He looked up, feeling the fiery glow recede back into his emerald irises and saw Maura looking at him in disbelief.
“What…?” she began, cradling her arm and shaking feeling back into it.
“I have to go,” Valentean said, too overcome with guilt and fear over how close he had come to losing what little control he maintained over these new powers to look her in the eye.
“What was that?” she insisted and started toward him.
Valentean took a step toward the door, and his sudden movement stopped her. Was that fear? It broke Valentean’s heart to even fathom such a thought, but he did not alter his gait, using the opportunity to quickly stalk from the room, away from Maura and the dozens of unanswered questions that filled the distance between them.
Nevick paced back and forth outside the airship, watching the Karminian engineers bustling about the vessel’s wracked exterior. His stoic stare moved quickly past them all and settled onto the one man within the camp who warranted the bulk of his ire and suspicion. Lord McNeil sat with his legs folded neatly beneath him, green eyes unblinking as they scanned the area with the precision of a bird of prey.
To say that Nevick did not trust the stranger from Karminia would be the understatement of the millennium. He viewed the air pushed out of the chiseled young man’s lungs as an affront to this place and to the people who once called it home. It was only his remaining belief in Valentean’s judgment that stayed him from marching across the camp, grabbing the intruder by the throat, and flinging him forcefully into the sea.
What was Valentean thinking, anyway? Nevick had told himself that if he had the opportunity to speak with the animus warrior before he departed, he would inquire as to what madness had possessed him.
“All right, we get it,” Deana’s voice said from behind him. “You’re big and scary, and you don’t like him.” Nevick grunted and turned to see his betrothed roll up to him, a steaming bowl of something that smelled delicious in her hands. “Now go eat before you collapse.”
Nevick looked at the stew, and his stomach gave a hearty growl. “You made that with the provisions they brought?”
“Yes…” she said as though she dreaded where his train of thought was headed.
“I’m fine,” he replied, crossing his arms.
“You know, my love, in times of great peril, the enemies of your enemies can become your friends.”
“I have all the friends I need.” He heard her sigh followed by the squeaking roll of her chair’s wheels as she slowly slid away. Nevick grunted through his hunger pangs and stalked forward, seeing Michael amidst a group of four Karminian engineers, issuing orders.
“…then go and see if Mitchell needs any help patching the main engine’s hydration line,” the stout engineer was saying to his foreign charges as Nevick approached. Fear passed along the faces of the Imperial workers, and they scattered as the big man drew forth. “I wasn’t done!” Michael called after them before feeling Nevick’s massive shadow envelop him. He turned with a smile. “I should have known. You tend to strike fear into the hearts of Karminians like no one else!”
“Which I’m quite proud of,” he replied gruffly. “I hope you’re taking all the proper precautions, monitoring these people.”
“What are they going to steal? They brought most of the equipment we’re using.”
“Yeah, to fix this ship so they can steal it out from under us.”
“You see the way they act when you so much as flinch near them. Do you think they’re going to try and steal from you? Besides, no one but Mitchell or I touch the controls.”
Nevick grunted in response. “You trust these…Karminians?”
“Do I trust the emperor?” Michael asked rhetorically. “No, of course not. These folks are just skilled workers. I even knew one or two of them from a long time ago. They’re decent people.”
“Decent people in the employ of monsters. So what does that make them?”
Michael finally turned and looked his dour friend in the eye. The mechanic went to pat him on the arm, and then thought better of it halfway. “You don’t have to worry about them, big man,” he said with a smile. “It’s thanks to them that we’re going to be able to set sail within the week!”
“So, I should be thankful for the Karminians now,” Nevick said, a dangerous edge rising into his deep bass.
Michael, at that moment, seemed to suddenly remember he was urgently needed somewhere else. “Well, I’d love to stay for seconds of that stew Deana cooked up but…duty calling and…all of that.”
The portly mechanic quickly made his way toward the airship, where Nevick noticed Valentean emerge from the entry hatch, a small bag slung over his shoulder as he marched with purpose toward McNeil. Nevick moved in to intercept him.
The Rosinanti did not seem to notice his approach until he was nearly upon him, and he turned with a start, clearly not expecting to be approached while so entrenched in his own thoughts.
“Valentean,” Nevick said by way of greeting.
The animus warrior composed himself, his expression unreadable beneath those thick, black goggles he always wore now. “Nevick,” he replied as though he were a ghost of the warm, kind individual who had fallen out of the sky and into their lives several months prior.
“Are you sure you understand what you’re doing here?” Nevick asked seriously, glancing toward Lord McNeil who still made no move to rise.
“I wish people would stop asking me that,” the Rosinanti spat back, shaking his head back and forth. When Nevick straightened and puffed his chest in the face of such brash rudeness, Valentean continued on. “Sorry…I’m just a little on edge.”
“I’d say rightfully so, given what you’re about to walk into.”
“Have you ever been there before? The Karminian capital?”
Nevick nodded slowly. “Long time ago. Bounty hunters had managed to snag one of our villagers while I was away. I tracked them into the Imperial City.”
“What is it like?”
“Big.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“Trust me, when you see it, that’s the only thought you’re going to have. It’s a city built on a mountain, with the Imperial Palace at the very summit. It can be a blazing summer day at the base gates and snowing outside the emperor’s window.”
Valentean’s eyebrows raised beneath his goggles. “Sounds like quite a sight.”
“I wasn’t there to take in the view.”
Valentean continued walking toward McNeil, and Nevick fell into step beside him. “So, do you have any advice for me?”
“Yes. Don’t go.”
“Not an option.”
“Very well.” Nevick exhaled forcefully. “Believe nothing and no one but yourself. Everyone in Karminia is out for themselves. Even those who swear sacred oaths to dedicate themselves to others.” Nevick’s eyes locked on McNeil who had been watching them approach, still and silent as the grave.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Valentean replied, stopping a dozen meters before McNeil and offering his hand.
Nevick grasped his friend, forearm to forearm in the warrior’s show of respect. “Just be careful. This team and this planet still need your skinny ass.”
Valentean laughed in spite of the moment, the first chortle Nevick had heard from him since he had awoken from their ordeal in Kahntran. “Take care of them, my friend. I’ll be back soon.”
As they released one another and Valentean walked toward the now rising McNeil, Nevick stared with curiosity at the arm the Rosinanti had just grasped. There was a kind of prickling tingle left behind in the wake of his gloved touch and a heat that burrowed into his skin for several seconds before cooling in the evening breeze.
I know what I felt, Maura thought to herself, staring into her own eyes through her reflection in the metal bulkhead, looking for any kind of sign that maybe she was ill or mentally unfit. Perhaps she failed to recall what had transpired when she had last spoken to Valentean hours ago
before he set off alongside that Karminian animus warrior without so much as a word to her.
I know what I felt…but that’s impossible.
“There you are,” she heard Nahzarro call to her from the hallway into the airship’s communal lodging. “You missed seeing Burai off. He left hours ago. Have you been in here the whole time?”
She did not answer him at first and simply stared in disbelief at the tiny, red burn scar, no more than two centimeters long, upon her palm.
“Did you hear me?” the Grassani prince obnoxiously called out, obviously not accustomed to being ignored.
“Of course I heard you,” she snapped back at him. “The whole camp can hear you the way you go prattling about at your one volume.”
“Forget I asked!” he scoffed and turned to leave before suddenly stopping short as if catching something out of the corner of his eye. “What’s so interesting about your hand, anyway?”
She attempted to shrug off his annoying questions, until he physically walked farther into the room, making it obvious that he would not be leaving. She sighed dramatically and showed him her palm.
“Valentean and I had an argument,” she said, “right before he left. I grabbed him, and there was this…jolt.”
“He attacked you?” Nahzarro asked, one eyebrow raised as he inspected her palm, seemingly missing the tiny burn scar.
“No. Not intentionally. It was like…I don’t know…some kind of…reaction when he got angry.”
“Well, that’s not…abnormal for novice mages to sometimes lose control of their magic at a time of emotional upheaval. It’s, of course, not ever something I struggled with but—”
“Yes, all right. I get it. You’re very good at magic.” She waved him off dismissively. “No, you fool. It wasn’t the fact that it happened…it was how it…felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was instantly filled with this prickling, spiky, stabbing burn along my arm. It was something I hadn’t ever felt…save for one other time.”
“When?”
Maura took a long, slow, deep breath, held its enriching oxygen within her lungs, and blew it out. The thought had been rushing through her mind all evening, but she had not yet said the words aloud. She feared actually saying them turned an irreversible corner. Once said, it could not be unsaid. She gathered her courage and spoke.
“When Aleksandra was electrocuting me alongside the River of Freedom… This was much, much weaker, but it was the same sensation. It was chaos magic…coming from Valentean.”
Nahzarro’s eyes bulged, and his mouth hung open in disbelief.
“Very good, human,” a silky, sleek, familiar baritone with all the kindness of a serpent spoke from the direction of the doorway. Maura and Nahzarro turned together to spot the red-skinned, sneering, frail form of Aurax leering at them. Nahzarro instantly hurled a lightning bolt at the demonic cleric that passed harmlessly through his chest before exploding along the far wall of the corridor. “It’s nice to see that you have learned nothing in my absence.”
“Aurax.” Maura spat the name as though it were a vile curse, reflexively drawing her daggers though she knew they were useless against him. “How was your trip?”
Aurax’s normally stoic poise broke for an instant as a look of unconditional rage spread across his face. He affixed Maura alone in a smoky, burning stare of molten hatred. “My dear girl,” he said slowly, his momentary lapse in decorum affixing itself back into his mask of humorless scorn, “it is my sincerest wish to introduce you to similar experiences before our relationship ceases to exist.”
“What do you want?” Nahzarro interjected in between the death stare taking place between woman and demon.
Aurax looked at him. “I want to ease your friend’s addled psyche,” he said with mock sincerity, turning his yellow eyes back to Maura. “That was indeed the gift of the Goddess you sensed coursing through your dear Shogai.”
“How?” Maura exclaimed, disgusted and alarmed at this affirmation of her darkest fears.
“How is not important, though not difficult to discern. What you should be concerning yourselves with is his reluctance to inform you of this development.”
“He…”
“Had his reasons?” Aruax offered with a slight chortle. “The Shogai is so woefully arrogant he believes he can bend the will of the High Mother to his whim. He cannot see that it is Her divine power twisting and corrupting him, controlling him, pushing him ever closer to fulfilling his purpose.”
“That’s never going to happen!” Maura shouted in rage. She heard commotion coming down the corridor as Aurax stepped into the center of the room.
Nevick, Mitchell, and Michael appeared in the doorway, and the brothers gasped at the sight of the Skirlack cleric in their midst. Nevick snarled and pounced at the frail demon, phasing through him and crashing to the ground between Maura and Nahzarro.
“That never ceases to amuse,” Aurax said, smiling humorlessly at the fallen warrior.
Nevick spun to his feet and glanced sidelong at Maura.
“He can’t hurt us,” she said. “His only power is to make snide remarks and maybe pull a few Skirlack soldiers through the dimensional rift for us to kill.”
“Bring it on,” Nevick growled at Aurax, pounding a meaty fist into his broad palm, welcoming the onslaught.
“I come not for that,” he replied, “nor had I traveled all this way to affirm your fears regarding your vile ally. I come to deliver a message”—he slowly pointed at Nahzarro—“to you.”
“Me?” Nahzarro asked, magic crackling along his fingers. “What business do you have with me, demon?”
“I bring you an invitation from her majesty Empress Aleksandra Kackritta of the Glorious Empire of Aleksandrya.”
“I don’t want any invitations from that witch!” he spat back.
“Ah, but my high and holy mistress invites you home, Prince Nahzarro. For in five days’ time, Grassan will cease to exist.” Nahzarro gasped, and Maura turned to see the proud prince’s face ashen, his lips trembling. “Your home, your people, and your cretinous father shall be reduced to ashes.
The empress kindly invites you and your friends…or…allies, as it were…to join in their fate and save her the trouble of hunting you all down personally.” He turned to Maura. “And on a personal note, girl, I hope to see you there as well.”
Nahzarro screamed in rage, igniting his whips with lightning magic and sending them crashing forward, passing harmlessly through Aurax and digging long gashes into the room’s floor. Aurax vanished in a haze of red, his eyes disappearing last, still locked with smoldering hate upon Maura.
Eventually, Nahzarro’s rage-filled screams became sobs of helplessness. He dropped his whips and fell to his knees. Maura wanted to run to his side, but the weight of Aurax’s words had rooted her in place. War was coming to Grassan, and they had to be there when it arrived. She made eye contact with Nevick. He turned to Mitchell and Michael, who still cowered in the doorway.
“Double time, gentlemen,” he ordered. “Get this boat in the air!”
VII: The Will of Rebellion
Tiberius hugged his hooded cloak tightly against his muscled body. Even in the typically warm summer months, a consistent chill had persisted throughout Aleksandrya. Confident that his face was well hidden beneath the shadow of his raised hood, the elite warrior stepped out of a dark alley and onto the busy evening street. The Champions of The Faithful were hunting for the rebels now with a ravenous hunger, but still the power of the Ice Queen kept them at arm’s length.
There had been far too many close calls for Tiberius’s taste, but the Captain Elite’s impeccable strategic prowess coupled with the magic of the Ice Queen had kept them safe from harm. He knew their base of operations remained a safe haven, concealed by the queen’s strong unnatural magic, but each time he journeyed from their ramshackle home, he worried. In order to avoid suspicion, he employed several tried and true espionage techniques for blending into c
rowds, becoming nearly invisible as he meandered his way through the bustling streets of Aleksandrya en route to any number of destinations.
This evening, he was making his way to the Haven’s Edge Tavern, where one of his agents was awaiting his arrival. He met with this particular woman once per week, and she kept him apprised of the chatter she overheard coming through the tavern. It had become an invaluable source of information concerning the general will of the Aleksandryan people and the movement of the Champions. While engrossed in drink and company, one seldom considered the possibility that they were being watched.
The clanking of a metallic mug on the street drew Tiberius’s attention to a huddled pile of filthy rags, completely hidden from view beneath heavy robes and bloodstained bandages. Tiberius sighed. There were so many poor pathetic souls brutalized by the Champions and the Skirlack in recent weeks. It tore his heart to shreds to see what was likely once a proud citizen of Kackritta being forced to beg on the street. He pulled a small silver coin from his robes and dropped it into the poor soul’s mug, nodding his sympathies to them as he continued toward the alleyway that marked the entrance to the Haven’s Edge.
Tiberius breathed a sigh of relief as his destination grew closer by the second. His pace began to quicken, as he was keen on getting off the street and away from the prying eyes of Aleksandrya. Suddenly, his boot snagged on something, and it was only his impeccable instincts that allowed him to retain his footing and not plant face-first into the stone. Looking down, he was met with a sight as curious as it was alarming. The rocky road had actually risen up and clamped around the toe of his boot, pinning him in place.
“Hello, Uncle Tiberius,” a low growling voice said from behind him.
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