War of the Princes 03: Monarch

by A. R. Ivanovich

  Rune grabbed the spear in the Empty's gut and called out to Dylan. “Lift!”

  Dylan raised his hands and the Empty launched into the air. Rune held tightly onto the spear, and when it pulled free, dark gray bile poured onto the floor. “Move!” Dylan shouted back at him.

  Spear in hand, Rune got out of the way with barely seconds to spare before Dylan smashed the Empty against the ceiling and down on the floor. Rune gripped the spear with two hands and delivered the finishing blow, stabbing the Empty through the back. When it was done, he extended his arm, slashing the spear downwards, and flicking gray blood free from the weapon.

  A shot fired from the darkness and the bullet whistled past my head and embedded in the wall beside Kyle. I froze where I stood, and all thoughts fled my mind but one. If I'd been standing one pace to the left, I'd be dead. If that was Headly shooting, he'd been aiming for Kyle. Knowing quite keenly what I was doing and what I could lose, I held my arms out and blocked him with my body.

  Kyle called out to me. He was close, but to me, he sounded far away. “Kat, get down! What are you doing?”

  I wasn't so sure of what I was doing, but it didn't stop me. “I made a promise.”

  I won't let anything hurt you.

  “Dragoon! The opening!” Hussar Prie shouted.

  Rune realized his mistake and dropped to one knee, placing the palm of his free hand flat on the cracked wood panels. A tiny blue flame sprouted to life, trailing swiftly away from its creator. When it reached the opening, Rune took a deep breath, and the little fire burst into a wall large enough to block the gap in the structure.

  No sooner than controlled blue flames lapped at the ceiling, baking us in warmth and throwing cool white light across the room, a second Empty charged through the elemental blockade. His body was so thoroughly engulfed in fire, it would have been impossible to differentiate him from an average soldier... except that he kept coming. Flames lapped around the quiet, cherub-like face of the Empty's mask. Fire or not, he charged in, an unstoppable force, aimed right for Dylan.

  The young lord yelped as the human fireball barreled at him. Rune threw himself in the Empty's path, but didn't have enough time to raise his spear for a hit. The Empty slammed its shoulder into Rune's chest, but my Dragoon had counted on the close proximity. He dropped his spear and grabbed onto his assailant with both hands, retracting the flames before the Empty could light the room, or Dylan, on fire.

  Free of the flames, the Empty was as craggy as charcoal, with armor and flesh and hair that had melted together. It wasn't a gory sight, but it wasn't natural either. No living creature would continue fighting. Before Rune could let go, Dylan Lifted the charred monster, carrying Rune along with him. It had all happened in such fast succession, no one had been prepared for the mistake. The Empty thrashed, punching Rune in the side with his metal-clawed fist, even as Dylan stopped short and dropped them both to the ground.

  I cried out in alarm, and another shot whizzed past my ear. Behind me, Kyle had narrowly escaped another bullet.

  Rune rolled on the ruined floorboards, clutching his side, but the charred Empty was up in seconds. It grabbed Dylan by the chest with both hands, lifted him in the air, and slammed him repeatedly against the wall. Glass frames shattered against his back, wallpaper tore, and the wall itself was indented where Dylan was used as a battering ram. His hands struggled against the barbs of the Empty's gauntlets until the final moment when he was dropped, limp, to the ground.

  Then the Empty came for us.

  “Kyle!” I shouted, not knowing what to do.

  Hussar Prie pulled a knife from her belt, and staggered forward. She was badly wounded and wouldn't stand a chance. Even now, the first Empty was stirring and beginning to rise. How could anyone fight an entire army of these things?

  Steadying myself, I strode forward and stepped around Prie, making myself the nearest target to the gray creature.

  I couldn't remain at Kyle's side any longer. At this point, there was a chance none of us would make it out of the room. I had to do something. Lightning roped from my arms like crackling vines, twining together to form wicked armor from shoulder to fingertip. Now, flourishing filigrees accented the design. I hadn't put thought into them, I just let the forming armor represent me and they'd taken shape. My connection with the Spark was strengthening. It was as solid as my resolve.

  I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't tall or burly. I wasn't any kind of a match for the gray berserker that raced toward me. But I would be more than I was, if it meant protecting the people I loved.

  All of the noise in the room vanished, replaced by the heavy thrumming of my heart. My vision was sharp, focused. The charred Empty descended upon me like a violent storm. His burned hands caught me partly by the collar, shoulder and neck, and like Dylan, he lifted me from the ground. I didn't feel the pain that raced through my body where he lifted me.

  Bad move.

  I grabbed onto his arms, pouring the electricity from my armor into his blackened body. The Empty shook from the charge, and his grip on me tightened. My head swam, I lost oxygen, my grasp of the Spark weakened. Twitching as he was, he pushed through my attack, barely missing a single stride. Using his momentum, he pulled me back and threw me by the neck off of the high ballroom balcony.

  I fell.

  Chapter 44: In the Ballroom and Falling

  Emptiness surrounded me. I was utterly alone. There was no one to reach for. Nothing to hold. That's what it feels like to fall. The world around me moved like a series of still frames. I existed for an eternity in each moment. Some part of my consciousness read the weight of the trouble I was in, gauged the distance from the balcony to the tawny, marbled ballroom floor, and knew that I was going to die.

  My eyes saw the Empty who threw me take another step, grounding himself from following after me. His burned torso twisted and he turned back to face the ruined blue room. I saw the few paintings that remained hanging, the space where Dylan's body dented the wall, and the giant chair that Kyle had been staring at. The railing that I'd been flung over was low, and made of twisting, silvery gold metal. The gilded green ballroom swallowed me, stealing my view of the blue room. I'd been plunged into a royal hall inspired by the most regal of forests. Insinuations of trees struck up the walls, tumbles of foliage inspired the decor, crystal chandeliers were like clouds of dewdrops, and the ceiling was painted like the night sky.

  My eyes saw all of those things in remarkable detail, but my mind saw other events entirely. My dad sat in the old chair where our kitchen met the living room–the one that was ripped and worn, but too comfortable to throw away. He held me and sang to me, and told me that he would always be with me. That was the night my mother had left us. The rare storm had thundered over us, but I felt safe.

  There was the day I'd gone to school and found out that the new boy with the cast on his arm would be sitting beside me. He'd made a lot of jokes and told me that his name was Kyle Kiteman. I saw my step-mom Kassey holding my little brother Kevin for the first time. I saw the day I'd met Ruby. Her hair was black before her parents began letting her color it red. I thought she might have been the only girl I'd ever known who wouldn't wrinkle her nose at me if I jumped in the mud.

  Countless memories of my life in Haven poured like a waterfall through my mind and through my heart, with one resounding plea: Not yet. When my flashbacks caught up with Rune, they held still. He'd lost everyone who mattered to him. I wouldn't leave him alone in this world. My friends needed me, Rune needed me, Haven needed me, but most of all, I needed me. There was too much I wanted to see, too much I wanted to do. I would not allow half of my life's canvas to be blank. I would not haunt the world in search of lost dreams. I would live!

  Air gusted around me, too thin to hold me up. The bottom of my stomach dropped. My lungs squeezed. My heart battered my ribcage. When my body reflexively sent pangs of warning through my nerves, telling me instinctively that I was not long before the pain, I used the Pull to reach for the Spark
within me. The result was a clarity that I had never experienced before. I had literally found a part of me by tapping into the core of my own connection with myself.

  I am Katelyn Kestrel and I–will–not–die!

  Summoned by my silent call, thunder boomed outside, rattling the foundations of the ballroom. Branches of lightning exploded from my arms, my legs, and my back, burying their points in the immaculate floor. Ropes of electricity scraped down the nearest wall like cat claws through tree bark, leaving dark scorch marks in their wake.

  Each bolt of lightning bred smaller, thinner tendrils, until my back was bristling with angular quills. Electricity cracked and deafeningly, I answered the sky with thunder of my own making. The power of a thousand bolts of lightning cushioned my fall, a mere seven feet from impact.

  I lost my breath, staring up at the falsely starry sky, the green and gold, and the chandeliers. Everything sparkled in the luminescence of my light. Was that really me?

  I hung there for the shortest of moments, and felt a tingling sense of fatigue: something Rune had warned me about. Abilities are like any other physical activity. If you overdo it, you get tired. That was the idea, more or less. Aside from the day I'd defended myself from Commander Stakes, and lit up the night with an electric white tree, I'd never felt truly exhausted. I'd never met my limit. As the breath quickened through my lungs, I wondered if I'd found the edge of it.

  Blue light glowed from the room beyond the balcony and my eyes narrowed. It was so high up. Too far. But when the blue light flashed, I didn't care. Pride filled me, as rich and strong as my own Spark. Headly, the Empty, Prince Raserion, none of them could stop me. I could not be beaten.

  My lightning stretched, pushing me up with the strength of its energy until I was standing on the beams that bristled from my legs, waist and torso. A cloak of lightning draped long from my back, like a pair of downcast butterfly wings. Striking out in all directions, my electricity clawed up the walls, pushing, pulling, and elevating me to the foot of the balcony. It was strange, standing on nothing, but feeling the security of an energetic force holding me up. The ground pressed away from me at a dizzying rate, but I didn't distract myself with the threat of heights. When I reached the balcony, Hussar Prie was fighting for her life with the unburned Empty. Dylan was still lying where he'd fallen.

  Headly, himself, stood over Rune with a rifle in his hands. His guards, Hussars and infantry soldiers stood behind him, readily awaiting orders. Rune's wall of fire had retracted.

  I didn't arrive in silence. I couldn't exactly pull off a sneak attack, but that didn't mean that no one was surprised to see me. My lightning cracked and burned, starting fires where it touched cloth or candle, or dry wood. Everything was hot and bright. I floated just outside the balcony. When the soldiers caught sight of me, their faces went slack and their jaws dropped open. Some of them armed themselves with sword or pistol, and many shielded their eyes from my piercing light. The charred Empty was face down, only a few steps from where he'd thrown me. Enough electricity could stop a heart whether a person could feel pain or not.

  “Put the rifle down, Headly,” I told him.

  Not even Headly was prepared to see me. “What the hell are you?”

  My nerves prickled at the insult and a vine of electricity ran up my back, snapping out to sever a chandelier from its hangings. Sparks flew, and the many glass and crystal petals struck together like the music of a wind chime in a storm, before shattering upon the ground. “I'm Katelyn Kestrel. I'm a Lodestone from Haven. And I accept your surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Headly chuckled, squinting up at me. “To you? You are no Lodestone, you're not even human,” he said, moving the wide barrel of his flintlock rifle to face me.

  “Katelyn,” Rune said, pushing himself up onto one knee.

  I reached out a hand to look at it. My skin and clothes were glowing white, cross-hatched with tendrils of lightning. My orange scarf and clothes snapped away from and against my body as though affected by a jagged wind. I touched my face and found it cushioned by the same electric padding. Only my eyes were free, electricity curling away like the absence of a mask. When had it covered me? My lungs sank, and I felt a moment of exhaustion sweep over me.

  “Let's not make this about me.” My lightning lashed onto the railing, twining and squeezing it. I floated over the rail, and pulled the Spark away from my feet before I touched the ground. I wasn't about to charge the floor and kill everyone in the room. Coaxing the element back into hibernation proved to be more difficult than I'd ever imagined. Where I took the lightning away, more of the branches sprouted like barren wings from my back. I took in a deep breath and forced myself to subdue the power. My brightness dimmed, but only a little.

  The Empty with the gaping wound in his stomach had battered Hussar Prie into the wall and hefted his barbed fist, ready to deliver her a killing blow. With my arrival in the corner of the room, the light even stole his attention for a moment. Prie leaped to her feet like a cat, snatching up one of the metal, robotic flowers that lay on the ground. She spun, holding it like a sword. As she moved, a sheet of ice grew over the flower until it formed a thick and brutal blade of its own. Vaguely visible beneath the rippling blue and white surface, the flower remained like a bone beneath flesh.

  Prie ducked his swinging blows and sent her blade straight into the Empty's heart, easily breaking the excess ice from her own arm, and leaving the weapon embedded in its mark. The weakened Empty buckled over and fell to the ground.

  Rune shot to his feet, jamming his shoulder into Headly's stomach. The Lord of Caraway buckled over and Rune quickly disarmed him. Favoring his side, he held the rifle in one arm, his finger resting on the trigger. Rune gripped Headly's shoulder with his free hand and kicked the man's legs out from under him. “Drop your weapons or I fire.”

  “Shoot him!” Headly snapped at his soldiers.

  “I wouldn't listen to him,” I said in a singsong voice. I let the electricity drip free from my face, and my hair tumbled down my back, moving in the static as though tousled by the slightest draft.

  Some of the soldiers clearly wanted to attack me. They were afraid and struggling to decide who the greater threat was: the Dragoon holding their leader hostage, or the lightning-charged she-beast.

  “This is your final warning,” Rune said.

  “Fire, damn you!” Headly spat.

  I curled my hands together, pressing my lightning into a series of compact forms. When I opened my palms, a sea bird made of electricity burst free. Nearly as fast as light, I guided the bird to meet the weapons of the Hussars. Pushing a creation of the Spark through the air, unattached to myself wasn't only difficult– it hurt. Just below the surface, my skin prickled and burned, but the bird struck true. Like a wave hitting the rocks, it collided with the line of guns and swords, steel and silver, one after the other, in a burst of sparks and light.

  It would have been easy to let the energy disperse into the metal targets. I could have let the electricity drive wholly into the steel, reaching its searing fingers up the length of the metalwork and into the soft, grounded flesh of their hands. That's what wild lightning would do. I could clear the room of enemies.

  I could give all of them reason to fear me. I could blast them all, Headly too, and save my friends.

  My own ruthlessness horrified me. I wouldn’t kill anyone. It wasn’t me.

  Biting down hard, I focused on withholding the bird's energy. Each soldier was shocked and dropped their weapon. One gun misfired, its bullet striking the floor before the Hussar could let the electrically charged weapon go. Some grabbed their wrists or pulled their hands back, but all remained standing.

  I staggered backward, relenting control of my electric bird. It slammed like a cannon into the far wall, burning through wallpaper and wood, and surged the electric lamps until they went out cold. Rune and Headly both jumped in reaction to the explosion.

  The room dimmed only a little, and I cast eerie, jumping white lig
ht on the soldiers as they prepared to retaliate. One of them set their hands ablaze with orange flames in defense. Others used their Abilities to manifest weapons of gold, or bone, or ice. The pain beneath my skin receded, but not completely.

  Any moment now, the Hussars would obey their leader and overwhelm us.

  A deep and booming voice consumed all other sounds in the room. “Lower the rifle.” It was Prince Varion... or his bodyguard at the very least. He filled the gap in the wall with his impressive bulk and stared at us through the slats of his helm.

  Rune didn't remove the weapon from his target, but I saw him flinch against the power of the bodyguard’s words. He tucked his arm against his side where he'd been struck with the Empty's barbed fist, stopping the blood from trickling down his waist.

  “What are you doing?” Kyle stepped out from the corner of the room. His hands were shaking, and though he hadn't fought, he appeared haggard. The thick black blood of an Empty was splashed across his shirt. “I thought you were on our side.”

  The bodyguard looked down at him with a posture that suggested regret. “I cannot take sides.”

  “You see?” Headly's voice was shrill and sharp as a knife. “Even the prince does not support you traitors!”

  Wounded as she was, Prie limped forward and pointed at Headly as though she wielded a weapon. “He obeys your command because he cannot do otherwise. Your rank is all that keeps him from standing with us at this very moment!”

  “How dare you speak such words before your prince!” Headly spat. “This is treason!”

  “Stay down!” Rune shouted at him.

  My skin burned, and the heat pouring over me was unbearable. Half of the soldiers watched me, waiting to see what I would do. I took a slow step toward Rune, but was stopped short. Anything could set off the fighting, and I needed to be careful that it wasn't me.