by Matt King
“Ow,” he said, laughing. He bent down and picked the animal up. Its legs continued to churn as it fought to get closer. He lifted it to his face and the animal licked greedily.
“Playful,” Tiale said.
“He’s fine. I like him.” He sat the animal down again. It jumped into the air before running around him in circles. “What’s his name?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
The thought brought a frown to his face. Something tugged at him, like he knew the name but couldn’t retrieve it.
The girl smiled as she stared at the wilting flower in her hand. Its petals fell limp over the bent stem.
“Your flower is dying.”
“Its time has come.”
A sound jolted through him, deep and reverberating. There was a moment of dread that disappeared almost as soon as it formed. “I think that was an explosion.”
“It was.”
“Is someone hurt?”
“Yes, but not here. Not yet.”
A wash of relief buried his fear for good. The animal ran away into the grass. It looked back and gave a sharp yelp.
“This place is beautiful.” When he lowered his hands, they brushed up against the tops of flowers now blooming up to his knees. He smiled. His fingers raked against a thorn on the stalk of a flower. He snapped his hand away. A small trickle of blood seeped across his fingertip. The pain faded immediately. He watched the blood flow with a dominating sense of wonder.
Tiale looked out from beneath her long hair. “You shouldn’t stay in there too long, you know.”
“But I’ve never touched flowers. I’ve never walked through a garden.”
“Take a step forward. Watch your feet.”
The animal barked, watching him intently.
He tried to move his legs but the flowers held him back. He shook free and jumped ahead into the low growth again. This time, he watched his feet as she suggested. The blades of leaves began to grow as soon as they came into contact with his toes. Tiny stalks started to grow in a thatch across his foot.
“This is wonderful.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Why do you keep saying these things? Can’t you let me enjoy it? I’ve waited so long.”
“It’s not real,” she said. As soon as the words left her mouth, her head jerked to the side like she’d been struck by an invisible force. Her eyes disappeared behind her long hair hanging down over her features.
“Of course it’s real.” He ran his hand through the newborn plants reaching up to greet him. His palm came away covered in bloody streaks. Beautiful.
A bead of sweat broke out on his neck. He glanced up at the sun beating down on him. The rays were brilliant. It was a testament to the quality of his fine suit that he didn’t feel the heat beneath it.
“You’ll die if you stay here,” she said.
“Stop it.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“Who?” He looked around at the blooming garden. “There’s no one else here.”
The animal barked rapidly. He freed his feet from the undergrowth to walk toward it. It seemed to be the only thing that calmed him. It lapped at his hand and nipped the ends of his finger, giving a shrill bark between each playful bite. He tried to smile even though it started to hurt.
Tiale rose to her feet. Her filthy clothes hung like a wet rag over her frame. The plants beneath her feet were brown and lifeless, despite the fact that the garden had nearly overtaken the small patch of undergrowth. “If you’re going to leave, you need to do it soon.” Her face rocked to the side again. She stumbled slightly, casting her eyes briefly to the plants. “Before it’s too late.”
“I don’t want to go. I told you.”
“You should go back to your world.”
He stepped forward into the last patch of ground not yet transformed into the tall flowering plants. “I don’t want to leave. This is the reality I want.”
Tiale wagged a bony finger pointed toward him. “Reality is not a land of dreams, little friend. Reality is a book already written.”
He looked around for the animal, which had gone silent. His friend was lost to the flowers. The loss was oddly affecting. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but he had an overwhelming urge to find the animal again.
The stalks of the flowers curled around his arm.
“I’m going to go now,” she said.
“Wait,” he said.
“I left something for you to find.”
“No, please. Help me look for my friend.”
He looked out over the tops of the swaying flowers to find the animal’s voice. When he looked back, Tiale was gone. The brown grass where she’d stood had already disappeared beneath a creeping vine of green.
He tried to walk and couldn’t. He forced his legs up until the binds of the vines snapped. Once he was free, he pushed his way through the stalks. The thorns tore away at his exposed hands, but he pressed on, frantically searching for his lost friend. He was so hot now. Sweat clung to the fabric of his clothes. As the cuts in his hands deepened, he registered for the first time the stinging pain that came with them.
He had to fight harder to move. He threw vines of flowers aside. The stalks seemed to grab at him. He quickened his pace even as the plants fought to keep him back. Their stalks dissolved from green to black. The thorns grew to twice their size. He had to find the animal before it was too late.
With a final push through the prison of vines, he stumbled into a clearing again. He looked up and saw the mirror once more—Tiale’s mirror—its pristine face bound by wood. His eyes settled on the reflection. Looking back at him was a single metal sphere, its face awash in swirling clouds of red.
Me.
Like being awoken by a sudden storm, Ion regained his consciousness. Mordric stood nearby, holding him in place with mental hands while Ellia’s familiar drowned him in flames from above. Ion detected cracks forming all over his shell. Sensors inside him flared as his systems teetered on the edge of failure.
“Tiale!” Mordric shouted over the din of Ellia’s pet’s attack. “What are you doing?”
Tiale sat on the ground behind him ignoring it all. She held a flower in her hand, watching the dead petals turn between her fingers.
The familiar’s fire had nearly broken through his shell. Finally in control of his consciousness again, he made sure the color of his shell showed red even through the flames.
He shot out his lightning in all directions, creating an expanding dome of white-hot bolts that tore through the Tria, knocking Ellia and Mordric onto their backs and sending Tiale tumbling across the earth. He ricocheted between them, charging his shell with electricity before each strike. They never had time to move. Like a series of relentless punches, he crashed down into the center of the Tria repeatedly, releasing a wave of lightning each time that juggled them in the air until they were scattered across the Void’s surface.
Mordric and Ellia were the first to recover. Tiale stayed on the ground with a hand pressed to her side. Her eyes looked at the wound in disbelief. They hardened once she turned her stare to him.
Ellia and her father attacked as one, with Ellia releasing a horde of flying beasts from her shroud and Mordric lifting boulders off the ground to hurl at him. Ion let his lightning fill the sky. He flew through the cloud of familiars, sparks of electricity jetting away from his shell. He caught one of Mordric’s boulders with his arms of energy and swung it in a circle before launching it back. Mordric fell again as the rock splintered on impact.
Ion saw his opening. He flew straight for Ellia, fighting through the ever-increasing number of her pets and killing them in sprays of fire as he got closer.
“No,” he heard her say beneath the sound of her storm. “Father, help me!”
Behind him, Mordric screamed something in anger. The champion tore a jagged chunk of rock away from the earth and sent it speeding toward Ion.
Ion sent out two arms of energy, one to grab Ellia in her sh
roud and the other to catch the stone slab flying toward him. He spun them around, pulling her away from her shield and tossing her to the ground. With his other arm, he brought the boulder down in a blur toward her head.
Ellia died in a massive explosion that stained the sky red. Ion anchored himself to the earth while the storm of fiery wind sped past. As the tempest faded, the silhouette of Mordric appeared through the haze. His eyes glowed white. They stared at the wide hole at his feet where his daughter lay dead, her torso ravaged by the stone. A cloud of white drifted away from her body. It rose into the air and seeped toward the white cloud hanging over the battlefield.
Ion flew toward him. Mordric raised a hand and stopped him only a few feet away. His telekinetic hold was unbreakable. Ion sent shockwave after shockwave at him. The electricity struck, but couldn’t stop him. Mordric locked his eyes on Ion. He glowed white hot with a foreign energy Ion couldn’t recognize. If the Orsix powered Mordric, he was calling on everything the force had. Using both hands, the champion directed his power toward Ion. The pressure on his shell increased tenfold. He fought back with all of the lighting he could produce. The electricity crackled across Mordric, tearing rips across his skin. Still, he pressed forward with his mind, squeezing the metal of Ion’s shell to its breaking point.
“Now, Tiale!” Mordric ordered. “Kill this creature! Kill him for what he’s done!”
Tiale crept toward him on all fours. Ion pulled hard trying to free himself. He inched his way back, remembering the sensation of how close she’d come to killing him before. Mordric stepped forward and placed his hands directly on Ion’s shell to stop him from escaping. The pressure was immense.
“Do it, child!”
Tiale lurched closer. A single, quavering finger rose as she extended her arm. She glared hungrily at Ion’s shell, gnashing her teeth as her hand drew closer.
He wanted to beg for his life, despite the folly in it. There was no life beyond consciousness. He wasn’t afraid of dying before Soraste gave him sentience and he would not be afraid after losing it. There would be no more fear or pain. He wouldn’t be.
And yet, he fought to save his life, knowing it was about to end.
Tiale’s finger broke the wall of energy around his shell. She held it there, trembling. Then, her eyes cut to Mordric. With a quickness he didn’t think she had, she moved her finger over and placed it on his hand.
Mordric’s eyes grew wide. They screamed where his mouth couldn’t. He broke apart like he was made of sand, slowly sloughing off body parts until he and his robes were nothing more than dust on the Void’s sandy floor. Tiale laughed as he faded away. He left behind a gathering cloud of white energy. Instead of racing off to join the cloud over the battlefield like Ellia’s, it twisted to a point in the air. Tiale turned her hand over until her palm touched the tip. It flowed into her until there was nothing left.
With Mordric gone, the hold on Ion’s shell evaporated. He quickly drifted away from her reach.
“You saved my life,” he said. “Again.”
“I wanted you to see,” she answered, still staring at the spot where Mordric had been.
In the distance, the battle raged on. From what he could tell, though, Soraste’s army had turned the tide. Galan’s troops were now outnumbered. The lone Mountain still rumbled across the valley. As though she could see him looking, she cast her own eyes to the fight.
“What do you want me to see?” he asked, hoping to distract her from joining Galan’s side.
Her dual-colored eyes looked mad over an unpracticed smile. “Pyra is coming.”
Seemingly present and free of her catatonic shackles for the first time, she rose to her feet, confident and tall. She gave Ion a final glance before walking away toward the battle. A storm of dust gathered around her bare feet. It spread quickly, forming a vortex of swirling red clouds. Arcing shafts of lightning strobed throughout. Tiale lifted her arms away from her sides. The storm responded by racing faster, shaking the ground beneath Ion’s shell. As its edge approached the battlefield, it began to siphon the fog of white energy hanging over the armies. The white light spun through the vortex until it arrived at Tiale. She absorbed it, adding its energy to the halo of light forming around her body.
Ion rocketed away from the earth to race back toward Aeris and the others. Tiale said she wanted him to see Pyra—she didn’t say anything about surviving her arrival. There was an air of finality to the girl’s actions that was unsettling. For too long, she existed in a world of her own, only brought out of her trance by the promise of a brief glimpse of the unknown. If she had broken free of her mental prison for good, it could only be because what she knew of reality was about to end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The storm erupted as if it came from nowhere. August stood rooted in place by the sight of it, mesmerized even though Aeris screamed for them to run. The edges of the tempest stretched wider every second.
Aeris took his arm. “August, help me get them to safety!”
She left him to gather as many Orphii as she could to order the retreat. The Horsemen followed her lead, but not before checking with him to make sure he was okay alone. He nodded for them to go ahead.
Most of the Orphii were closer to the hills, where Aeris headed. A few had scattered to the edge of the battle, including the Mountain. Part of its arm was missing where one of Galan’s pyramids had struck, but otherwise it was still as powerful as ever. It fought a group of tanks that had strayed too from the others.
The storm wall swirled closer, with rips of lightning scattered across its face. The first bands were nearly on top of the the fighting near the far end of the battlefield. What fight was still left in Galan’s troops seemed to be fading fast. Ministers and Pyrians scattered as the winds approached.
August ran up to a pair of Orphii looking around for someone to fight. “That way!” he said, pointing back toward the pass through the mountains. He wasn’t sure whether they understood until they looked at each other, bellowed something he couldn’t understand, and then took off toward the pass. He found a few more and repeated his order. As they left, they called for others to join them. Only the Mountain remained.
He stumbled on his way to the beast. The ground shifted like it might give way any second. The sky, which had been a stagnant cloud of white, was now a churning sea of muddied air. The Mountain’s head rose above the ceiling of the approaching clouds. It reached down, grabbed the last of Galan’s tanks at its feet, and crushed it with a clenched fist. Red sparks flew around its fiery hands.
The top of the tank rolled past August as he approached the Mountain’s feet. He didn’t look back at the storm behind him. He could tell from the first streaks of red in the clouds overhead that it was close. It didn’t occur to him until he was in the shadow of the ten-story giant that he had no hope of being heard above the storm. There was no other choice, though. “Hey! HEY!” he yelled at the Mountain. “We have to get back!”
The Mountain’s single eye looked toward the far end of the field, unaware of August’s screams.
“Hey!” August yelled again. He picked up a rock and threw it at the creature’s feet. “Look!”
A roar from his left froze him. When he looked over, a dozen Elosians glared at him with hungry orange eyes. The muscles in their legs tensed as they prepared to charge. He’d seen the look before when Shadow was about to attack.
Shit.
“Easy, fellas,” he said, inching away. “You should know, I taste horrible.”
The Elosians broke into a sprint as soon as he moved his feet.
All he could do was watch them come. They moved so fast, they would have caught him in two steps if he’d tried to run. They steamrolled over a fleeing Minister, tearing him apart with barely a pause.
August put a hand on his sword. His heart pounded against his ribs.
With the mob of Elosians almost on top of him, they immediately disappeared behind the open hand of the Mountain slamming against the grou
nd. Its long fingers formed a wall between August and the charging beasts. The Mountain focused its eye on him and gave a short bellow before moving its open hand toward him.
Like picking up a bug, the Mountain cupped its fingers beneath the loose soil and scooped August off the ground. August had to dig himself out of the sandy dirt as he fought against the vertigo brought on by riding in the Mountain’s palm. The giant held him up to his diamond eye. Behind its angular planes, each face of the diamond held a pupil like a cat’s eye.
“We have to go back!” August yelled while jabbing a pointed finger toward the hills.
The Mountain looked at the hills and then looked back at the battlefield. For the first time, August did too. Both armies had scattered. The Mountain had destroyed all but a few of Galan’s largest weapons. Those that were left retreated away from the storm. Seeing it from a few hundred feet in the air, he could see why.
It was like looking at a small hurricane from above. The center swirled quickly while the outer bands cycled around the battlefield. In its wake, the ground was splintered and cracked. As the ground-level clouds reached the armies, it swept them up and swallowed them whole, sucking them into its vortex. August switched his vision to infrared. The bodies of Pyrians and Ministers appeared at the edges of the storm as shadows in blue, then disintegrated as they got closer to the eye. A tiny figure floated in the center of the hurricane. Tiale, he guessed. She moved straight toward the heart of the fight, killing indiscriminately.
As her prey dwindled, she angled her storm toward the Mountain.
We can’t stay here. August looked back at the sky. Soraste’s visage was still there. If he couldn’t get the Mountain to understand him, maybe she could.
Soraste, can you hear me? he said through his thoughts.
Her worried eyes cast down on him from above. Yes, she answered.
You have to help me get everyone out of here.
She hesitated. I shouldn’t interfere.
The Mountain’s hand rose and fell as he stomped a group of Ministers. Beyond him, the storm’s eye moved faster across the sand.