Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

“Me, Revik… Feigran.” I sighed. “Probably Cass. Maybe Stanley and my mother and the other intermediaries, too.”

  I felt a pulse of disagreement from Balidor. I could almost see him gesturing a negative, even with the visuals turned off.

  “No. That does not appear to be so,” he said. “Your mother did not even know this Dragon existed before you found him. She cannot feel anything about him, Alyson. Nothing. She tells us she sees a black hole where his light is, that occasionally she gets pictures, sounds, but not premonitions. She thinks it is more like a realtime image of his light and mind.”

  Sighing, he made his voice sharper.

  “Her husband… your father… has forbidden us to ask her about it anymore,” Balidor added. “He told us what she would not admit to me, which is that she passes out cold when she looks for him. She starts muttering about stars, making no sense. ‘Darkness that is light’ and something about the place where all light originates. So whatever it is you think you know about Dragon, you might be on your own with it, Alyson. Your mother can provide no insight.”

  I nodded. “Okay. So how different is this from how her normal visions function?” I said. “Why did Uye forbid you to ask her about it?”

  “Because he’s afraid she might not come back from these,” Wreg said, speaking for the first time, his voice harsh. “Her visions are normally painful, Esteemed Bridge. They are sometimes even traumatic. They can harm her physically. But they do not usually pull her so far from her body. So unless you want your own mother dead––”

  “Painful?” I said, startled. “Her visions are painful? Why?”

  The line grew silent.

  It hit me that they were both stunned I didn’t know this.

  Moreover, despite Wreg’s jab, they obviously felt they’d overstepped in sharing something personal about one of my parents with me.

  Realizing we didn’t have time to talk about this, nor did I have time to navigate seer etiquette around familial relationships, I waved off my own words.

  “Forget it. I’ll ask her later.”

  Feeling both of their relief, I glanced out the window, watching the horizon move even as seers in the rows in front of me began taking their seats, buckling into seat belts with a casualness totally unlike any commercial plane I’d ever been on. I noticed Jem stayed up front with the others, maybe to give me privacy.

  Pushing him out of my mind, I fought not to think about the animosity I could still feel on Wreg’s light.

  “So Uye thought attempting to trigger visions about Dragon might actually kill her?” I said, my voice neutral. “Or am I misunderstanding you?”

  “You are not,” Wreg said, his voice equally stripped of emotion. “Brother Uye was concerned about this killing her, yes. He seemed to think it may not even be intentional on Dragon’s part, but something to do with the qualities of Dragon’s light.”

  Thinking about his words, I fought back and forth on whether to ask it, then did anyway.

  “What about the Myth?” I said. “Any help there?”

  Silence.

  Balidor was the one to break it that time.

  “What about the Myth, Esteemed Bridge?” he said politely.

  “The Commentaries,” I said. “The ones about the Old God. The ones about Dragon. Can either of you use those to glean any additional information about what I might be up against?”

  I felt both Wreg and Balidor react on the other end of the line. I could also feel Wreg listening harder than before, although his anger didn’t lessen.

  When neither of them spoke I plowed on.

  “Jem…” I said, trailing when I felt them both react to that as well. I cleared my throat, making my voice businesslike. “Brother Dalejem said the Myths talk about Dragon a lot. He mentioned specific commentaries.”

  “I was aware of that, yes,” Balidor said drily. “Brother Wreg and I are both aware of that, Esteemed Sister. We were trained in the Pamir as well as brother Dalejem.”

  “So?” I said, ignoring the implication that I was listening to Jem over the two of them, even as I let sarcasm leak into my voice. “What can you two ‘experts’ tell me then? Jem had some theories. He’s been studying the texts he has access to here as well as he can, but he mentioned some that can’t be transcribed into electronic form for religious reasons. He thought those might actually contain more of the real information about Dragon as an actual entity. Most of the later commentaries say Dragon doesn’t take corporeal form anymore. I’d say that’s been more or less been disproven at this point.”

  Forcing my voice calmer, I added,

  “I wondered if the two of you had discussed that with him. Jem. Or if you had your own theories based on what we’ve seen so far.”

  “If I talk to that fucker, it won’t be about commentaries,” Wreg growled.

  “Wreg,” I said, my voice cold. “Get over it. Now. I need your fucking head in the game. The priority is Revik on this. And stopping Dragon. I don’t want to hear jack shit from you about anything else until both of those things are addressed.”

  Silence greeted me. The Chinese seer exhaled more anger.

  “Understood.”

  I opened my mouth to say more, then glanced to the front of the plane, feeling something in my light. Staring down that aisle, my eyes focused on the blue curtains at the end, the ones that separated the two different segments of the cabin.

  Through the crack in those curtains, I caught a bare glimpse of the face of that same seer who had interrupted me earlier, the one with the odd sun tattoo. He, alone among all of the others, remained standing as the plane’s taxi picked up speed. I watched as he closed the door to the bathroom and relaxed slightly, realizing he’d just come from there.

  But he didn’t re-enter the main cabin.

  I couldn’t see him anymore, but I had to assume he was standing in the alcove between segments of the plane, concealed behind those curtains.

  My eyes sought out Jem.

  He sat in the front row, next to Jasek and two of his infiltrators.

  He was talking to Jasek now, not paying attention to the alcove at all.

  I felt more than saw when something changed.

  Releasing the latch on my seatbelt, I stood, igniting the telekinetic structures over my head.

  Jem turned at once. I saw the motion in my peripheral vision, but that time, I didn’t glance at him, only felt his reaction via his light as his puzzlement turned to alarm.

  My light snaked out, feeling for the seer behind those curtains––

  “Allie!” Balidor said in my ear. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Ignoring him, I continued to look at the other seer, not even sure what I was looking for at first. I just knew something was wrong.

  I hit a shield… scanned it.

  Unknown origin.

  It was enough to flare the telekinesis hotter.

  The seer with the sun tattoo must have felt me looking. Or he’d seen me, maybe. One or the other thing was enough to propel him into action.

  Suddenly, I felt a gun in his hand. I felt organics in the gun activate, even as I hit the blank wall of a shield around the person holding it.

  Then I saw him aim, saw the person at whom he aimed the gun’s sights.

  I didn’t stop to think. Cracking the gun in half, I used the telekinesis to throw the body of the person holding it backwards in the same motion.

  I might have overcompensated a little.

  Okay, maybe a lot.

  The sharp crack of the gun exploding happened at once. I heard gasps, yells from a few seers in the rows ahead of me in the cabin.

  It seemed like a really long time before I heard the crash in the area of the cockpit.

  The reactions of everyone to that louder noise seemed to take longer still.

  “Allie!” Balidor shouted.

  Unhooking the headset, I tossed it on the seat next to me. Then I was walking fast down the aisle even as the plane lurched, picking up speed as it began to accelerate
down the runway. I didn’t stop but grabbed onto the backs of seats to yank myself forward.

  None of the other seers moved at first, or stopped staring at me––not until I’d passed that first row of seats and pushed my way through the blue curtain. Only then did I realize a number of them were calling out to me, asking me what the hell just happened.

  I continued to walk towards the front of the plane, even as I felt Jem unhook his own belt and pull himself out of his seat to come after me. I felt the nose start to lift up off the ground, the first bump from a pocket of air as the plane moved faster.

  “Allie!” Jem yelled from the back of this section of cabin. “What happened?”

  I was already most of the way there.

  I reached the tattooed seer who now lay crumpled on the floor at the front of the plane.

  A female seer sat buckled into a jump seat nearby, her eyes wide with fear. I gave her a reassuring gesture as I lowered my weight to a crouch, gripping onto the nearby seats to keep from being thrown down the aisle as I stared into the strange seer’s face. Seeing the open-eyed stare and lack of movement, I frowned, touching his throat with my fingers.

  No pulse. Fuck.

  A heavier hand fell on my shoulder. “Allie… gaos. What happened?”

  He spoke loud over the roar of the engines, but I could feel his light wrapped into mine, reassuring, also relieved. I felt some element of understanding there, powering that relief, along with him kicking himself that he hadn’t noticed whatever it was.

  “Who was he after?” he said.

  “You,” I said, looking up at him.

  I saw Jem flinch, more in surprise than anything.

  Then his light grew even warmer.

  Embarrassed by the softness I could see growing in his eyes, I looked down at the face of the seer I was now pretty sure I’d killed.

  “Get Jasek up here,” I said. “We need this guy ID’d, even if it’s an alias. I don’t think he did this alone, whether it was religiously motivated or not. While he might be part of a group that’s a proxy of some kind, I’m not convinced it was Shadow, either.”

  “Who, then?” Jem said.

  I shrugged, both with my shoulders and one hand. “No idea. He had a strange shield though. It felt familiar to me in some way, but not Shadow-familiar. Something else.” I frowned, trying to remember, sifting through my seer memory for something more concrete.

  When it came to me, my frown deepened.

  “Gaos i’thir li’dare...” I muttered.

  “What?” Jem said.

  When I glanced up, I could see Jasek heading our way along with two of his infiltrators, including that seer, Crieg, with whom I’d still barely spoken more than a handful of words. Seeing the same seer staring at me, his dark eyes holding a faint concern, I realized Jem must have called them up here with his headset.

  Jem was watching my face, that warmth still in his light, even as he seemed to be trying to read me without reaching out.

  I made it easier for him, opening my light to him more.

  “Myther cult,” I said, focusing back on the task at hand. As my own words sank in, my voice held disbelief. “A real whack-job one. Fanatics. I can't even believe they still exist.”

  “Myther cult? Here?” Jem frowned, watching my face before he looked back at the dead seer. “You’ve come across them before?” Clicking softly, he amended his words. “I mean… yes. Obviously, yes. But do you know them, Allie? Do you know who they are?”

  “Depends on what you mean.” Glancing up at his questioning pulse, I grunted. “If you count being kidnapped by a couple of them and then nearly lit on fire in some kind of twisted end of the world ritual, then yeah, we go way back.” I gave Jem a grim look. “Back to when I still thought I was human. Before Revik pulled me.”

  I saw understanding reach his eyes. “New York.”

  It was my turn to stare, then to frown. “You know about that?”

  He made an apologetic gesture with one hand. “Your mother.” Seeing my frown deepen, he exhaled, as if reluctant to tell me the rest. “Kali tipped Revik off. Told him he needed to come to the United States. She told him he needed to be there in person.”

  I exhaled, trying to hide my anger and failing.

  With an effort, I focused back on the body of the dead Myther.

  It crossed my mind that Revik believed that cult in New York had some connection to Shadow. He told me how he’d questioned one of their acolytes, a fanatic who’d been drugged to the gills and obviously crazy, but who said a number of things that only made sense to him after Shadow appeared, and after we found the Displacement Lists.

  The acolyte had known about the nine intermediaries alive on Earth.

  He’d also told Revik he had a “patron” who only came to him in dreams. Whoever it was, Revik hadn’t believed him to be talking about Galaith.

  Jasek and the others had reached us by then, so I focused my attention on them.

  “I want his light mapped,” I said, meeting Jasek’s gaze. “You’re going to have to hurry. I killed him, so there won’t be much left to map by the time we reach Asia. I’ll stay here and help.” I glanced at Jem, who made a sharp gesture with one hand, telling me with his eyes he wasn’t going anywhere. “…So will Jem.”

  My eyes returned to Jasek, holding a harder warning.

  “Keep the group small, okay? We have reason to believe it’s religiously motivated, but there might be a Shadow connection.”

  Jasek nodded, touching his headpiece with his fingers.

  Jem had already knelt down beside me, gripping the seat on his side with a white-knuckled hand as the plane continued to climb. The bumpiness inside the cabin was mostly gone, both from the ground and the initial turbulence as the plane took off.

  It was really just gravity and the angle we were fighting now.

  I figured Jem had already started the mapping, but when I glanced at him, he was looking at me. Before I could ask, he leaned abruptly closer.

  He kissed me, hard on the mouth, clasping the back of my head in his free hand.

  We’d never done that in front of any of the others. Kissed, I mean. I panicked briefly from the public display––then, when Jem started using his light, I kind of forgot Jasek and his two infiltrators were standing there, too.

  When we finally parted, a long-feeling handful of seconds later, Jem grinned at me.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You know… for saving my life.”

  “De nada,” I said, grinning back. I nudged his shoulder with mine, if only to get that softer look off his face. “I guess that makes us even, right? Only since I didn’t almost get myself killed for you, maybe you’re still ahead. Just a little.”

  Something in that made his smile fade.

  Studying his face, I bit my lip, regretting my words even as a pained look came to his eyes. Seeing the emotion there, I nudged his shoulder, softer, sending him a pulse of warmth.

  “Hey,” I said. “This guy really is dead, Jem.”

  His eyes cleared.

  He nodded, once, looking back at the dead seer. I watched as he stripped the emotion back from his light, turning it infiltrator-sharp.

  That time, when his irises slid out of focus, I could tell he was working.

  Still, yeah, some part of me wondered what he’d been thinking just then.

  50

  A DISTANT VOICE

  REVIK… BABY. CAN you hear me?

  He sat at the head of a long table, in an open room inside the Royal Gardens.

  It was late summer now.

  No… Fall. It was Fall.

  They told him that. Someone told him it was October.

  The thought flickered through his mind, distant, significant in some way that lingered on the edges of his tongue and mouth. He didn’t know what it meant. He glanced at the trees and realized the leaves had colors, that many had already begun to fall from the dark branches.

  There had been rain. One day this week.

  He cou
ld see birds––

  Revik. Baby, I’m coming for you––

  “Brother Sword?” a voice said.

  The voice was polite. Female.

  He turned his head, and found a seer watching him. He knew her. He could not remember how he knew her, but he felt certain he was correct.

  “Brother,” she said, from where she sat in a half-circle with a dozen other seers. “We require your guidance here, brother.”

  Revik nodded, sitting up.

  Threading his fingers together on the ancient wood table, he leaned forward, remembering why he was there. The construct. They were redesigning the construct here, connecting it to the larger compound below ground.

  He found himself in that other place a lot now.

  It had been strange at first, to be underground.

  He found it uncomfortable at first, not as nice as it was here, with the trees and birds, the sky and rain. But he had grown accustomed to it. He was in the Barrier so often here, it mattered little, where his body was. When he wasn’t working in those spaces, he would drift.

  He would look at the trees and wonder at the significance of colored leaves. He often felt like he was missing something here… like some denser meaning eluded him.

  He didn’t mind. Honestly, he sort of liked it.

  But work… work had always been easier.

  Clearer.

  Beauty lived in that simplicity. Precision like that found in nature itself.

  Picking up from the seer what she wanted from him, he receded into those higher spaces now, looking at the various configurations he’d mapped earlier that day.

  Or maybe the day before––or a handful of days before that. Time confused him now; he spent so little of it on the ground. So little of him lived outside of the Barrier at all now, he almost forgot he was still a prisoner of time’s more linear waves.

  He found the segment she was looking for, the links between the secondary construct and the security station underground and snapshotted it, sending it her way.

  Once he had, he realized he should speak.

  “Will that be adequate?” he said, clearing his throat.

  She smiled at him. Friendly. Warm.

  For an instant, he saw something else in her eyes, too.