“Burai,” he said slowly as if approaching a wild animal, “I understand more than you know.” Valentean looked at him expectantly. “My heart lies in my home, and I commiserate with your feelings of frustration. But maybe Maura is right. Maybe we do need one another at this point.” Her face swiveled to stare at the prince in shock.
“You know nothing, Your Highness,” Valentean growled low, chin inclined as he sized up Nahzarro beneath his dark goggles.
She felt the captain stiffen beside her and immediately sensed tension sparking between the two men. As she was about to step between them, a loud sound thundered through the area. A boisterous trumpet blast resounded along the shoreline, coming from the direction of their camp. Valentean blurred from sight, and Maura sprinted after him, Nahzarro only a fraction of a second behind her.
As they arrived in the ramshackle camp they had made their home for the past several months, in the shadow of the downed airship, Maura saw Nevick standing out in front of Deana and the Duzels, facing down a platoon of blue and black-armored soldiers. Their trappings were plated to allow for swift movement, and the swords that remained sheathed at their sides were round at the handle and curved along the thin blade. Over their heads they wore domed helmets, and face masks hid their true visage behind unique, twisted facial carvings.
Valentean strode up beside Nevick, glancing sidelong at the big man, who returned his stare with a glower of stoic protective silence. They stood arm and arm as though shielding their allies from this horde.
“What are they?” Maura asked as she came alongside Michael.
It was Mitchell who answered, his voice harder and harsher than she had ever heard it. “Karminians,” he practically snarled, a mixture of anger and dread anointing his words. Maura glanced over at Michael who was breathing hard and Deana who sat wringing her hands together.
The formation of soldiers broke, and a slim man atop a black-armored stallion rode forward slowly, stopping at the midway point between his fellows and Valentean and Nevick. There was a moment of uneasy tension, and Maura’s fingers began to pat the handles of her Grassani daggers. Then, the stranger spoke.
“On behalf of his excellency, Emperor Tek The Magnificent, Master of the Western Continent, First of His Name, Father of the true monarchy of Terra, we seek an audience…with the Dragon-Lord.”
III: Rebels
In her dreams, he stood tall and proud, that same brash bravado and infectious smile playing with familiarity upon a face that made her heart flutter with the sheer force of its rugged handsomeness. The location often varied; sometimes they were in the training center behind Kackritta Castle, sometimes her parents’ throne room where he had avowed himself to her. Today, it was the crowded market district of Kackritta City. Seraphina could spot him waiting for her amidst a sea of people. Despite the crowd, despite the noise and bustle around them, light dimmed from the surrounding area until his white animus robes shone like a beacon through the haze of activity.
Seraphina’s heart filled with the boundless joy she reserved only for this man who had defined love in her life since childhood. She dashed forward, her blue gown billowing about her body as she sprinted through the crowd, wordlessly elbowing past the dozens of nameless, faceless strangers who separated them. As she approached, he slowly turned, lifting one strong hand in her direction, his warm smile welcoming her touch.
The crowd became harder to move through, but Seraphina was relentless in her desire. She fought with the intensity of a feral jungle creature, but her progress was frustratingly slow. Pedestrians slammed into her with surprising force, knocking her to the ground and continuing to kick her away from him, away from her love, away from the one man who could make the troubles of the world melt away. Finally, Seraphina focused on the flowing power of order within her and felt the familiar glow of her power erupt along her irises with azure energy.
Instantly, the crowd dissipated, and there was nothing between them now. His hand still lay outstretched, calling her forth, begging for her presence. She ran to him. She ran with a smile so wide that it hurt her cheeks, though she cared not one iota. They were so close now, fingers only centimeters apart, and Seraphina looked up into the emerald eyes that had always made music from the beating of her heart, but she stopped.
The eyes she gazed into were no longer that deep shade of forest green that had so kindly and effortlessly once made her feel like the only person in the world. Rather, they were replaced with a fiery glow the color of blood. They looked at her not with the gentle amusement of fond teasing, which once defined their verbal exchanges, but with the hard melting fury of chaos. His face looked so haggard, so waxen and pale as the robes burned from his body, leaving him naked, shrouded only in blazing red flame, which mirrored the hue of his eyes. The hand that once beckoned her curled into a fist, held so tightly that it shook with his fury.
“Val?” she called over the crackling sound of flames that filled the area around them.
“Not anymore,” the chaos creature that was once her love snarled in a voice that sounded entirely alien and monstrous. The ground beneath her erupted with molten spewing lava, burning away their bodies, burning away their home, burning away their love.
Seraphina woke up screaming.
Vahn Burai burst through the door, blade drawn, only half expecting to find some assassin creature of the Skirlack’s creation hovering over the terrified body of the Ice Queen. Instead, he found Seraphina sitting bolt upright in place, panting with exertion, her clothes stained with sweat, hair plastered against her face. These nightmares were getting worse.
The princess’s eyes glowed with blue energy, and splaying globules of water sat suspended in the air all along the room. Seraphina gripped the thin blanket with white-knuckled intensity as she lay upon the floor mat that served as her bed.
“Your Highness,” Vahn said, falling to his knees beside her, laying his thick, calloused hands along her shaking, delicate knuckles, “relax. It was but a dream.” He watched as the girl’s eyes settled onto his, and the pulsating blue light faded into a once more very ordinary brown. As the hue shrank away, the floating water fell free of the power that held it aloft, splashing to the floor with an audible splat.
“Oh, Vahn,” she cried out, her gaze shining with recognition as she threw her arms around the elite warrior’s thick neck.
Vahn wrapped his strong fatherly arms around her torso and gently stroked her hair with one hand. “Shhh… It’ll be all right.”
“I saw Val,” she said, the words slurred and smushed into his shoulder.
Vahn winced through the fresh pain of this particular wound—the mention of his son. He knew Seraphina and Valentean shared some sort of intangible bond he could not hope to understand. For months now, he secretly hung on her every word concerning the well-being and mental state of his boy. Her tales had evolved from feelings of scorching heat and wracking pain, to rippling strength marred by an unquenchable fury. The old man was beyond troubled, but his personal feelings had to be set aside for the sake of their mission.
He did not need some magical tethering connection to tell him of the dangers Valentean was facing. His fatherly intuition was already informing him. Vahn lived in a perpetual state of anxiety now, his stomach dropping off in a bottomless pit of nervous nausea. But to Seraphina and the men and women of the rebellion, he was steel personified. Vahn kept his emotions tightly locked behind a mask of stoic calm that never for an instant betrayed the waging nightmare storm erupting within his mind. He could not afford to fall apart now. Not when they were finally starting to gain some ground.
“What happened?” he asked the shuddering princess as she desperately clutched at him.
Seraphina pulled herself back and looked into Vahn’s steely chestnut eyes, her face red with exertion in the wake of her emotional outburst. “The chaos…” she said, her words dying as though she were afraid speaking them would cut her throat. A look of pride flashed across Vahn’s face as he watched the Ice Q
ueen take a deep breath and soldier forward. “He was corrupted by it. I could feel it twisting him, changing him until he wasn’t himself anymore.”
“He fell? Like Kayden?”
“No…” Seraphina’s words wafted out of her mouth like smoke. “It was worse. It was so powerful, so…angry.” Her shaking intensified, and she lunged forward again. Vahn held her close, feeling that it was his duty to comfort her in the absence of her father. Vahn had indeed found a new purpose in standing beside Seraphina through their struggles to restore Kackritta. Despite his inability to stand against foes such as Zouka or Aleksandra, he could still do his part by safeguarding the daughter of his best friend and the love of his son’s life.
“He’s going to be all right,” Vahn said. “He is strong, Your Highness.”
“I know but…”
“Valentean is doing his part; now we must do ours.” He looked her firmly in the eye, a hard forceful warrior’s stare that snapped the princess back to attention. Seraphina dried her cheek with the sleeve of her blue tunic and straightened. He saw a brief flash of blue along her eyes and watched in silent fascination as the order she commanded swept away her fear and distress.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice once more even and calm. This ability of hers that he still could not fully understand seemed to extend far beyond her seamless control of water and ice and further even beyond the ability to transform into a blue dragon. The order that she commanded helped regulate her emotions, calm her in times of strife, and filled her with the confidence needed to lead an army. This, though, reminded Vahn of the reason for his visit.
“Princess, the council gathers, awaiting your presence.” He nodded toward the door.
“Oh, yes, of course,” she replied, flushing with embarrassment. “I slept for far too long!” Seraphina immediately began to bustle about the room, flattening out the blue tunic she wore over her dark grey light armor, straightening her hair in a nearby mirror. She fussed for only a moment, looking every bit the extremely young woman Vahn knew her to be. Then, in one pride-inspiring instant, she rose to a commanding straight-backed stoic posture. Though her stance went rigid, Seraphina’s face lost none of the warmth that had become her defining characteristic amongst the heroes of the rebellion. She nodded to him with a small smile, hiding the turmoil he knew to be storming behind her kind gaze.
“Are you ready, my queen?”
“Lead on, Captain Elite.”
Seraphina could not grow accustomed to the way the rebels looked at her. Their faces raised to hers as she followed Vahn through a narrow corridor. Many of them were wounded, maimed, and burned by her sister’s forces. Many of them had been rescued by her personally in recent months as she enacted lightning raids upon The Faithful’s public executions, rescuing all she could and absconding once more into the night before Aleksandra could personally respond. There had been a number of close calls. She had lost many followers to the blades of The Faithful and Skirlack. But still, the rebellion surged on.
“Ice Queen,” a woman called out to her, huddled in a lump of rags upon the filthy floor. Her shaking blackened fingers reached for her with heart-wrenching weakness. Seraphina extended one arm out toward the poor soul, brushing her fingertips along the woman’s mangled hands as she made solid eye contact and flashed a hopeful smile that caught upon the wounded rebel’s face. This was the greatest gift she could bestow upon them: hope.
Though she had never asked for such a responsibility, she understood the role that destiny had forced upon her. Seraphina was the Spirit of Order. She was the princess of Kackritta. It was her sacred duty to combat chaos in all forms. Despair was a tool of chaos, and Seraphina avowed herself to ridding it from the hearts of her followers.
“Your Highness,” a middle-aged, grey-bearded warrior croaked to her, inclining his head in a bow of respect. Seraphina’s pace slowed as she cupped her fingers beneath his chin and raised his gaze up toward her eyes. She did not desire fealty. The Ice Queen would not rule in that way. As her presence was noticed by more and more of the gathered huddled mass that had sworn to her their loyalty, more and more cries for her attention began to rise up from the ground.
“Princess.”
“Your Highness.”
“Ice Queen.”
“Majesty.”
They all reached for her, their eyes bordering on despair and desperation. It had not been an easy journey for this rag-tag assemblage. They had won some minor victories, rescued more than a few loyal Kackrittans, but this war was far from over.
Word had spread like wildfire through the kingdom following her dramatic first transformation into the blue dragon, and Seraphina believed this story and the reality behind it to be their sole source of hope for a renewed future. In truth, she had loathed the “Ice Queen” moniker with which they had saddled her. It sounded harsh and cold, the extreme opposite of what she aspired to be. But the title helped them see her as something more than human.
They saw her as a symbol, a beacon of hope, a bright and shining avatar of the very order they sought to restore.
The Blue Dragon… she thought, recalling her sudden metamorphosis into that majestic beast. What an odd feeling it had been to stand so far above the world, so far above Aleksandra. For the first time ever, her sister had looked so small, so weak.
She recalled watching Valentean thrash about in the Northern Magic as a bulky white dragon, upending stone and structure in a blind, power-fueled rage. Initially upon realizing what had occurred, Seraphina’s heart had seized in fear, believing for a moment she was about to lose control as he had. But there had been no bloodlust.
There had been none of the wild pangs of destructive desire Valentean had so vividly described to her when recounting his experience. Instead, for the first time, she felt completely in control. She had become calming serenity, the gentle stream that trickled outward from the raging sea.
Her pace slowed to that of a snail as she reached out, meeting the fingers and eyes of the gathering, who loitered here in this place, undoubtedly knowing she would pass through on her way to meet with the council.
Vahn had stopped before the large wooden door of their destination and patiently waited as she took a moment to connect with each and every one of them.
Valentean had told her once that her smile was infectious, and she was happy to see it spread to the faces of the rebels one by one. The harmony between them could be felt within the air. No words were needed beyond a simple nod, a smile, a wink, the squeeze of a hand. These were enough to inspire them. But she realized with a carefully veiled internal shudder that it would not be enough to save them.
IV: The Dragon-Lord
Dragon-Lord… The words reverberated through Valentean’s mind as if shouted from the base of a wide canyon. The horseman rode fearlessly toward them as though he had no idea he faced down the single strongest human being on the planet and a dragon-god with the power of chaos-bred flame at his fingertips.
“The what?” Valentean answered back before Nevick’s head snapped toward him with a weathering glare that seemed to scream for him to be silent. Valentean forcefully exhaled through the prickling heat building beneath his shrouded eyes and acquiesced to Nevick’s judgment. He had no experience dealing with Karminians, and he knew that Nevick had been pitting himself against the Empire’s forces for all of his adult life.
“The Dragon-Lord,” the armored rider called down once more.
Valentean knew he could only be referring to him, but how did the Karminian Emperor know he was there? How did he know he was a Rosinanti? None of this made sense. Chaos flared through his veins, demanding an answer to these silent questions. Thankfully, due to his outburst upon the beach, the pull of the blaze had subsided, and he could once more feel the invigorating pulse of light within his heart; it stayed his hand.
“There’s no one by such a title here,” Nevick growled. “Take your men off my land.”
“Ah,” the man atop the horse said, sliding fro
m his mount to the ground and removing his helmet with both hands. Green eyes amidst a chiseled, scruffy, rosy-cheeked face drank in the enormity of Nevick’s imposing girth. “The protector of Casid.” The man nodded in way of greeting, bringing his hand up beside his nose, flicking it with his fingertip three times before turning to meet Nevick’s eyes once more.
“That’s me,” he responded, stretching his neck until Valentean could hear his upper spine pop as though he were bracing for combat.
The Karminian officer gazed around the ruined devastation that was once a teeming village. “Seems as though you’ve done a banner job here.”
Nevick’s muscles tensed, and Valentean could actually sense the chaos born of his anger expand outward from his scorching glare. This new arrival did not so much as twitch in the presence of Nevick’s smoldering hate. There was a tense moment of stare down between the two until a gasp from behind drew Valentean’s attention.
Michael, the author of the distracting inhalation, was ashen-faced and trembling. Mitchell stood beside him, his jaw clenched tightly as his hands tugged along the waistline of his shirt. It was a familiar tick Valentean had noted in the inventor, but he had never seen it enacted with such frenzied vigor.
“Lord McNeil,” Mitchell said, his voice a barely audible gasp carried to Valentean’s sensitive ears upon the breeze. The sound of such a name birthed realization in his mind. McNeil, he thought. Lord…
“You’re an animus warrior,” Valentean exclaimed, drawing the attention of both McNeil and a very irritated Nevick. “The brother and animus warrior of the Karminian Emperor.”
“My reputation precedes me,” McNeil said, smirking around the wispy, black scruff that framed his lips. Valentean’s eyes moved down to the animus warrior’s waist, near which his gauntleted hand rested atop the hilt of his curved Karminian sword. Indeed, his reputation was one with which Valentean was familiar. Lord McNeil was known as the most lethal swordsman on Terra. It was said he moved with the speed of legend and could cleave a man’s head from his shoulders and re-sheathe his blade in the time it took one to blink.
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