“Where did you get this?” Fire rose from his gut, anger and fear mixing in a churn of pain up his throat. A soul stone was a small piece of stone taken from the material that created the Gates between worlds, a small piece of the Gate itself. Extremely rare. Very dangerous. These stones were used by the healers of old to trap enemies, make mortals Immortal, and to drain Immortals of their power.
The Immortals on Itara feared the stones. To be caught carrying one was an instant death sentence. A half-breed like himself could live thousands of years off one Immortal soul trapped in a stone. They could also be used to record memories or knowledge to pass along to another, but, according to the books on Itaran Lore, doing so usually led to the death or loss of sanity of the person who donated the knowledge. The few stones known to exist were held by the Mater Mortis and the Queen’s inner circle. Viciously guarded.
To the Immortal race on Itara, the stones were a powerful and indestructible threat.
Gerrick opened his eyes once more, and the unholy blue made his words even more ominous. “Lose it, and we lose the war. It must be presented to The Lost One. It must be given to him. He’s here. On Earth.”
Raiden removed the stone from Gerrick’s neck and studied it. Assuming he could even find the lost king, the bastard would most likely kill him the second he saw the stone. And despite what Gerrick claimed, this stone did not belong to the Lost One. Gerrick wouldn’t sense what his mother’s Itaran blood allowed him to know. The stone did not house a piece of the Lost One’s soul, or any other Itaran’s. But it did hold something… “It’s not his soul stone, Gerrick. It sings of Earth. No Itaran created such a stone and no Itaran’s soul is held within it. Where did you get this? Who gave it to you?”
Gerrick tried to laugh, but his lungs were filling with fluid and it came out gargled. “Poor Little Prince. Didn’t know I had a secret.” He smiled and turned his head so he could see the stone dangling from the chain held in Raiden’s grip. “Protect it with your life. It must be returned to the king.”
“How am I supposed to find him? He’s been missing for centuries.” Raiden clenched the stone tightly in his fist. The Lost King was a mystery even the Immortals had been unable to solve. At the time of the Crux, the King had been turned to ash with his Queen. And before that? In the alternative timeline no one else on Raiden’s crew seemed to remember? He’d disappeared years before the final battle. None who remembered either version of the timeline could explain what had happened to him, or to their people. In all their missions to Earth, and all their battles, he’d never heard even a hint or rumor of the Lost King. Not once.
“Keep it safe. Return it.”
“But…?” By the gods, how was he going to find the Lost One, the True King? He could blend in with Earth’s human population. He knew several languages and had gathered intel on the Itaran Triads here many times, making sure they weren’t in contact with the Triscani, or helping any more of those bastards escape their prison dimension. It wasn’t like he could waltz into one of the Triad leader’s homes and ask. They’d kill an Itaran on sight, even half-bloods. Any Itaran blood was a threat to their power.
No, Earth wasn’t involved in this war between the Immortals and the Triscani. The unsuspecting humans weren’t fighting it, they were just unlucky enough to live on the battle zone.
Gerrick’s grin faded and his legs twitched, the muscles fibers finally dying. He had moments, no longer.
“Tell me what to do? Where to go? How do I find him?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.” Gerrick shuddered.
“Who?”
“The Seer.” Gerrick choked and fought to draw air into his lungs. “Don’t die. She’ll come for you.”
“Who, Gerrick? Who will come for me? The Seer?” When had Gerrick spoken to a Seer? As far as he knew, Gerrick had never set foot in the Itaran Temples, let alone spoken to the most powerful Immortals on their world.
“Mark you.”
Raiden’s breathe froze in his lungs. Shock turned the fire in his veins to ice. There were no more Marked, no Timewalkers left alive. They’d all vanished from his world at the Crux. That was the reason the Itaran Queen had sent him to Earth in the first place, to track any Descendants, and capture them for her to control. The evil bitch wanted him to capture innocent humans and help her to detain and weaponize them. She’d said it was for the greater good, promised him she’d end the war.
He’d almost believed her, until she’d stuck a piece of her evil inside him so she could keep track of him. Hunt him. Drive him insane from the inside out…
“Lucky bastard.” Gerrick grinned. The stubborn old fool must be losing his mind. And yet, there was no need to argue, no need to admit to Gerrick how quickly Raiden would followed him into the eternal night. They’d fought side by side for more than fifty years, since the death of his father and his great nephew had assumed the throne. Raiden had never trusted another living soul more. He owed the man whatever vow he could give.
“I give you my word, brother. I’ll protect it with my life.” However pitifully short a time that may be.
Raiden helped Gerrick to lift his hand and clasped his friend’s forearm just like he’d done thousands of times before. There was nothing left to say. Raiden simply waited. A handful of minutes passed in silent understanding before Gerrick quietly joined the ranks of loyal men, friends all, who had come to this primitive planet to die at a traitor’s hand.
Raiden dropped his chin to his chest, but refused the tears that burned behind his eyelids. He’d spent the last hour in hell watching his men fall, one by one, while the bastard, Ryu, and his Triscani allies destroyed his ship and forced him to crash in water, his beautiful ship a casualty of Earth’s most infamous salt-water graveyard, swallowed whole by the blue abyss of the Atlantic’s legendary Bermuda Triangle.
But not before Ryu took the only escape pod to freedom, leaving Raiden to die like a dog deep below the water’s surface.
There was no one left alive to witness his pain, or his heart-rending failure. Even Gerrick was dead now. Just like the others. No healing unit could stop Triscani poison. He’d have to pray his Immortal blood was strong enough to overcome the poison, or for the miracle of a living healer. All but a handful of healers had disappeared when he’d been just a boy, gone at the Crux just like the rest of them. Everyone, just gone.
Raiden knew he wouldn’t last much longer like this. A day. Perhaps two. Then all of his sacrifices would be for naught. His men. His home. His ship.
Treason twisted his insides, gnawed at his heart with hundreds of tiny teeth. The betrayer would pay, in this life or the next. And his demon spawned twin brother had escaped, was at this very moment free to return to their home world, to walk freely and sit at table with the current generation of Raiden’s family, who were all blissfully unaware of his brother’s evil duplicity. Hell, the bastard would go home and assume Raiden’s identity. They were identical, truly identical. No one, not even their own father, gods rest his soul, had been able to tell them apart.
Raiden had agreed to the Queen’s mission for reasons of his own. He’d come to Earth to find the Dark One, the Darkwalker Lord, a secretive being known on Itara as the Guardian of the Gates. The Dark One kept a lock on the Triscani hordes, on the Itaran’s most insidious secret…their own forbidden sons. He was the only hope Raiden had of ridding himself of the darkness he carried, of restoring his own besieged soul.
He hoped the Dark One could get the Queen bitch’s Remnant out of his system as well. If not, he’d have no choice but to ask the other male to end him when the time came. With her evil lurking inside him he was too dangerous, too unstable to walk freely. She’d turned him into a ticking time bomb. And she didn’t even know about his other problem, his mother’s blood. Or perhaps she did know and that was why he and his brother had both been summoned and chosen for this mission in the first place. Perhaps the bitch was his great-great grandmother.
God, he hated all the Immortals. H
ated the fact that, with his half-breed blood, he’d never be anything more than a pawn in their games. Hated that his mother had abandoned her twin sons within hours of their births. Hated the evil that crouched inside him like a dragon roaring and battling for freedom every moment of every day since he’d made his first ash kill.
He’d sucked the Triscani dry completely by accident. The power had risen under his flesh, felt like every individual blood cell in his body had suddenly exploded. The moment that Triscani Hunter had touched him, the power had flared to life. After that, who lived and who died had been a matter of will.
And Raiden had always been stubborn. The Hunter hadn’t stood a chance. Within moments, the powerful Hunter was nothing more than a pile of ash, and the Triscani Hunter’s evil soul had flowed into Raiden as naturally as breath, and stayed, cursing Raiden with both his power and his evil. He’d been the first, but not the last.
That was the day he’d realized what Immortal bloodline he carried, the full nature of his power, and the full extent of his problem. He was doomed. A forbidden son. He was destined to join the ranks of the Triscani scourge he’d spent a century battling.
He’d often wondered why their mother hadn’t just killed them. He and his brother were half-bloods, not full Immortal sons. She could have killed them both and no Immortal would have raised an eyebrow on their home world. He and his brother were abominations. Perhaps she’d hoped their father’s human blood, his human compassion, would be enough to save her boys.
She’d been wrong.
Raiden rose on shaky legs and stumbled to his quarters. Exhausted by the short trek, his legs collapsed and he sank onto his bunk. He no longer felt the need to hold his shoulders straight or have all the answers. Now he only had one question. Why? Why had his own brother doomed them all?
Raiden grabbed an overturned crystal goblet from the floor and hurled it against the far wall. The act tore open the knife wound in his shoulder. The splintering crystal was his world, nothing but tiny pieces and worthless shards that had once been brilliant with purpose. Fresh blood trickled down his back, what was left of his lifeblood weakly following the flow of its earlier river. Mortality loomed. He’d bled too much from his brother’s attack. Despite his mother’s bloodline, between the poison and his wounds…he might actually die down here.
Worse, he’d fail. He’d lose his soul forever, devoured by the evil lurking within him. He’d made his blood oath to the Queen and accepted her Remnant soul in the hopes that he’d find the Dark One while on Earth. Only the Darkwalker Lord could remove the Triscani’s parasitic stain from his soul. He hoped the male would provide him with a soul stone so that the evil spirits crouching inside him might be withdrawn and trapped.
Now both his brother’s attack on his ship and Gerrick’s secret mission had derailed his plans. Gerrick believed the Lost King was on Earth. If there was the smallest sliver of hope that the Lost King was here, Raiden couldn’t stop looking.
The Marked mates were already gone from Itara. The Timewalkers and Darkwalkers with them. Vanished. Raiden wouldn’t allow two civilizations to completely perish. Gerrick had given him another job to do. But this task wasn’t for duty or for his homeworld. It wasn’t for that bitch Queen. This was for Gerrick. He’d made a deathbed promise, a vow of honor, to the one true friend he’d ever had.
Death wasn’t an option.
He had a plan, a terrible, desperate plan.
Stasis. The ship’s energy cells had been damaged by Ryu’s explosives. They were failing. The ship would shut down completely in a few days’ time and he had no way to get out. He was too deep under water to swim for the surface. Even if he miraculously made it to the surface, he could float for days, hundreds of kilometers from land, bleeding and weak. Shark food.
He would shut down everything but the emergency beacon and one stasis capsule. He calculated that would buy him two Earth years on life support, give or take a few days.
His family would come looking for him. Someone from Itara would come looking for him. Someone would find him.
Surely, someone would find him.
He didn’t have a choice. If they didn’t find him alive? Well, they’d find him eventually, and he intended to make damn sure the traitor would be held accountable. Even dead, he would make his brother pay.
With his still functioning right arm, he lifted the data crystal off his bed. The tiny crystal contained his identification, ship logs, and mission information, including the name the Dark One used on Earth. Thank the gods some unknown instinct had kept him from divulging that name to his evil twin. This copy of the ship’s data log documented the battle, his crash, the deaths of his men, and all of Ryu’s machinations for his people to see. Proof. Even if he didn’t make it, once his family retrieved the data, justice would be served and his men would be avenged. Raiden’s human king could seek the Queen’s justice, death by Angel’s Fire. His great nephew was not Immortal, but the human king on Itara held much political power. The Itarans, the true Immortals, numbered fewer than ten thousand. The human population neared two billion.
If his king demanded justice, he would get it. The Queen would not want to deal with human riots or a war on her home world, not when the death of a single, half-blood traitor would stop it.
Despite the bone-grinding pain of his left shoulder wound, he winced as the microbots that held the crystal together burrowed under the skin just behind his ear. They found his skull and attached themselves to the bone with microscopic drill hooks. No one was getting that data crystal off him without the proper codes, even if they removed his head. The bots could function for centuries, first off his body heat, then by breaking down his tissue. Decomposition would supply them with all the power they’d need.
Done. He hid Gerrick’s precious soul stone in his quarters and then used the walls for support as he forced his legs to carry him to the stasis chamber. He’d thrown everything he had at the Triscani ship that attacked them in Earth’s low orbit, but the scaly bastards had taken them by surprise. He’d lost the battle and run the ship out of power during the fight. He had to shut everything down. Everything.
He passed the healer’s room and swore an oath to avenge his men…even if he had to come back as a phantom to see it done.
Raiden gritted his teeth and swallowed the rage and pain threatening to choke him. Emotion was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now. When Ryu was dead, when the Triscani sabotaging this planet were all dead, when he’d kept his promise to Gerrick and delivered the stone to the Lost King, then he would grieve. Until then, his friends would be the fire in his gut that kept him moving, that kept him alive, that kept him fighting.
The empty bed in the stasis chamber looked cold, hard, and uninviting, but Raiden lay down with nothing but hope and his precious knives for company. He ordered the ship to shut down all systems but two, this chamber and the beacon. Someone would find him. They had to. He couldn’t afford to think otherwise.
Yes, they’d find him. Then he’d be freed. He’d heal. He’d keep his vow to Gerrick, and he’d hunt the bastard betrayers down one by one.
The clear cover lowered and sealed him inside with a popping noise. The beat of his heart slowed to a barely perceptible rhythm. Thoughts became like slow-moving slugs in his mind and cold numbness flooded his system. The injection ports tunneled beneath his collar bone to pump necessary chemicals and nutrients into his body as he slept, their normally sharp bite no more than a mild nuisance to his senses. The lights in the room outside his chamber flickered off. Raiden lay in complete darkness, fighting the pull of oblivion, knowing this might be his final moment, his final decision.
Two Earthen years.
Someone would find him…or he’d die.
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Blue Abyss, Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3
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Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 Page 19