Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  Eve clenched her teeth and finally managed to focus enough to weave healing magic into her burned palm. It would undoubtedly scar, but the worst of the pain had already subsided. At least it would let her concentrate enough to mount a real offensive. Perhaps he would underestimate the power she could muster without having to Defile—perhaps it would even be enough to kill him.

  Even if not, she had to do something. If the others were downstairs, then they were walking right into a trap. She doubted Gregori’s illusions would work on Chaval, and she wasn’t sure if even Shaedra could stand against him. And Zach…

  She prayed to the Goddess he wasn’t here. Hopefully he’d gone to the train to meet Maltus. Hopefully he was somewhere safe, somewhere far from here where Chaval couldn’t hurt him.

  Eve spun on a heel and unleashed a spell. She didn’t think about it; she simply acted on instinct, and a surge of violet energy streamed from her fingertips and smashed into Chaval’s protective sphere. She had to close her eyes against the brilliance of the coronal discharge, and she half-expected him to cry out in pain a second later.

  Instead he stood there, smiling, as the energy dissipated harmlessly away.

  “Abalor has graced you with his power, and yet still you deny yourself,” Chaval said. “I am just a man, and no match for the fury of the Avenshal. Surely you can do better.”

  She thought back to the train, and with a flick of her wrists she summoned a trio of flaming rings above her head. One by one she hurled them at Chaval…and one by one they sizzled against his shield and vanished.

  Eve yelped as the Flensing bit into her. Her arms went numb, and the veins in her wrists flared like they were about to burst. If she tried any of that again, she wouldn’t have to wait for Chaval to kill her—the Flensing would take care of that on its own.

  “The curse of your ‘gentle’ goddess,” Chaval sneered as he idly cracked his whip. “If only it were enough. The ancient disciples of Abalor saw the Flensing as the last-ditch effort of a petty, jealous deity who feared her own followers. They thought she was restricting their freedom by forcing them to play by her rules. They thought that once they transcended the Flensing, the best and brightest among them would be free to rise to the top and create their own order.”

  “And damn everyone else in the process,” Eve whispered. The feeling had slowly begun to return to her hands, and she heard more gunshots and screams from outside the door. She was running out of time. She needed to hit him again, to find some way to pierce his defenses…

  “Of course, that’s how magi think,” Chaval went on casually, as if he were in the middle of a dinner-side chat rather than a warzone. “That’s how they always think, and that’s why they deserve to die. Your Kirshal thought she had saved the world by destroying the Balorites and creating the Enclave, but all she did was replace one group of oligarchs with another. Where was her Enclave when Vakar was destroyed? Where were the priestesses of Edeh when Talam was raped by generations of Defilers? Where were any of them when Kalavan was reduced to a graveyard?”

  “Yet you want me to Defile?” Eve asked. “You want me to do exactly the same thing.”

  He smiled again. “No, my dear. I don’t want you to Defile—I want you to make those massacres look like the work of a krata. I want you to feed so deeply that you scar this place for generations. I want you to show the world the true face of the magi…and make them understand why you must all be destroyed.”

  Eve bit down on her lip and shook her head. “You are insane.”

  “I am truth,” Chaval said, cracking his whip again. “And I shall set you free.”

  His whip lashed as if he meant to strike her again, but then a gunshot fired directly outside the arboretum door. A half-second later it shattered open and a lanky, auburn-haired woman strode through, her tattered dark coat covered in a collage of red and blue blood.

  “I hope we’re not intruding,” Shaedra said. Zach crouched behind her in the doorway, gun in hand.

  Chaval grunted. “No Gregori? Well, that’s disappointing.”

  “They’ll be along.”

  “Get on your knees, both of you,” Zach ordered, his gun shifting from Chaval to the Talami woman. “I’m not in the mood to ask twice.”

  Eve grimaced. “Zach, get out of he—”

  The words died on her lips when Chaval’s whip lashed out and slashed across her face. She crumpled to the ground screaming, madly clawing at the wound as if she could tear the pain away. Through the haze of tears, she saw Zach’s face harden and his body tense.

  He twitched his hand as if he meant to fire, but Chaval was faster. The whip lashed out and snagged the gun, plucking it from Zach’s hand and hurling it across the room. Zach reached down to his belt to grab a second pistol, but this one never made it. Chaval gestured with his hand and the weapon immediately disintegrated, leaving little more than a fine pinch of sand to slip through Zach’s fingers.

  “Excellent weapons,” Chaval smirked, “if still a bit primitive.”

  Shaedra pushed Zach behind her and took a step forward. “I wondered how you managed to build this empire all by yourself. It always felt a bit…magical.”

  Chaval snorted. “Magic has nothing to do with it. And after today, it never will again.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered. “I’m not really in the mood for exposition today, so how about I just kill you and get it over with.”

  “The Enclave’s little pet assassin. As much as you hate them—as much as they’ve wronged you—I would think you’d be more interested in what I had to say.”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” she said, her green eyes blazing as she lunged towards him.

  Chaval calmly gestured with his hand, and a current of energy arced from his fingertips directly into Shaedra’s chest. She staggered as the magic coursed through her, and her eyes widened in shock when she suddenly froze in place, apparently unable to move.

  “Given how much you’ve suffered because of the Enclave’s arrogance,” Chaval said, “it’s a pity you haven’t learned from it.”

  Shaedra growled as the energy sparked across her body, and after a moment she seemed to shake it off. She tossed a glance to the Talami woman still standing motionless in the corner. “Your consort here managed to shoot me once and it didn’t kill me. What makes you think your spells will fare any differently?”

  He grunted. “And why would I want to kill you? You’re the perfect example of the magi’s corruption, a woman who destroyed an entire country out of spite. If young Evelyn here doesn’t wish to cooperate, I can just show you to the people and they’ll understand.”

  Shaedra shook her head and charged. She made it perhaps two meters before Chaval flicked his hand and hurled her upwards towards the ceiling. She smashed against the metal latticework of the glass dome above. It cracked around her as she thrashed against the invisible well of gravity.

  Eve rolled back to a crouch, doing her best to ignore the blistering skin on her cheek. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Zach creeping forward to the Talami, and when the woman’s aim shifted towards Shaedra on the ceiling, he pounced.

  He almost made it. He was a single meter away when Chaval abruptly turned and gestured, and suddenly Zach was tumbling across the room. He smashed into the railing right next to Eve, gasping in pain as the air left his lungs. She reached out to grab him, but another wave of invisible force shoved her backwards.

  “Now, now,” Chaval scolded, “you must let him fight his own battles, dear. I figured pain might be enough to get what I wanted, but perhaps this is even easier.”

  Chaval nodded to his bodyguard. “Shoot him in the leg.”

  The yohisha hesitated as she looked at her master. Her face had drained of color and her body was shaking, but eventually she raised her pistol and aimed it down at Zach.

  Eve hopped to her feet again and unleashed a barrage of energy. It lanced out towards the Talami, but with little more than a casual glance Chaval extinguished it long before i
t reached his servant.

  “Still not enough,” he chided. He locked eyes with his bodyguard again.

  This time the yohisha aimed and fired. Zach screamed and thrashed on the ground as a gout of blood erupted out of his knee. Eve tried to lunge after him again, but once more Chaval’s magic pinned her to the ground. She cried out in desperation, but she could barely even hear her pleas above the chiding voice inside her head.

  She had known this would happen. It was the entire reason she’d come here, the entire reason she had wanted to face him alone. But she hadn’t been able to muster the strength to defeat him, and she’d been too cowardly to just kill herself instead. Now Zach was going to suffer and die while she watched, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Or rather, almost nothing.

  “Last chance, Evelyn,” Chaval warned, stepping closer to Zach. “Watch him die, or become what you were born to be.”

  ***

  Gregori Danev hadn’t expected their journey through the hotel to be easy. An Enclave squad had already moved in ahead of them, after all, and he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to reach Karyn or Janel in time. At the very least he’d expected to stumble across the scene of a battle, either one they had just missed or perhaps the last few skirmishes of one that was nearly over.

  What he hadn’t expected to find was this. Not the remnants of a battle, but a slaughter.

  “Blessed Kirshal,” Jean breathed as they came across another pile of corpses. Just like the others they’d found, the bodies were not all soldiers or bodyguards. Most, in fact, were hotel workers or other civilians who’d apparently gotten in the way. And perhaps most telling of all was the lack of burns or other signs they’d been struck down by magic. These men and women had died from much simpler things, from broken necks to knife wounds to bullets.

  “Eclipseans,” Glenn murmured as he glanced down to the bodies stacked at the bottom of the stairwell. “Be on your guard—they may have left sentries behind.”

  “How could they…?” Jean’s question died on her lips and she clenched her fists together.

  Glenn paused briefly as if he wanted to soothe her, but then turned and looked up the stairs. In the end, there was nothing he could say. There was nothing anyone could say. Danev thought back to all the times he had defended Enclave policy over the years, no matter how cold or brutal it might have seemed at the time. He knew they didn’t have an easy job policing magi across the world, and the price for their failure—even a small one—was almost always inordinately high.

  But this had nothing to do with stopping a Defiler, and in the end it didn’t have anything to do with protecting the Fane, either. This was about power, pure and simple. The people of Arkadia had threatened to take it from them, and now they were going to take it back…by any means necessary.

  He took in a deep breath as he followed the others up the stairs. One of his professors at Valmeri had said once that in virtually any war, it was the common people who suffered the most. It rarely mattered how right or wrong either side might have been. At the end of the day, he doubted most Arkadian families really cared if the magi or the Dusties ruled the country. They just wanted to be able to feed their families and go on about their lives.

  It was increasingly unlikely that they would get that chance. One way or another, the lines had been drawn, and the war wouldn’t stop here.

  Glenn paused when he reached the top of the stairs and signaled for the other two to wait. He frowned when he pushed open the door and glanced up and down the outside corridor.

  “Anything?” Danev asked between labored breaths. If they somehow did manage to survive this, his first order of business was going to be getting in shape…and probably quitting smoking, too. Off-hand, he wasn’t sure which prospect scared him more.

  “More bodies,” Glenn said. “No fighting and no sentries.”

  A knot twisted in Danev’s stomach. He had no interest in fighting if they could avoid it, but at least if they’d stumbled on a battle it would have meant they weren’t too late. But if it was quiet…

  “Come on, stay close,” Glenn said, beckoning them both forward.

  Danev turned the corner and swallowed heavily as he took in the carnage. Corpses lined the hallway on either side. Some were maids and other hotel workers thoughtlessly gunned down. Most, however, were campaign staffers for President Janel, well-dressed men and women lying in pools of blood and scattered piles of paper.

  “They didn’t even bother to burn the bodies or conceal the evidence,” Danev whispered.

  “They want to send a message,” Glenn replied gravely, his eyes still darting about the corridor. “They want to make sure everyone knows the price for standing against them.”

  Jean shook her head. “It’s only going to make it worse. The Dusties will rally around it.”

  “Maybe,” Glenn murmured as he stepped forward and started peering in the rooms one by one. The presidential suite was obvious when they approached it, and the door handle still dripped with fresh blood.

  Glenn took a deep breath and pushed it open. The others followed closely behind him. The scene inside was no different than that in the hallway—bodies lied crumpled in all matter of positions, most of them soldiers and bodyguards.

  All except one. Danev drew in a sharp breath when he glanced through the bathroom door and saw President Janel lying face down in the tub, shot execution-style at short range.

  It had been a hundred fifty years since an Arkadian president had been assassinated, and it was commonly believed that the last one had also become an enemy of the Enclave. He and his entire family had “accidentally” burned to death inside their own mansion. The message then had been just as chilling as it was now.

  “The first torbo president,” Danev murmured, “murdered in his washroom.”

  “Gregori.”

  The voice came from across the hallway, and Danev spun on a heel and raced outside. He didn’t really want to see what he knew was in there, but he knew he had to.

  “She didn’t cower,” Glenn whispered as he stood over the bed. Karyn Marose was slumped across it, a pair of knife wounds in her back.

  “Goddess embrace you,” Jean prayed as she placed her hands on her old friend’s face and closed her eyes. “May you find peace in the Fane.”

  Glenn balled his hand into a fist. “And then there were five.”

  “When I get my hands on Simon, we’ll be down to four,” Danev said. “After Jack, we can make it three.”

  “They don’t matter right now,” Glenn growled as he spun to face the open door. “We have to get to Evelyn before it’s too late.”

  Danev placed a hand on Jean’s shoulder and another on Karyn’s still-warm cheek. He almost wished the Eclipseans had stuck around….but vengeance had never really been his thing. And in the end it would just waste more time and more lives, and right now they didn’t have a lot of either.

  “We can cut across Duren Street to save time,” Danev said. “With luck, we should be able to make it in ten minutes or less.”

  “Then let’s go,” Glenn replied, tossing a final look down at their old friend. “We’re not losing anyone else today.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Amaya Soroshi’s thoughts lingered on her family. In just under a year of working for Chaval, she’d sent back enough money to give them an honest start at rebuilding their lives…but that was all it was, a start. It would take her years to earn enough to guarantee them a real future, years during which Steamworks would no doubt rape and pillage Talam until nothing remained but barren fields and indentured servants.

  She turned to face her employer and reeled at the sight of the sick, twisted grin stretching across his face. He was the same man who had given her a once-in-a-lifetime chance to save her family. He was the same man who had put a bunch of poor and disenfranchised peasants to work all across western Arkadia. He was the same man whose revolutionary vision of the future was echoging across the entire world.

/>   Yet he might also have been the most evil person Amaya had ever met. He had sold his people on a lie, and perhaps even worse he had been a hypocrite while doing it. All this time he had been a mage, fully capable of wielding the power he waged war against. And all of it—the grand speeches, the remarkable innovations, even the revolution itself—was driven by a petty thirst for revenge against those who had turned their backs on him.

  Amaya felt sick. She had worked for evil men before; she had probably spent most of her life doing just that. But at least the Talami warlords had been honest about their intentions. They wanted power, pure and simple. They wanted to take control of the shattered remnants of her homeland and make it theirs, and they made no apologies for their ambition. Perhaps that didn’t actually make it any better, but somehow it felt different.

  Her mother had once told her that good and evil were just words men used to justify their actions and demonize those of others. The only constant in the world, she’d insisted, was survival. She had traded her body and ultimately her life to ensure that her daughter would live, and for a long time Amaya had heeded her words. In a world of brigands, tycoons, and warlords, morality was a razor thin wire that cut anyone who dared cross it.

  But right now, standing here in this chamber surrounded by Chaval’s madness, she knew that evil did indeed have a face. And she knew that if she looked into a mirror, it would be staring right back at her.

  “Last chance, Evelyn,” Chaval taunted the young woman. “Watch him die, or become what you were born to be.”

  DeShane dragged herself to a crouch, her left cheek scarred and blistered from Chaval’s whip. A swirl of Fane energy coiled around her like a serpent, and her eyes flashed dangerously as she gathered all her strength.

  “Eve,” the young man whispered, grasping at the hole in his leg. “You can’t.”