Kara backed away hurriedly as her tendrils flailed around before her. They tore at the ceiling, gouging the metal, and then they clawed at the floor. In a panic, Kara severed her connection with them. Instantly, they withered and turned to dust.
The freed woman stared up at Kara, her body semi-transparent.
"You..." Kara exclaimed.
"We meet again, Imogen who is Kara." The ghost woman smiled, her face appearing ice-white in Kara's dark-vision.
A chittering snarl sounded from the catwalk and it shook violently. The shadow beast was almost on them.
"Come to me," the ghost woman said, getting to her feet and ushering them close.
Sasha moved over to her, and the ghost woman reached out and grabbed Kara by the arm, her touch as cold as death. "I will take us home. We will be safe there. For now."
"Wait, my sister comes too," Kara said quickly.
The ghost woman gave Semira a look that would have suited an Inquisitor. "She is not welcome here."
Kara snatched her arm free. "No. She comes with us or I stay here. I might need her."
The shadow beast slammed into the doorway, shaking the entire room. Its bulk would not fit through the opening but with its strength, it would soon bring down the entire wall. It snarled and thrashed, reaching in with a shadowy arm. "This is no time to argue," Kara screamed. "We need to get out of here."
The ghost woman watched the beast for a moment, then sneered and reached out to grab Kara and Semira both in her icy grip. Instantly, Kara was enveloped by blinding light and felt herself propelled upward.
Only seconds seemed to have passed when the light disappeared. Kara found herself in a concrete room standing beside Semira and Sasha. The ghost woman materialized in front of them and nodded in satisfaction.
"Thank you, for freeing me."
"Is this your home?" Kara asked, looking around and finding nothing but a small empty room.
"No, it is here." The ghost woman pointed at a concrete wall and it burned away with a blinding shimmer of orange flame. The flames had burned away the wall and revealed an entryway leading to a stairway glowing with soft electric light. The stairs led down, deep into the frozen earth.
Sasha wrapped an arm around his mother's waist and walked with her down the stairs. Kara glanced at Semira. Her sister's face was as hard to read as stone. "Go," Semira said. "I'll follow you."
Kara studied her a moment. "You saved me back there, when you threw that metal pole."
"You don't owe me anything, so stop talking and get moving." Snarling, Semira shoved Kara toward the stairs, almost knocking her down them. "Hurry up."
Regaining her balance, Kara bit back an angry retort. She spun and stormed down the stairs. She heard footsteps behind her, as Semira followed her down. Maybe I should have left you back there, you vile sod. Kara ground her teeth. You and the shadow beast would get along nicely, I'm sure.
At the bottom of the stairs, they were greeted by a door. The ghost woman faded to almost nothing, then reappeared again. "We are not alone here. Inside is someone I have been instructed to watch over. I have kept him safe and he told me things, filling in some blanks in my fading memory." Her eyes went to Semira and became black pits. "This one will bring great pain to him—like she does to me—and she shall go no further."
Semira scowled. "I never wanted to come here anyway." She curled her lip. "I just want to be left alone."
"Then go, and let the shadows consume you." The ghost woman pointed back to the stairs.
I can't let my sister go. "Wait. I won't go in to meet this man without Semira."
Sasha shook his head. "Mommy, I promise I tried to make Imogen who is Kara leave her behind, but she would not come with me unless her sister came."
The ghost woman continued to stare at Semira with those black pits that should have been eyes. Then she faded until she became almost invisible. "He left me to languish in this dying, forgotten world for you?" Her voice was filled with anguish. "You are nothing but a misbegotten shell who should have died the moment you were born. I stood by him when he left; the least he could have done was not shove you in my face."
"Mother?" Sasha reached out for her.
Kara had no idea what the ghost woman was talking about. Semira spat at the ghost woman, but it went through her. "Is that the worst you can say to me, you crazy..." She looked the ghost woman up and down. "I don't even know what to bloody call you. I've seen light-starved husks with more substance than you."
The ghost woman took a menacing step forward, her body coming into focus. "You—"
"Mommy, please stop." Sasha started to cry. "I never wanted her to come. I am sorry I made you angry."
A long moment passed, then the ghost woman started fading again. "I am... sorry, my sweet." She hugged Sasha close. "But this woman's presence wounds me." She continued to fade. "Open the door, my dear little one, and show them in. I need to spend some time alone."
"But, Mother, what if the servants come and take you away again?"
"Do not fear for me. I will not fall for their traps again." With only the faint black outline of her eyes still visible, she said, "Imogen who is Kara. The man you will meet here knows you are here. Speak to him, then wait for my return."
Kara swallowed. "How long will you be gone?"
"Not long. I need to... put myself together again."
Without further talk, the ghost woman left them and the small room became silent.
After a moment had passed, Sasha walked wordlessly to the door and opened it using his invisible power. The two sisters followed him in, and found themselves in an underground bunker system. Sasha led them along a central corridor, passing empty rooms with blank, concrete walls.
At last, they came to a large antechamber filled with warm, humid air. At its center stood a tree growing out of an immaculately tended garden blooming with colorful flowers that filled the air with pleasant smells. The tree stood twenty feet high, its leaves lush and green. Standing before the tree, with head lowered, was a man.
Semira slowed her pace as she stared at him. Sasha stopped near the man, then watched the two sisters expectantly. The man's head slowly rose, and Kara heard Semira catch her breath. His eyes went over Kara, lingering on her courtesan dress, and then they fell on Semira and widened. "Daughter..."
"No... You're dead. You're not here." Semira backed away hurriedly, her arms held up as if to ward off an assailant.
The man reached out for her but Semira spun and ran from the room, her footsteps fading into the distance.
Kara called after her, "Wait, come back."
But her sister was gone.
CHAPTER 11
MINARD
Minard and Erinie stopped in an empty room near the precipice of leaving the mysterious Dead City and reentering the heretic-and-monster-infested Great Dark. Both were weary, muscles aching from carrying the weight of the guns and ammunition. "I think we should stop here and sleep," Erinie said. "Once we head back out there, we'll need all our wits about us."
"And we didn't here?" Minard felt an overwhelming urgency. He wanted out of this place. They needed to get back to the temple to warn his Order about the scion and her machine-freaks. If they made it back before her, perhaps they could stop her from stealing Ibilirith's armor.
But as much as he hated the idea of stopping, it was true. They both needed rest. He stifled a yawn. But he would push on until he collapsed from exhaustion if that was what it took to get back home in time. "After we eat, use your map and see if you can work out the quickest route back to Stelemia."
Erinie unceremoniously dumped her bags on the ground, the guns clanking as they hit the floor. "Are you serious? I'm too tired to think, let alone watch for danger."
Minard wanted to break something, to pound an enemy's face into goo. "I don't think I can sleep until we're set on our destination. I want to get back to my Order to warn them of what is coming."
"Ibilirith will beat us back there."
"I
told you not to call her that." Minard bit down hard on his teeth. The anger he had just felt surprised him. He lowered his voice. "She isn't Lady Ibilirith."
"Call her what you will, but stop going on about heading back to Stelemia." Erinie collapsed against the wall.
"Why? My Order... The scion said she—"
"Was going to your temple to retrieve her armor. So what?"
"So what?" Now it was Minard's turn to hurl his stuff to the floor. "What if she kills my brethren with her machines? She is the Scion of the Prophecy."
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but if she is going back there to kill them—they'll be long dead before we arrive. I don't know where we are, and I doubt she'll let us wander around the city until we find the way we entered, so we can't go back the way we came."
Ibilirith help me. "So we find another way home."
"It could take us weeks to get back to Stelemia—while she is going to be using the highway."
"But it's blocked by cave-ins and that broken bridge you said you saw."
Erinie let out a tired laugh. "Do you really think that will stop her? She has the technologies of the past and her metal servants to do her bidding. They will clear the road and arrive long before we can."
Tired as he was, Minard began to pace. He had too much energy to sit still and rest. "We need to try."
"No, we don't."
He stopped and stared at her in disbelief. "So you would leave me to make my own way back?"
They both glared at one another. "I will if I have to," Erinie said. "I'm not going to waste my time on a fool's errand while so much is at risk."
"My Order is at stake, as is the whole of Stelemia."
"And what difference can the two of us make? By the time we get back there, who knows what will have happened."
Minard wanted to punch the concrete wall until it broke—or he did. "Then what would you have us do? Give up? I am a Chosen of Ibilirith." He bared his teeth. "I will never give up."
"And I am a dark-born heathen who cavorts with heretics, dark sisters and monsters born of the old world. To you, my kind are scum. Heretics."
"What?" He stopped pacing. Is she really bringing this up now? He considered apologizing for calling her people heretics earlier, but he was in no mood for compromise or her silly games. "You can berate me over that later."
Erinie snarled, "Let's argue after we get some sleep. Right now, I feel like taking one of the guns and... well, let's just say I'm not in the right frame of mind to be arguing with you. For your sake, it's best you left me alone for a while."
Minard fell silent and watched her close her eyes. Then, swallowing his anger and hurt, he grabbed one of the guns, loaded it, then sat just inside the doorway. "I will take first watch. Get some sleep."
He smothered the torch, plunging the room into darkness.
"DID YOU MEAN WHAT YOU said before you fell asleep?" Minard asked, as he sat across from Erinie as they ate.
The torch glittered in her eyes. She didn't look half as tired as she had the night before. Between the both of them, they had slept for almost fourteen hours, according to her time-keeping device.
She swallowed a mouthful of salted meat. "I don't know what I mean anymore."
Minard looked away. So there was no longer anything between them. No chance of fixing things. He forced a grin. "Well, I'm glad you didn't slit my throat in my sleep."
"No... I didn't mean it like that."
He turned back to her. "Then what did you mean?"
She stared at the flickering shadows on the wall. "I feel like I have failed. Everyone. Wrynric is gone, Semira—or whoever she is now—got away, and then we lost Aemon." She sucked in a deep breath through her nose. "Then there is the scion, her so-called children and the harvesters. Should I believe her when she said there is no library here?"
Minard took a moment to think. The scion could by lying—she was certainly lying about being Ibilirith—but what about everything else? He had only half-believed the prophecy, feeling more akin to the Reformers and their interpretations of the old files. But now he had seen the harvesters for himself, had witnessed the changes the scion had undergone, and felt the sting of her hostility (and been punched in the guts by her machines).
"I think the only thing I can trust her word on is she will kill us if she sees us again. As to the library, I think if we tried to go back into the Dead City to find it, she or her servants would hunt us down."
Erinie nodded. "So do I."
Minard finished the last of his meal. "Then will you come back with me to Stelemia? I must warn my brethren."
She grimaced. "No. We will never beat her back. But there is something we can do that might make a difference."
He tried to keep his disappointment out of his voice. "Like what?"
She lifted Wrynric's medallion he had given her and kissed it lightly. "We go back to Sunholm, find Arden and Liana's medallions, and anyone else's we can find. Then we put them to rest and after, we can see what is left of our records in our repository."
"I thought Kahan destroyed Sunholm."
"He attacked and burned much of it, but none of my covenant has returned to the site since we fled. We're a superstitious lot. My people—me included—believe that the souls of the murdered will forever haunt that place until they are given my covenant's funerary rights."
Minard went to speak but she glared at him. "Before you condemn me for having heretical thoughts, remember we're not followers of your divines. We believe the Lost Sun watches over us, and gathers our souls once we are dead. But in order for it to gather us up, our medallions must be melted down in the Cauldron, then the cooled metal placed within the Solarium Sump." She winced. "The spirits of Wrynric, Liana, Arden and the others who perished still await their final rest."
Minard shifted around. He couldn't get comfortable all of a sudden. "I'm sorry I called your people heretics and heathens."
"If only you knew the fate of many of those poor people your kind sends down the Path of Exile." She looked down her nose at him. "And you Stelemians think yourselves civilized—while people like us are the scourge in the dark."
"Those exiles trespassed against the divines. They—"
"Deserved their fate?" She narrowed her eyes. "And what do you deserve, monk? How many innocent people have you watched be purged? How many children has your kind left homeless because their parents were thrown out here into the Nether?"
Her words troubled him and he no longer wished to speak of them. "You said you wanted to see if any of your records survived in Sunholm. If some have, how can they help us? Surely, you have read them before and know what they contain."
"I've read what I could, but there is a lot my people were unable to translate." Erinie's shoulders sagged, the fire gone from her eyes. "I've been thinking about this while I was on watch. Our files were never complete, though we translated as much as we could from the old languages." She studied him. "Your order keeps backups of all your records at the Obelisk of Light. If what Imogen said was true—that her brother took the records from the library here and took them with him..." She stared into the torch flame. "Then perhaps those records were at some stage split up between your Order and mine."
He frowned. "That is a big jump in logic. Where are you going with this?"
A faint smile crossed her lips. "What if we retrieve what we can of the files at Sunholm and then combine them with the records you keep at the Obelisk of Light? Your translators could go through our files while I look through yours and translate what I can with the languages we understand but your Order doesn't." Her smile turned into a full-on grin. "Just think about all we could learn from one another. We could read of new technologies and weaponry, long forgotten by humanity." She rubbed her hands together, bursting with sudden energy. "Then we could make them, and turn them on our enemies."
Minard had to dampen her hopes before they dragged her away. "The patriarch will never allow you to touch our files. If he had known you had a
library out here in the Great Dark, he'd have sent an army to retrieve it."
Her smile faded. "We knew that, and that is why we kept it secret. Arden would never have let me do what I am suggesting we do now. But surely your patriarch would want to stop Imogen and the enemy as much as us."
Who knew what Lucien thought? Sometimes the patriarch made as much sense as the madman who used to proselytize on the corner near Minard's house as a child. But Lucien was right about the scion... "I doubt it." Minard no longer had to hold his tongue, for there were no Inquisitors out here to hear him. "The patriarch wouldn't care what you brought with you. Most likely, he would have you purged, and then take all your records and hide them away."
"So what do we do?"
"There might be another way." Minard drummed his fingers on the gun on the floor beside him. "There is a rift in our Order. Lucien leads the traditionalists, while a man called Inquisitor Mariot leads the Reformers."
"An Inquisitor?"
"Yes, but one who has seen the error in the old ways and has proposed changes to the way my Order and the Order of Inquisitors works. He makes his home at the Obelisk of Light and might be willing to work with you." Minard gave her a winning grin. "Well, if I'm there to persuade him."
"Then you will help me?"
The look on her face—the hope, the excitement—made his heart flutter. You're making me soft, girl. I love it when I make you happy. "Yes, and the best thing is, if we keep our heads down, the scion might not even know we are there." Finally, they had found a way he could help his Order. "We have files at the temple too. Perhaps after we go to the Obelisk, we could go there and—"
"The scion will have come and gone by then, most likely, so don't start making sweeping plans," Erinie said. "By the time we leave here and make our way to Sunholm by a path I've never taken before, we'll still have a five-day journey to Stelemia. A lot could have changed in the weeks it will take us to get to the Obelisk."
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