, far more than I could conceive of or control. It suffused his entire body, and light poured from his eyes, then his ears, and mouth, and nose. His limbs shot out suddenly, rigid and unmoving.
A silver cloud appeared over him, or maybe just became visible. Maybe it had been in the spirit world, but Voria’s magic had drawn Pickus’s soul back. I gaped in awe as it flowed into my friend’s mouth.
He awoke with a cough and a gasp, then sat up blinking. “I saw…I don’t think I want to talk about it. Security! Who’s in charge? We need to get on top of this. Now.”
It didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t even processed that he’d been dead, and was already back at work trying to make sure things ran smoothly.
I stood frozen, as firmly rooted as a Shayan Great Tree. “You brought him back from death. You resurrected him. It is possible. You can cheat death.”
“Yes.” Voria turned to me with a cautious smile. “But it isn’t easy, or cheap. There are many limitations. Restoring a soul, even one recently separated, requires tremendous magical power. If used to restore a soul long after its death it often requires sacrifice. It is never easy, and I do not do it for just anyone.”
“Pickus is worth it.” I helped Miri to her feet. The mercenary had seen to her own wounds, and despite having no hair there was no missing her obvious nakedness. So far as I could tell she’d been completely healed.
Miri scooped up her spellpistol, and seemed unperturbed by her lack of clothing. “I’m going to hunt down whoever did this.”
“Do you think it’s Jolene?” I wondered if I should have used the Inuran matriarch’s title, but then figured her blowing up my planet meant I could call her whatever I wanted to.
“My flame readers will ferret out the answer, though finding your assailant may be tricky.” Voria pursed her lips as she scanned the upper levels.
“I can describe her, or offer up an illusion.” I tightened my fist as I thought of the woman who’d shot me, and blown up an entire restaurant, likely as payback for taking out Jolene’s cruiser, and her position of power. This was my fault.
“That would be helpful, but for now I’d like to get you to safety.” Voria rested a hand on my shoulder and the two of us vanished. We arrived in lavish quarters dominated by a four-poster hoverbed, a golden nightstand, and silk hovercouches.
I breathed easier when I realized that Miri had been brought as well, and the naked Inuran plucked a discarded nightgown from the floor, which didn’t do much to cover the bits worth looking at. Which were pretty much all the bits.
“Please, take your ease.” Voria gestured at a trio of hoverchairs, and I dropped gratefully into one of them. My armor made a mess of it, but I imagine she could have it cleaned. Voria remained standing, and I noted that her golden staff was absent. So far as I knew she was never seen without Ikadra, and I wondered if that was noteworthy. She didn’t give me time to ask. “I realize this will seem callous, but the attack, whoever the culprit, is immaterial. I asked you here to talk about Necrotis, and her plans. Everything we’ve seen, and Inura’s own testimony, suggest she is the most dangerous player we have ever faced. She has had millennia to prepare.”
“Didn’t you kill the Wyrm-Goddess Nefarius? And Krox? And Nebiat? I mean, I only saw the holos.” I drummed my fingers along the chair’s arm and tried not to glance over my shoulder for more assassins. Being shot does that to you.
The lady sank into a chair of her own, and looked just as mortal as I am, if you didn’t count the luminescent skin. “We killed Nefarius within weeks of her rebirth, and the same was true of Krox when Nefarius killed him. As for Nebiat? Yes, I killed her, but she was a weak goddess and didn’t put up much of a fight. Necrotis has a Great Ship, and an army, and, I’m presuming, a plan. I’m hoping you can tell me about that plan. Your report, which I have through your mother, says they are trying to blackmail you into coming to Sanctuary. Why?”
I glanced at Miri when a golden glow erupted from her scalp, and blinked in amazement as her hair began to regrow. Life magic was insane. “They want me to gain entry to some sort of ancient facility that predates the dragonflights. It was run by a pair of gods named Hotep and Ptah, which correspond to ancient Terran deities. I don’t know much else about them, and I have no idea who created the storm. I bet they did it to cover the facility, thoug
h.”
“And the unseen fleets?” She folded her arms, and seemed to accept my words at face value. “What can you tell me of their relationship with Necrotis, or their disposition?”
“Nothing.” I hated not having anything to give her, not because I wanted to please her, but because I’d be the one sailing into that storm blind. “I can make some guesses. The status quo is no one can get inside this facility. Necrotis has either promised them she can change that, or wants to distract them while she tries an end run around them to get whatever this facility is.”
I hesitated as a thought burst into clarity. It wasn’t even related. Pickus had just been resurrected. You could bring people back from the dead. My father was a shade. Could Voria bring him back? How did I casually bring that up?
Voria removed the clip from her hair, and shook chestnut locks over her shoulders. It humanized her somehow, and also made me conscious that I was in the bedchamber of a goddess.
“Are you going to do as they ask?” She fixed me with a heavy stare, but I had no sense of what answer might please her.
“Yes,” I gave back without hesitation. “They have my father’s shade. If I don’t dance, then they kill my mother. I don’t want to lose my mother. In fact, I’d like to get my father back.”
“Are you suggesting some sort of bargain?” She raised an eyebrow. “Because right now I have no vested interest in your trip to Sanctuary. I’ll be taking the Confederate fleets to the Kemet system to secure the remaining Great Ships.”
There it was. I had nothing to trade. Not yet anyway. “I’ll go, and I’ll see what they want. I’ll learn about Necrotis, and about the unseen fleets. If I missive you all of that intel, fleet strengths, and their general plans, will you bring my father back to life?”
Miri crept across the carpet behind Voria, and I noticed a silver mirror disappear into the nightgown’s pocket. Was she robbing a goddess?