Industry & Intrigue

by Ryan McCall

  Most of the employees at Streighas didn’t know about her father’s true work and the Order of the Endless. They simply believed they worked for an mining company. They would not be here either, having left for the day. There were several employees in the company who were part of the Order; the ones who occupied the real positions of power and had given themselves over to the Endless.

  Atira did not have long to wait. After sitting for a few minutes, the front doors opened and in walked an older man with a regal bearing. He was flanked by several guards in imperial uniforms; someone from the government.

  She studied his face and realized who he was, Minister of Security Austin Blake. Since the war had started he had become the most powerful man in Alkos after the emperor. He and his guards drew back as she stood up and walked towards them. She often received that reaction.

  Two of his guards remained in front of him, eyeing her with concern, as if worried she was going to attack.

  She greeted the man, “Minister Blake. Mr. Kulthon is expecting you. I have been instructed to take you to him.”

  The elderly human opened his mouth, “I must insist that my guards accompany me. In times like this, one can’t be too careful.”

  “Of course minister,” she replied. “You are welcome to have them attend you. Mr. Kulthon would have no objection to this.” If her father wanted to kill the minister, a few pathetic guards would not stop him, but that was not his intention. He still had many uses for the man.

  She unlocked the door leading to the corridor she had come through and led Austin and his men down. She opened the double doors and held out her hand. “Mr. Kulthon awaits you inside minister.”

  His guards trampled past and as Austin walked past he said, “Thank you”, while still eyeing her warily. People would always be wary of her. The savage nature of her race and the memory of the Agorid Wars ran deep among the rest of the continent’s populace.

  Her father would be some time with the minister so she closed the doors, walked back down the corridor and entered her personal quarters. They were simple and bland, a double bed with black sheets, a plain, wooden desk with a large number of drawers and a single piece of art.

  It was a small statue of the agorid god, The Great Hunter. The Hunter could take on the guise of any predatory animal, but in his natural state he was an amalgam of beasts. The head of a wolf, the wings of hawk, the arms and claws of a bear, the legs of a tiger and several other animal parts to make a monstrous, chimeric body.

  Atira didn’t believe in the Hunter of course, but she kept if there for appearances sake. The only god she believed in was the Endless. It had been a long time since her father had connected to the Endless and spoken its words.

  The voice overwhelmed her and made her feel a part of something bigger and more ancient than she could ever conceive. Soon all of the Order would feel the same intimate connection that father had with their god. His plans and this war were only the first steps to something greater.

  Several hours later, there was a knock on her door. It would be her father. She opened it and he stepped in.

  “Atira,” he said. “Thank you for seeing them to me. They were nicely shocked at seeing an agorid. It kept the minister on his toes during our negotiations.”

  “How did it go?” she asked. She was eager to hear how her father’s design was panning out.

  “Excellently,” Varko gave her a wide smile. “Blake is easily manipulated by his hubris and arrogance. He wants to see Galrian power curbed and Alkos triumphant. He needs me to use my contacts in the Enzian government to push them towards the Alkon side.”

  Atira grinned, showing her fangs. The small kingdom of Enz wouldn’t enter this war unless directly attacked. “Foolish,” she said.

  “Yes,” replied Varko, nodding in agreement. “King Luca is far too timid to join either side. H will sit out fretting about the borders until one of them goes too far and decides to use Enzian territory without permission.”

  Varko stretched his arms and his bones creaked. He was old, far older than he looked and sometimes she had the irrational thought that he would not live to see through his plan.

  “Of course he still thinks I helped arranged the assassination of the Galrian foreign minister for business reasons, namely the Alkon contracts I’m about to receive. The new emperor is a weak-willed man, he will grant Minister Blake more and more power. And Blake will continue the war until he sees Galria burned and broken. Alkos and Galria will weaken each other to exhaustion in the fighting. They will pull troops away from Kangur and once they have whittled each other down, we can begin the next phase.”

  Atira sat ready and waiting for the commands he would give and how she would be contributing to this next phase. She wanted to make up for the mess up at Crean and failing to retrieve the sphere.

  Varko looked at her face. “I will need you for a delicate and specialized task Atira, something that will be vital to my plans. It will mean returning to the land of your people.”

  Atira took in a deep breath. Her father needed her to go to Kangur. Until this point in her life he had kept her away from the steppes, warning her against travelling there. She remained dutiful, but could not deny that part of her had always been curious. Now it seemed she would have the chance to satiate it.

  Chapter 75

  The frosted glass of the window was starting to fog from the heat of the fire in her office as Xerin looked out.

  Reese Galius was making his way along the field of grass and away from the biology department. She put her talons against the window and kept watching, until he crossed the field and was out of sight amongst the apartment blocks.

  What a shame she thought. He was one of the brightest and most passionate students I’ve had in years.

  Now he had been infected with the war fever gripping the empire. He stood every chance of dying before he could grow into an adult. It was always the young that paid the heaviest toll in a war. The other races often forgot what war was like, they lived for such a short amount of time that before one war had finished they were already finding problems to argue about for the next one.

  Not that the longer-lived drakons didn’t have wars, but they were few and far between. Ever since Weicarus had stabilized under the rule of the Zuren line several hundred years ago, the Wei drakons had fought amongst themselves only once.

  The Daiyun Ascension, which been little more than the rebellion of a power-crazed madman who had engulfed most of the southern islands and provinces in war. Afterwards Drake Lashi had granted an amnesty to all who had fought for the Daiyun, an act which had secured and kept the peace to this day.

  They had fought wars against foreign powers but the Wei only engaged after exhausting and considering all possibilities other than war. Those wars were also rare, thanks to Weicarus’ distant location to other nations and its geographical defenses. Weicarus had a line of mountains called the Ren-San, along the length its northern and western coasts, a daunting prospect for a potential invading force. Translated into Alkon, the name meant Shield of the Backbone.

  Xerin moved back towards her desk, her sandals clacking on the hardwood of the floor. Her toes were beginning to feel the chill. Another week or two and winter would be here in full force. She would have to start wearing more suitable footwear for the cold weather.

  She sat down and reached into the box of her mail her cousin had sent from Valhai, the capital and her hometown. Her cousin, Ling Saryu, regularly sent her new books and scientific publications from Weicarus related to her field of study. She liked to keep up with the latest material and see how her rivals back home were doing. Weicarus was not known for its study of life sciences, preferring to focus on physics and chemistry, part of the reason she had moved to Alkos. Another reason was that progress in her homeland moved too slow for her liking.

  Research took decades, most of the researchers and professors at the prestigious Grand Hall of Higher Learning were too stuck in the mud for her taste. They never wanted
to explore anything controversial or exciting in case they upset anyone or were proven wrong. So they plodded along with the same old ideas, never truly progressing.

  The first two books she pulled out were studies of dragon fossils from west Weicarus, she set them aside. They would make for intriguing reading, but would be ponderous and detailed, with lots of footnotes. They could wait until she had plenty of time to delve into them.

  There were several scientific journals, with details about newly discovered species of plants, insects, birds, and their classification. Nothing jumped out at her as she thumbed through the thin pages, most of these new species she had heard about already.

  She put her scaled hand on the last book. It had a thick hard-cover and was heavy. She pulled it out and put on the desk with a small thump sound. Before she could read the title, there was a knock on her office door.

  “Come in,” she called and pushed the book to one side. In walked Cassandra Breac, another of her students and a friend of Reese. From the look on her face, Reese had told her of his decision.

  “Ms. Breac,” said Xerin. “How can I help you?” She leaned back in her chair.

  “Reese Galius is leaving the university,” said the girl.

  Xerin nodded. “I know. He left here a few minutes ago. He told me about his decision.”

  Cassandra’s head sunk. “I see,” she said, her voice dropping slightly.

  The girl must have been hoping that she would be able to talk Reese out of his decision. “Let me guess, you were going to ask me to convince him to stay?”

  Cassandra nodded.

  “Sorry to dash your hopes,” replied Xerin. “He told you why he left?” she asked the girl.

  She nodded in response.

  “A tragic state of affairs, the murder of a young student on campus. And coming right after the assassination of Rossiv. The university is not as safe as it once was and I fear whatever is going on, is not over yet.”

  Cassandra tilted her head quizzically. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Xerin had her suspicions, but she had ignored them when news of the Galrian attack and the war had overshadowed everything. Now that she had lost her favorite student, they were buzzing around her head again.

  “I shouldn’t say anything.” She didn’t want the girl getting herself mixed up in it. Xerin didn’t have all the facts yet, it could be dangerous.

  “Please,” begged Cassandra. “I lost someone I cared about a great deal to a senseless madman. Now I’ve lost two friends. I need to know why?” She was getting emotional, as humans were want to do.

  But Xerin sympathized with her, so she answered, “The watch officially stopped investigating the death of your friend. They are far too preoccupied with city security and militia training for the war. They have passed it on to university security, who labeled it as a burglary gone wrong.”

  “But that’s crazy,” said Cassandra.

  Xerin agreed with her, even if she had not said so to the university chancellor. “Yes it is. From what few details I could gather, it did not sound like a burglary at all. There is something bigger going on here. Unfortunately, between the incident at Crean and my classes I have not had time to dig deeper.”

  “Reese knows more. I’m sure he does. There’s something he wasn’t telling me,” said Cassandra.

  At least the girl had a good sense of intuition. Xerin had come to the same conclusion. “That may be true, but he is in pain and if he chooses to keep it to himself, there is not much either of us could do to pry it out of him.” Xerin had considered dropping the matter altogether, but she could use Cassandra to help her look into it further.

  No stupid she thought. Best to let it lie, for now at least.

  She folded her arms, her blue and white lecture robes brushing on her desk. “Was there anything else Ms. Breac?”

  “Uh, no, except…I did want to ask you. What is the Sphere of Katarus?”

  Xerin blinked in surprise. She had not expected her to ask about that. Where in the world had she heard about it? “Why do you want to know?”

  “I overheard one of our captors at Crean mention it. I figured it was an ancient relic and you would know what it was,” replied the girl.

  “Nothing more than whimsical legend Ms. Breac,” she said. “Whoever those criminals were, they were chasing legend, as untouchable as a dream. Best not to dwell on it.”

  The girl nodded. “I see. Thank you professor.” She exited Xerin’s office, leaving the drakon to return to her new books.

  Xerin looked down at the book title she had been about to read before Cassandra had knocked on her door. The title read The Real Avathrax, Possible Evidence of the Immortal Tyrant.

  She scoffed. What a waste of paper. Who in their right mind thought that the myth of the Immortal Tyrant could be real? It would be another hatchet hoax piece, like the discovery of the long lost city of Anlei. That had turned out to be nothing more than the ruins of a small village from the Five Kingdoms period.

  She would get round to reading it when she was bored. For now she had better books to read than wasting time on the conspiracy theories of whatever fool believed the Dragon Tyrant was real.

  Epilogue

  On the other side of the world from Alkos, across the Twilight Ocean, past the cities of the Kordate Union and beyond the Dawn Plains with its tribes of native Kordatian humans and drakons, there was a small village sitting north of the Shadow Mountains.

  It was a village of drakons; though they were shorter and thinner in stature than their Wei cousins. While Wei drakons had brown, red or golden scales, the Kordate drakons were colored in shades of green and blue. The village was populated exclusively by green drakons; they were far from contact with other tribes or settlements and had become homogenized as a result. They had long thin tails and painted themselves with red tattoos.

  They called themselves the Nasufira, which in Alkon meant The Riders. They were one of the few folk on the continent who could tame the great malcan land serpents and ride them. They would send out packs of hunters, who would track the serpents’ movements through the earth and then laid traps. When one of the beasts sprung a trap, a hunter would jump atop its head and tame it. The beasts were then used to hunt for food for the village.

  On this particular day the hunters were well overdue for returning, it was almost sunset. The village elders and the hunter’s wives anxiously awaited them at the village entrance. When they had about given hope of the hunters returning, one of them gave a cry and pointed.

  Far in the distance, a figure was slowly making its way towards the village. There was little light, but it was clearly a drakon. As he came closer, Crackjaw could see he was limping. When he came within the village’s shadows he could see that the hunter had an injured leg and was covered in blood. He looked at the gathered villagers and collapsed in front of them.

  The elders called for help and soon three younger drakons were carrying the hunter to the medicine woman’s hut. As they pulled him inside, space was cleared on the floor and furs put down. They placed him down gently and the medicine woman tended to him, gathering her herbs and treating him.

  He finally regained consciousness a few hours later. The village elders gathered around to hear what he had to say. The young drakon warrior sipped on water and told his tale.

  “The malcan…they…they are maddened. The other hunters are all dead, I barely escaped alive. The first one we tried to capture, it attacked. Turned its head in a flash and bit Smokescar’s arm off when he tried to tame it. As he fell, it ripped him to pieces.” There were gasps and shocked faces. Smokescar had been the village’s most skilled malcan rider.

  “There are hundreds of them on the plains, churning the earth to pieces. We found ourselves surrounded. We tried defending ourselves but it was useless. They have gone mad. I have never seen anything like it in my life.”

  The oldest of the elders, Crackjaw, stepped forward. Most of his once green scales were now dark burnished cobalt,
the color changing with his advanced age. “This is an omen,” he said. “Never before have the malcan behaved as such. We must consult the witch.”

  The hunter on the floor gave out a short laugh. “That crazy old crone. What does she know about malcan?” He winced as the movement of his humor inflamed his injuries.

  “More than you youngling,” he replied. “She carries the memories of our people from long ago. From the time before the Riders were even known as such, before the winds separated the tribe of tribes. If anyone will know, it is she.”

  Crackjaw stomped out of the tent, the rest of the elders following. They marched through the village, past the chieftain’s hut, past the main feast area and all the way to a lone hut atop a small hill.

  They arrived at the entrance and Crackjaw held up his hand; the other elders behind him stopped. No one entered the witch’s hut without her permission.

  Her creaky voice sounded from the darkness inside, “Enter Crackjaw and village elders. You have questions.”

  Crackjaw tentatively stepped forward. His clawed foot hit touched the ground in her hut and the flames of torches suddenly lit up. The witch was sitting at a small, wooden table. She was wearing a black shawl that covered her head and body, only her pale green arms visible.

  “Sit,” she said. Compared to the witch, Crackjaw may as well have been a youngling; she had been practicing her craft since he was a child. Crackjaw sat in front of the table and the other elders followed suit, sitting behind him.

  “There was trouble with the last hunting pack. Only one came back and he told us-” he paused.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He continued, “He told us the other hunters are dead. He said the malcan have become enraged, maddened. Hundreds of them attacking anything they encounter. Is this an omen?”