“I haven’t a clue. They’re lost, or so they say. A shrine is a place where a... ‘special person’ becomes an Orbed One. He—or she—is given a powerful orb... to defeat Abyssians.” I showed her the Amethyst, expounding every tidbit of information on the matter as I could, answering every question she could muster. The conversation went on for two hours. Nova seemed relieved in a way when I told her about the shrine, the magic, and the orb. She spoke of what had happened to her after our imprisonment in Lucreris, divulging details about Blitzkrieg that only drove me deeper into confusion. She asked me about the powers she had conjured against him.
“Am I one of them—I mean, one of you all?” An Orbed One, she meant.
I stood, thinking. I don’t know. Nova’s power was an entirely different mystery, and I couldn’t detect it even the slightest. I knew it was great only because of what she had done to Blitzkrieg. Her question went unanswered, but I told her that we would find out together.
Sergio approached. “I booked us a room at the Green Goose Inn—took every coin I had, those sniveling little bandits. But, hey, what use is there for money at a time like this anyhow?”
“Sergio, you’re sure you didn’t see any pages in the shrine of the Emerald?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t. How many times are you going to ask me that? I didn’t stick around long enough to notice anyway.”
A shrine without pages. It was becoming a more vexing conundrum by the moment. Why only the Amethyst and the Aquamarine’s?
“Come on, let’s get some shut-eye,” said Sergio. I gazed into the shadow of the trees across the canal. “I think I’ll take a walk and clear my mind.”
Sergio and Nova left. “I’m starving, Sergio,” said Nova. “Food. Now!” Within minutes, they were out of sight.
Visqont was a rustic masterpiece, something about its delicacy restorative to the soul. The day deepened into the later hours of the sunset. The canal took me into a brief forest of cluttered trees. An arch bridge reached over the narrow waterway, going in a direction where the stone ground became dirt and the city became its rural outskirts. There were no buildings where I was going, and no people. It was a secluded area. There was a wooden platform floating in a large spring littered with rose pedals and lilies. Teleporting onto it, it rocked as my boots struck it with a thud. Seems like a decent training ground.
Though so much had happened, I felt free and at peace—the first time in weeks. The Amethyst flickered. It spoke to me.
“Darwin, clear your thoughts. There is something that I want to give you.”
What is it this time?
“You must first become submerged in your power. Immerse yourself.”
My eyes locked shut. I sat down and crossed my legs and thought of the sky—something vast, empty, and unchanging. It was the only way to still my inner self and aid the Amethyst’s grip on my subconscious. Clouds formed in the sky above and moved—slow and then fast. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed and then it grayed as if there was a coming storm. I felt energy afar yet near. I concentrated my senses around it. It was traveling, darting like an arrow. It was almost there, almost entering the gaseous world my mind had created. A hole opened in the artificial clouds, and a strobe of light rained down. I saw it as it zoomed toward me. I caught it.
When I opened my eyes, there was a sword within my grasp. “Wield this new instrument against the Abyssians,” said the Amethyst. Rage filled it, and it was much smaller than Rahginor. It was a single-handed weapon with a single-edged curve pitched toward its point like a sickle. The blade was white-silver; it’s hooked hilt made of darker silver. Odd symbols stretched upon this blade as it had Rahginor. It was heavier than it looked but still nothing for me to throw around.
“You must give it a name. It was created for you.”
I examined it. It made me think of my Militia-issued falcata—the shape uncannily similar. “I’ll call it the Silver Jackal.” The name sprung from nowhere. I was half joking, but the more I looked at the sword, the more fitting the name became.
I clutched it tighter and moved it over the air, hopping over the rocking platform and swiping in a cross-slash. It was like swinging a battle-ax. The Silver Jackal resonated with a low tone as I lashed it about. Tossing it and flipping it in my hand amused me. I sparked an intense training session, following the sword into the air with a leap after throwing it high. With divine will, I brought it back to my hand and swiped the air furiously. An hour’s practice acquainted me with the sword. I felt as comfortable holding it underhanded like a knife, as I had with correct grip.
The day was fading. By the end of our training, I was kneeling in exhaustion. I sat with bent knees, controlling my breathing. “Your tolerance for thaumaturgy has increased, I see,” said the Amethyst. I hadn’t noticed.
Only because of your doing—you and your incredible power of influence.
“Perhaps. But whether you like it, or not, you have begun to conform to it. It suits you well.”
Don’t get your hopes up. I’d still much rather fight on my own, without magic. My opinion of the Superiors hasn’t changed either.
“Is that so? Have you not the very tool to do that in which you’ve been trying for many years?”
What tool is that...and trying what?
“A tool to destroy Abyssians and turn the tide of the coming destruction.”
It was an adequate answer to both questions. I was silent.
“You’ve been given what you’ve solely desired. It would serve you well to understand that.” I grumbled and grimaced, never addressing the matter. The Amethyst left it alone.
A supernatural presence swept by me, triggering my senses—a powerful entity that drew me east into the city woodland. A peculiar breeze blew southward. I followed it to a clearing, discovering an old temple strangled in ivy. A wooden bridge lay over a snaking river. Baffled, I crossed and went up a staircase of stone to its gaping doorway.
The inside was chilling, and the chamber beyond it was dark and grim. Ancient gibberish that exuded unsettling air coded the walls. I scanned the room. Then as I turned forward, I spotted a bed of dull crystal and a mossy pedestal in the distance. An orb? It sat in the pedestal’s center, just as the other three found before it, but something was oddly contrasting about its quality. The glowing light that emitted within the platform was absent. The pedestal crackled and crashed, and the stone rolled the stairs. I commanded the Silver Jackal away and brought the translucent sphere before me. The stone was yellow and stark. Three pages appeared suddenly from feathery light.
The Angel of Doctrine seized the fate of the entire world. Its light made it more powerful than even the Superiors. Its soul would decide what side of the coin would claim Vail—for both good and evil desired and needed it for all power. Its own choice ruled it and not the will of either or, or any being of greater authority. Would it lead the Orbed Ones as it had in the past or condemn them to the destruction of its sovereignty? Its white light was greater than all things.
It eluded them—what had come from the Angel of Doctrine, had gone forever. The gift it gave them, they did not also understand. It was in the distance coming toward them, but they didn’t receive it. Even the man that was with the group who knew both, Airius, and Navirru the wielder of the Amethyst Orb, was thoroughly vexed and mystified. According to Doctrine, that which had gone forever was condemned to return, and the Orbed Ones would have another chance.
“The spirit is a danger to humanity,” the Angel spoke to him as he looked upon his friend and comrade lying ever so peacefully. His heart sunk as he had learned not so very long ago that her eyes would be closed forever. He wanted to listen to the words of the great Angel, but his heart would not hearken. His greater desire was to help her, but he knew he couldn’t escape the call of his destiny. He fell to his knees, and his eyes filled with an emotion that he had no longer known or could control. Love.
The pages disappeared as suddenly as they had come. A column collapsed. I better get out o
f here. I left quickly, keeping the stone held tightly in my hand. Irvina stood just beyond the bridge.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I, er... I was... training earlier... But then I found this shrine.”
“...What shrine?”
I looked back, but all I saw were trees for miles. The ivy temple had vanished in the quiet forest. I winced, gazing off for a long moment, too tired to question it. Placing the stone in my pocket, I returned to Irvina. I’ll just explain it to her later. “Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
Evanda Criét
The night was full of stars and of hope. They gleamed high in the dark firmament. Irvina and I headed back to the inner city, finding the Green Goose for a good night’s rest.
I lay awake in bed, wondering if I would have a dream when I fell asleep. Restless, I thought of the tragedies that we’d endured along the unexpected journey so far, not only as we had allied but throughout my life before our fates intertwined. I’d lost someone dear to me once again. That seemed to be one of the only sure things about me—losing things.
I felt stronger since waking up after our ordeal in Ortiz. The Amethyst had since bestowed more talents upon me. It had refrained from its impulsive habit of conceiving thaumaturgy. As I lay there, many things ran through my head. I was in rare form, my mind, body, and spirit raw, and finally alert of all the things that had happened over the past month and a half. I brought the Amethyst above me, staring at its starkness. The orb’s spirit had retreated into itself, leaving me alone for the first time since we’d conjoined. It was an empty feeling without it near, cold and unsettling. I thought of that day in the shrine. I’d wanted nothing to do with it then. It was an amusing thought that summoned memories of the fights in Lucreris, the Dugan Cavern, and Ortiz thereafter.
Without the Amethyst, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against Blitzkrieg, or Roth for that matter. We’d all be dead. Guardian. Deep down somewhere I knew he was trouble the first time we met. Who were the other hooded ones with him? The Inevitable, they called themselves. And Cassidy leaped onto the Sky Bastion with them. I was getting overwhelmed.
“The answers to your questions shall all be made clear as you journey on,” said the Amethyst. The orb awoke, lighting dimly, feeding calming energy into me. All the pain, confusion, and anger within me ebbed until it subsided completely. A positive and pleasurable feeling came over me, though I still thought of all the questions. Guardian was the one who had first told me of the orb and was the inadvertent reason for it implanting into my palm. Or was he? It made me wonder if the entire instance had been a design of some sort.
How do I know you don’t have some ulterior motive like him? I asked it.
“What purpose would that serve? I know nothing of who Guardian is, nor do I of his plan. I know that your paths will cross again, eventually. Because he opposes you. As for my loyalty, I could’ve allowed you to die in any number of battles we met together. I have been made to destroy Abyssians. It is my sole purpose whether I am joined with you or not.”
The Amethyst had given me no reason to mistrust it. As I had said before, because of it, I’d survived. In my human instinct and judgment, I knew it was just what it said it was. Then what was Guardian doing in the shrine? I realized that he had only been in the Amethyst’s shrine. Sergio had known nothing of him before I told him, and neither had he been in the shrine of the Aquamarine. We shall indeed meet again, especially if he’s connected to the Abyssians. The Amethyst was right.
Cassidy. How had he survived? I turned on my stomach, setting my chin in a silk pillow. I could still see his face plain as day during our last battle together as allies. We were on the white shores of Ar’Terez, a city on the farthest western reaches of the Vanik Isles, fighting the Horde—the White Fox Militia alongside the Shadow Legion who had come to our aid.
“That’s thirty-one for me,” said Sergio after he had crushed a nasracan’s skull with his hammer, Gertrude. A biting Abyssian rushed toward his flapping horsetail, and he cracked the butt of the weapon’s long handle across its face. “Thirty-two.”
I smiled with amusement as he came beside me. “You have quite a bit of catching up to do, this time, Sergio. I’m already ten ahead of that.” He growled. Several yards ahead of us, a group of nasrogh surrounded Cassidy, his blade Masa drawn and pointed.
“Blast,” said Sergio. “Leave it to that old pretty-boy to get all the real uglies!” The nasrogh were worth three nasracans to our count.
I winced with concern. “Maybe we should help him with this one. There are too many.”
Sergio clicked his teeth. “For Cassidy? I don’t think so. He’ll slice ‘em like onions, for sure.” Cassidy found the both of us in the distance with a smile. I didn’t have a good feeling about letting him alone. But when he nodded, I rested assured. Sergio sped off to further his kills in our friendly competition. But, I paused, destroying only those that encroached upon me so I could keep a close eye on my dual-wielding friend.
Cassidy fought them as if he’d had eyes in the back of his head, defending both in front and behind him with one sword after the other. When a nasrogh coiled its tail around Masa, in one smooth motion, he tossed the sword in the air, drew Mura, and severed it. And then, with a spin, he slammed Mura back into its sheath and caught Masa once more. The nasrogh shrieked of pain, and Cassidy impaled its gut.
The next one he took with a slice across the throat. The third fiend he stabbed three times with Mura, in three precise places: the stomach, the heart, and the brow. The way Cassidy fought made it appear as if he barely ever bent his legs or swung his sword with not enough force to kill the way he did. He was graceful. He had destroyed three and still had three left. They exchanged blows. He fought the black monsters with ease until they caught him in the legs with tails and swords.
I had just hacked a nasracan down from behind it; when I saw him kneeling and fighting, my skin crawled. There was too many. He killed two from the ground. One, he swept its legs with Masa and stabbed in the heart with Mura as it lay in front of him. The second, he gashed vertically up the throat as it stood. The blade sliced its way upward through the nasrogh’s skull. Cassidy rose to his feet, finding me with a smirk and a hand flipping hair from his face. And then it happened—a moment I would never forget. A jagged black sword burst through his chest from behind. He dropped Masa, looking down at the weapon that impaled him without so much as even a grimace. In his face, there was no emotion.
I froze with a gasp and shook in tremors as if it had been me the beast stabbed instead. Before Cassidy could draw Mura from his belt, another Abyssian gripped it first with a tail and flung it away. The nasrogh that delivered the thrusting blow came behind him, yanked the sword out, and set it across his neck. The last expression Cassidy made was a smile before his life ended. The nasrogh sliced his throat.
“Cassidy,” I belted. I grabbed a knife from my belt and flung it as hard as I could as my comrade’s body leaned forward. It cleared Cassidy's head by a hair’s breadth and caught the nasrogh between the brows, killing it instantly. I fought my way to him, finding him rolled on his back. He was gone. His blood spilled over the ground; his face fixed with a grin and his slate eyes staring.
I didn’t know how I felt about him being alive—perhaps a mixture of relief and vehemence. He’s Blitzkrieg now. Like before, the Amethyst deflected the thoughts.
My mind wondered to Nova and the powers she had displayed in Ortiz. It was a different magic than what the orbs harnessed, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. It was just a feeling. Somehow, I felt that this was the beginning of her strength. What she had unleashed against Blitzkrieg was hard for me to grasp. The fact that I lost and she could have easily finished him was incomprehensible. As I thought to ask the orb, it said, “She is a mystery even to me. The source of her abilities, I cannot feel.”
I rolled over again, a gnarled hand lifting against my temple. A multitude of thoughts was still mounting in my head like a fierce tide—m
ost of them weeks old. The Amethyst had suppressed them I’d come to realize, but at some point, they were going to need sorting. They will have soon overwhelmed even the ruling orb. Of them, the thought of Memoria was most prevalent. The heartland was finished. If I could look down from the sky at the continent, it would be a dark prospect. Lucreris and Arkhades had fallen. Abyssians had conquered them, and we were in grave danger the longer we remained. That realization made me desperate to sleep and meet the Militia to leave from this hell.
Footsteps thumped outside. Curious and restless, I exited and followed. It was Nova. She was watching the starlit sky, leaning against a banister out on a terrace, the harvest moon bathing the forested city in silvery light. “The moon’s mesmerizing.” I came beside her as she gazed into the quiet wind. “Visqont’s very stunning. It’s almost as if the city requires it.” I nodded with a grunt. “Is this what you fight for in the Militia? If it is, then I’ll learn to fight too, so the people of Vail can live the rest of their lives watching the night like this. Those men of the Shadow Legion must not understand just how worth it these moments are.”
Someone else came outside—Irvina. She stayed in the doorway, watching us. “I’m going to get some rest. I’ll leave you with the stars.”
“Good night, Darwin.”
Irvina was staring at me. She hadn’t yet learned to sleep with the Aquamarine in her. I smiled. “It may work if you ask its permission,” I suggested to her telepathically. She returned a grin before fading back inside.
I slept in the darkness of an absent dream. The next morning was the day of our departure. Nova’s voice roused me, insisting that I follow. “Darwin, wake up. Come and look. It’s incredible.”
On the terrace, Irvina and Sergio were ahead. Nova leaned over the banister. Afar south, docked at Visqont’s port was the Evanda Criét: the bayonet of the sea and mother-ship of the White Fox Militia. The vessel was two thousand feet of glistening silver. Strong men lined its length, hands wrapped on the hilts of their swords. “Time to go!” said Nova anxiously.
Enigma: Awakening Page 27