by John Corwin
"Cephus isn't going to be as easy as we hoped," I told him.
He didn't look surprised. "Underestimating an opponent is a sure way to make anyone formidable."
"Sounds like something Kanaan would say," I said with a grin.
He chuckled. "I probably got it from him."
"Justin Slade, my lad!" Colin McCloud barged into the conversation, slapping me and Takei heartily on our backs. He took Elyssa's hands and kissed them. "Lieutenant Borathen, you're still as fair a lass as ever."
She blushed and smiled. "Thank you, Colin."
The lycan alpha's smile faded after he released her hands. "I'm ready to pay back that son of a bitch, Cephus." He ran a hand down a mutton chop. "I didn't fight a war against Seraphim to let another one blast our realm to pieces."
I put a hand on his thick shoulder. "You'll have a chance soon, Colin."
"Aye, I hope so," he said. "The packs are howling for vengeance."
"Justice is best served with a clear mind," Takei said calmly.
McCloud barked a laugh. "Our minds are quite clear, thank you."
I cleared my throat before the pair got off on a tangent. "It's time to get started."
Before taking my place at the head of the room, I walked to Kassallandra and offered her a slight nod. She curtseyed deeply, eyes on the floor without losing a hint of her royal bearing.
"Anae Kassallandra Assad, your presence honors me," I said, doing my best not to laugh at the absurd social niceties required by Daemos.
Her eyes rose to meet mine, an eyebrow quirked. "The honor is mine," she replied. "This is truly a new day when Justin Slade greets me formally."
"I try to mix it up," I said. "Thank you for coming."
"The war is not as completed as we hoped," she replied. "Cephus poses a serious threat to our realm should he muster another attack."
"Agreed." I headed toward the head of the room where Elyssa had already gone to speak with her father. "We ready?"
"Ready as ever," she said, fiddling with her phone. "Just give me a minute to prepare the maps."
I decided to get the ball rolling and clapped my hands to cut through the din of conversation. "Our mission to destroy the crystoid didn't go as planned."
"You're darn tootin'," Shelton said around a mouthful of donut. "We were about to call in the cavalry."
"It's a good thing you didn't," I said. "Cephus has been a very busy beaver." I displayed an image of the dome taken as Elyssa and I had flown past it during mission insertion, and pointed to the shadows of the arch inside. "We suspect this purple arch is how Cephus was able to launch the crystoids."
"It looks purple," Shelton said.
"Probably red," McCloud said. "The Murk just makes it look purple from the outside."
"Whatever color it is, it poses a significant threat," Elyssa said. "During our escape from Tarissa, we were cornered by Cephus and his forces. He asked us to join him because within a few days, he plans to open a portal to the Void."
Shelton's mouth fell open. "Holy Moly. He can't be serious."
"What madman would release the Beast from its prison?" Captain Takei said.
I held up my hands to silence the shocked murmurs. "Does anyone know what the Beast is?"
The looks around the room told me no.
Victus was the only one who didn't look overly concerned, his gaze distant as if scientific curiosity were more interesting than the grave danger of the Void.
"There are few legends about the Beast," Mom said. "Jeremiah said he'd once seen the creature, and it frightened him so much he refused to travel by portal for months."
Shelton held his hat over his chest, eyes wide. "What did it look like?"
Mom shook her head. "He didn't say."
A chorus of groans went around the room.
"That was a letdown," Shelton grumbled.
"Cephus's arch isn't the only concern," Elyssa said. "He's had enough time to construct more crystoids or another secret weapon."
I clapped my hands once to silence the room. "Bottom line—we don't have time to play around."
"We need to be on the attack in less than four days," Elyssa said. "Sooner if possible."
"We came ready to go to war," McCloud said. "Just lead the way."
I continued the story of our escape from Tarissa and our journey to Ooskai. "In this small village we met someone I thought was long dead." I paused to let some tension build. "Kaelissa, the mother of Nightliss and Daelissa."
"She still lives?" Victus asked in a shocked voice.
Murmurs filled the room.
"Alive and kicking and messed up in the head," I confirmed. "She's pumping out kids to fix the Seraphim immortality problem." I caught an embarrassed look from Joss who probably prayed I didn't mention his contribution to the cause.
"An interesting wrinkle," Takei said. "She won't be a problem, will she?"
"I don't think so." I displayed images of the village and people Elyssa had taken during our visit and stopped it on Kaelissa. The murmurs rose to gasps.
"Bloody hell, she looks just like her daughters," Colin said, the hair on his neck rising like hackles. "Let's hope she doesn't have the same aspirations as the crazy one."
Shelton whistled. "Spitting image. I think she looks more like Daelissa."
"She is troubled, but harmless," Flava said. "I do not expect her to help or hinder."
"Agreed," Elyssa said. "My assessment is that she prefers to stay out of harm's way."
I still felt a wild mix of emotions looking at the sera who so reminded me of Nightliss. I almost hoped I never saw her again. I flicked the image away and projected the holographic map of Kdosh. "Thanks to the Mzodi, the sky fishers, we were able to secure passage to Kdosh on a flying whale-dragon ship with a forest inside it."
The murmurs died away to confused silence.
"What's a whale dragon?" Shelton asked.
I flicked to a picture of the Evadora and described the ship and crew. "I asked Captain Cora, to request help from the sky fisher fleet. Otherwise, it'll take several days to finish repairing the skyway."
"Holy prancing pirates," Shelton said. "That's the coolest thing since ninjas with laser swords." His eyes lit up. "Do they have sky ship battles?"
Thomas asked a more practical question. "What's the capacity of these ships?"
"The whale ship could probably hold two hundred people." I rotated the image so everyone could see how humans scaled to the large vessel. "I don't know how large the other ships are."
"Who's the lass with orange hair?" McCloud pointed to Cora in the three-dimensional image.
I wasn't sure how to answer. She'd requested I keep her true identity secret from the crew, but what she'd told me seemed too important to keep from the others. That, and my nerdy side was super-excited about what I'd discovered. I felt like a giddy school girl with fresh gossip to dish. I repressed a nerd-tastic giggle and kept my face serious, then baited the hook. "What I'm about to tell you must remain classified."
Shelton rubbed his hands together. "I knew you were holding back."
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "What's the reason?"
"Cora doesn't want her crew to know certain things about her," I explained. "Not that it's anything bad."
Thomas looked around the room. "Whatever is spoken in this room is already privileged information for security purposes, but I recommend we adopt a classified rating for whatever you're about to tell us."
"Recommendation seconded," Victus said.
"Vote by a show of hands," Thomas said, raising his.
Everyone but Shelton raised their hands. He hesitantly did so after Bella nudged him with her elbow.
"The motion passes," Thomas said. "Information regarding Captain Cora is classified. Anyone caught disseminating such intelligence will be banned from future meetings unless and until we hold a vote to declassify."
Shelton frowned, but a warning look from Bella kept his mouth shut.
"Proceed, Mr. Slade," Thomas sa
id.
I dropped the little bomb first. "Cora is not Seraphim." Bam.
The statement drew a few raised eyebrows but fell well short of the response to Kaelissa's picture.
I let the suspense marinate a few seconds before dropping the next bomb. "She's also not from Eden." Boom.
Shelton didn't let this dramatic pause linger. "You going for an acting award or something? Spit it out already."
"Cora is probably older than all of our combined ages." Kerblam! I didn't know if that was true, especially since Kassallandra and my father existed a long time before they adopted corporeal bodies, and my mother had been around a few thousand years as well. Still, it was definitely worth the uproar that followed.
"How is that possible?" McCloud said.
Shelton had turned to my father and was probably interrogating him about his age so he could calculate a number. Even Kanaan looked a bit unsettled.
My mother gave me a troubled look that didn't have to do with age. It made me think she had some idea where I was going with this. It also reminded me of Kaelissa's claim—that Fjoeruss might be my bunch-of-greats grandfather.
I dropped the final thermonuclear factoid on the crowd. "Cora is from a realm called the Glimmer, a place that anchors all the realms together. In fact, the pocket dimensions are actually the points where our realms touch." KABOOM!
The room erupted into excited conversation.
Victus raised a hand. "I motion that we declassify any information regarding the Glimmer where it does not pertain to compromising Cora's identity."
"I don't have a problem with it so long as we don't blow the whistle on her," I said. "Motion seconded."
Thomas called for a vote and the motion passed. Everyone in the room suddenly had access to the juiciest gossip known to man and Shelton had the look of a man who planned to milk it as much as I had.
"Let's simmer down, folks." I raised my hand and lowered it. Once it was quiet again, I continued, explaining how Cora controlled nature and what she'd told me about the Lyrolai, the Apocryphan, the Sirens, and so forth. I didn't mention her daughter, Evadora, or her personal issues since I didn't think they contributed to the conversation. I finished up with some fun facts about the Glimmer. "After the Sirens destroyed the realm, they granted the survivors immortality, but at the cost of all emotion. Apparently, the Glimmer folk can regain emotion if they come to Eden, but they also risk losing their immortality."
"Cora lived here for centuries," Victus said. "Does she retain immortality by visiting the Glimmer?"
"I don't know," I said. "I suspect there's something about the realm that makes mortal beings immortal."
"How interesting," he said.
With the big revelations out of the way, I flicked back to the map of Seraphina. "And now back to our regularly scheduled program." I flourished my hands toward Elyssa. "What's the battle plan?"
Without missing a beat, she stepped into the spotlight and switched to a map of Tarissa. Elyssa drew arrows from the skyway terminus. "If the sky fishers don't give us passage, we'll come via the skyway." She dotted the area with icons of blue flying carpets. "The Blue Cloak air forces will sweep forward with our broom attack squadrons to ward off aerial assaults from the fliers."
"You said these fliers are brainwashed citizens?" Takei asked. "Are we using lethal force?"
"I think we have to," Thomas said. "Their conditions might be reversible, but we can't risk losing our own people." He turned to Flava. "What do you think?"
Flava's eyes clouded with sadness. "We would be killing mothers, fathers, and children—citizens my legionnaires are sworn to protect even at the cost of their lives." She looked around the room. "If you saw your own brethren in such a condition, would you kill them, or grant them mercy?"
Thomas turned to Phoebe. "I need casualty projections if we attempt nonlethal force on the mutants."
"I don't have enough data," Phoebe said. "Justin told us that Cephus is creating more of them every day. If we attempt nonlethal takedowns on a thousand, then we're going to be massacred."
"I need more options," Thomas said, looking around the room. "We have lancers, but their range is too short to be effective against flying targets."
"What about magical interdictors?" Victus said. "Without magic, they can't fly."
"They have the aether packs, remember?" Shelton said. "Cutting off magic won't do squat."
"Interdictors don't deplete magic like crystoids." Victus said in a contemptuous voice. "They corrupt it into malaether. This means that even the aether packs would be corrupted."
"Our people would require a token to filter the malaether," Thomas said. "We don't have nearly enough of those to go around."
Shelton glared at Victus a moment then raised his hand. "I have some ideas, but I'll need Adam Nosti's help."
"If you can implement them quickly, let us know," Thomas said. He turned to Flava. "If we can't come up with suitable nonlethal methods, we'll have to use full force."
"I appreciate your efforts, Commander," Flava said coldly, "but I cannot condone the wholesale slaughter of Tarissan citizens, no matter their state of mind."
"I'm not asking you to condone it," Thomas said, "but you also need to understand that Cephus poses an immediate threat. If he opens a portal to the Void or launches another salvo of crystoids, he'll kill thousands more. I will not sit idly by and allow that just because he's using civilians as shields."
Shelton grunted. "Talk about your moral dilemmas."
"The loss of civilian life would be regrettable," Takei said. "But we must act swiftly and decisively before Cephus launches another offensive."
"Approaching from the skyway means we'll be facing the brunt of Cephus's defenses," Elyssa said. "If the Mzodi help, we can flank Cephus's defenses and assault his fortress before his forces react." She zoomed in on the giant purple pimple in the city center. "The shield is powered by aether wells—the equivalent of Arcane aether generators—and can probably withstand a barrage of crucibles."
"That's where we come in," I said. "I once broke out of the fortress using Stasis, but it took everything I had to make a hole big enough for me to fit through. I'll need all the Seraphim we can muster to link and pound the fortress with one huge blast of Stasis. That should create a gap for our ground troops to exploit."
"Once the ground troops are in, their priority targets will be the aether wells around the perimeter." Elyssa circled the locations. "At least half of them need to be down for the shield to fall."
"There is a flaw in that plan," Flava said.
Elyssa turned to her. "Which is?"
"There are backup aether wells belowground." She walked to the front of the room and rotated the angle of the holographic image to ground level. Barely visible through the Murk barrier, the aether wells resembled flat circular pods bulging a foot out of the ground. Flava drew circles staggered between the aboveground wells. "In order to lower the barrier, the wells above and below must be destroyed."
"How do we reach the underground targets?" Thomas asked.
Flava pointed to the building door. "The only access to the underground is through the Ministry of Research."
"Are there any sewer tunnels in the city?" Thomas asked.
Flava's forehead wrinkled. "Sewers?"
"They don't use plumbing," I explained.
"Huh?" Shelton said incredulously. "Where do you put all your sh—"
Bella elbowed him. "Harry!"
"There are aether conduits," Flava said, "but they are barely large enough for a person to crawl through."
"It's an option," Thomas said. "Are they dangerous to use?"
She shook her head. "No, they merely contain concentrated aether for the buildings to utilize."
"What if we cast an interdiction field over the fortress?" Shelton said. "If we corrupt the aether, the wells will fail."
"The interdiction field can't breach the Murk barrier," Flava said. "The device would corrupt the aether outside the dome, but not
inside. Even so, aether wells can convert malaether back into aether."
"How in the world do they do that?" Shelton said.
"They use purifying gems," Flava explained.
"That's one tough zit to pop," Shelton grumbled. "Once the Stasis breaks a hole in the shield, how long do we have before it closes back up?"
"A few seconds at most," Flava said. "Any of our troops inside would be trapped."
Elyssa shook her head and stared at frozen image. It was a look I knew all too well. She was stumped.
"Welp." Shelton clapped his hands once. "We're screwed."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Chapter 21
The room fell silent, mental gears churning as everyone looked for a weakness in Cephus's defense.
"An elemental could tunnel beneath the fortress," Kassallandra said. "We could destroy the generators below while other forces attack those above."
"The barrier extends underground," Flava said. She drew an egg-shaped oval around the holographic image.
"Damn, I was gonna suggest trolls," Shelton said. "They can dig through anything."
"Perhaps we could cut off their food supply," Thomas said. "I don't like the idea of a siege, but it might be our best alternative."
"The Ministry has greenhouses where they grow food." Flava flipped to an overhead view of the complex and circled a pyramid-shaped building. "We also believe they stockpiled for years in preparation for Cephus's plan to overthrow the government."
"I'm getting real tired of hearing what we can't do," Shelton said. "What can we do that'll be super-effective?"
"There's an old trick we used back in the first war," my father said, a sly grin tugging at his lips. "When the Brightlings used dome shields to protect their troops, we'd let loose a few rats inside."
His comment raised eyebrows around the room, except for Mom's. The amused look on her face told me she knew what he was talking about.
"Are you suggesting we blow a hole in the shield and infest the Ministry with rats?" McCloud said.
"Something bigger," Dad said. "Demons."
"It was a clever ploy," Kassallandra said. "Unfortunately, once the enemy caught on, they were able to counter it."