Divided (#1 Divided Destiny)

by Taitrina Falcon

  That was the problem with misdirection: people then assumed you knew things that you didn’t. However, the truth was a dangerous thing and had to be treated with caution. Honesty might make some things easier, but could make everything ultimately harder. Which reminded him, Mathis had said ‘in this difficult time’ earlier, so perhaps not all was well in the kingdom of Kaslea. As unfortunate as that was, maybe they could use it.

  “We skipped the border villages,” Leo said casually. “I wasn’t aware that there was a situation.”

  Mathis frowned in confusion. “You are not aware of the war between Gatlan and Sintiya?” Leo shook his head. “You must have travelled from the south,” the knight reasoned.

  “This region is unknown to my kingdom. We know almost nothing about the kingdoms here,” Leo said hesitantly.

  He was flying blind here. Mathis was making assumptions that he knew at least the basics of the world around him. It was a natural assumption, but one that he couldn’t afford to let slide. He needed more information. Hopefully his statement was possible. If horses were the fastest method of travel, it seemed plausible that there could be regions which had no contact with one another.

  “Ah, well, to the south does lie the unknown regions. I shall explain,” Mathis offered affably. “King Oswald of Gatlan and Queen Eleanor of Sintiya, their kingdoms are at war. Kaslea shares a border with them to the west; their forces keep clashing, and it is our people caught in the middle. The border villages are being forced to abandon their homes and farms, losing everything bar what they can carry.”

  “Well, better their homes than their lives,” Leo pointed out. “Do they have somewhere they can go?”

  “Our people are generous, but times are difficult enough without a war that is not ours causing suffering.” Mathis scowled.

  Leo frowned as he considered Mathis’s words. The knight had said ‘times were difficult enough’; that sounded to him like the war on their border was not the only issue facing Kaslea. Being caught in between two fighting factions was difficult, especially if you didn’t want to take sides. There was really little to be done but attempt to negotiate, to try and get the fighting to move on—or just wait it out. The battle had to be over at some point. However, until then, as in all war, it was the innocent that suffered.

  Taking sides, that was the problem. Leo couldn’t help them with their border problem, as that would mean going against the kingdoms of Gatlan and Sintiya, who might have the help that Earth needed. As callous as it was, Kaslea wasn’t likely to care about Earth’s problems, and he couldn’t care about Kaslea’s when there was nothing he could do. However, if he was right and there was another issue facing Kaslea, maybe that was something that his unit could deal with. Kaslea would then owe them a debt, and it was always much easier to negotiate when the other side owed you a favor.

  Hopefully whatever was causing ‘difficult times,’ it wasn’t a war with another kingdom. Perhaps it was a blight on crops, or an illness; they had medicine and farming technology. They could also ship over food, possibly. That assumed that they eventually managed to find the way back. They had been told the legends of the shrine spoke of people disappearing and reappearing. He had to have faith.

  The passage of time weighed heavily on Leo’s mind; the more time he spent here wandering this planet, the more time passed back on Earth. That was also a matter of faith. He had been transported by what was likely an alien device—he could have been anywhere, at any point in time. He couldn’t be certain how time flowed here. However, until he found proof otherwise, he was going to assume it flowed the same.

  That meant that he was racing the clock.

  There was a very real risk that by the time they found what they needed and located the platform to return, there wouldn’t be anything to return to. The aliens could have taken complete control, or Earth could have destroyed itself in the fighting. Leo wasn’t sure what would be preferable, slavery or annihilation. The first meant there was a chance of freedom down the line, but the second meant maybe they could take some of the bastards with them, and that appealed to him.

  No one, not even Roswell Grey aliens from legend, could kill freedom.

  Chapter Seven

  The kingdom of Sintiya stretched between its small coastal border next to Kaslea down to the forest with Gatlan and then up to the mountain range, separating it from the Northern Kingdoms. It was one of the larger kingdoms of the known realm, and one of the most affluent. There were a number of royal castles, offering a different home for all the seasons. The castle favored by the current queen was nestled at the foot of the mountains.

  The castle could be seen from miles, its gleaming white stonework standing out even from the snow-covered mountains beyond. The golden spires reflected the sun, dazzling the unwary. It was almost unearthly in how brightly it shone, like it didn’t belong in this realm amongst the dirt of the real world.

  On the second floor of the castle, there was the throne room. Anyone who saw it could be forgiven for believing it was the ballroom due to its size. The interior walls were covered in portraits of all the previous monarchs. Kings and queens draped in rich fabrics, dripping with jewels and adorned with heavy golden crowns.

  The ruling line had been unbroken for generations until the current queen had taken the throne. Queen Eleanor had been born noble, but not royal. She had married King Augustus, and on his death, as he had no heir, she had taken over his kingdom.

  Queen Eleanor was standing by one of the many windows. The entire exterior wall was composed of windows. It allowed the monarch to look out over their kingdom, and brought a lot of light into the throne room. The view was better in her tower, especially from the balcony of her bedchamber, which was why she had taken that room as her own.

  She was dressed in black, as befitted a widow. It was closing on a year since the kingdom had buried King Augustus; that was the standard time of mourning. However, she had to come to like the dark colors; they matched her mood and her actions. Her long, dark hair, usually straight, was curled and pinned in an elaborate style so that it only reached her shoulders, as opposed to mid back.

  “Your Majesty,” one of her knights said softly to gain her attention. When he was a few feet behind her, he sunk down to one knee, bowing his head in respect.

  “What is it?” Eleanor demanded icily.

  “One of the patrols captured a stranger. He is garbed in a manner we have never encountered. Do you wish him brought before you?” the knight asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor rather than on his queen.

  “Yes, immediately,” Eleanor ordered.

  The knight straightened, bowed, and strode out of the room to do his queen’s bidding. Eleanor swept over to the throne, carefully holding her skirt and taking her rightful seat. She’d learned at an early age that appearance was everything, and first impressions carried a lot of weight. Whoever this stranger was, she wanted him to know who held all the power here.

  A minute later, several knights trooped in. Two of them were holding a bound and struggling man who looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in strange patterned clothing, the jacket of which was ripped and covered in dirt.

  “Oh, yes,” Eleanor smiled cruelly. “In what kingdom is that fashion?” Her knights obediently laughed politely at the queen’s barb. “What are you supposed to be? An envoy of King Oswald? He truly must be desperate if he is contracting mercenaries from the unknown regions.”

  “We confiscated these from the prisoner.”

  One of the knights held up a black waistcoat of some kind; it was covered in pockets that bulged with unknown contents. Another waved a metallic object of a shape she had never seen before. Eleanor hid her unease; she didn’t like surprises, and she didn’t like encountering situations she knew nothing about.

  The bound prisoner straightened best as he was able, with both his arms held firmly by the two black armor-clad knights at either side. “I’m Staff Sergeant Max Ortiz, US Marines, Earth. I’ve never h
eard of King Oswald, and I don’t want any trouble.”

  “King Oswald rules over the kingdom of Gatlan, though not for long.” Eleanor narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “It is the second largest kingdom in this region. You could not have reached Sintiya and not heard of Gatlan and its last king.”

  “Well, we didn’t exactly take the normal travel route,” Ortiz told her.

  The knight to his left drew back his gauntlet-covered hand and punched Ortiz hard in the stomach. Ortiz would have fallen to the ground if the knights hadn’t been holding him. Eleanor watched as he sucked in desperate gulps of air, clearly trying hard not to empty his stomach all over her pristine throne room floor.

  “We came looking for friends, not to make enemies,” Ortiz stated through gritted teeth.

  “What kingdom did you say you were from?” Eleanor raised an eyebrow.

  Her senses were tingling. It wasn’t the strange garb, or the lack of knowledge, or even the lack of fear—it was all of it combined. This was no ordinary stranger. He was an unknown, and she hated unknowns. Knowledge was power, and she held all the power here, so there could be no room for ignorance. It was time for a subtle application of a slightly different form of power.

  “Earth,” Ortiz repeated. “Look, as I said, my unit came here looking for friends...”

  “There are more of you?” Eleanor interrupted.

  “Yes,” Ortiz confirmed.

  Eleanor could hear the hesitation in his tone. Her chocolate-brown eyes narrowed in calculation. So the stranger was not alone? That meant he was more than an oddity. One stranger was worthless, but learning of a group pleased her.

  “Take him to the dungeons,” Eleanor ordered suddenly, her tone dismissive. She rose from the throne and casually flicked her hand, gesturing them away, to leave her sight.

  The knights turned, not bothering to turn Ortiz, and dragged him backwards out of the throne room. The large double doors were open; with a wave of her hand, Eleanor crashed them closed after them. She strode back over to the window. It was where she did her best thinking. A prickle on the back of her neck told her what she already suspected—that she was not alone.

  “Very interesting,” Yannick’s low, mocking tone came from behind her, as the man in question slid out from the shadows in the corner of the room behind the throne.

  His black clothing was form-fitting around his trim, deceptively strong body. The mixture of dark dragon-hide, black leather, and silk practically made him invisible. The shadows seemed to cling to him as he moved to the window, even without him tapping his magic.

  Yannick appeared young for his power and knowledge. His piercing blue eyes and dark, messy hair belonged to someone with an easy grin, not a cruel smirk.

  “He is not from this world,” Eleanor told him, though her teacher likely knew more than she did. He had taught her everything she knew about magic, but she was under no illusions that he had taught her everything he knew.

  “He is dangerous. A spirit of a warrior from an unknown place. That presents…possibilities,” Yannick suggested. His dark eyes gleamed with bloodlust, and Eleanor shivered despite herself. “You should investigate.”

  “He didn’t say how many others there were to find,” Eleanor pointed out.

  “Eleven,” Yannick interjected calmly.

  Eleanor blinked. She really shouldn’t have been surprised by now. With their strange garb and lack of knowledge, Staff Sergeant Ortiz’s friends wouldn’t be hard to find. In fact, her main concern was that they were so distinctive they would be noticed by others, and the last thing she wanted was King Oswald gaining any kind of last-minute advantage.

  The kingdom of Gatlan was all but bankrupt; King Oswald’s last desperate hope was to win this war against her, to take Sintiya’s riches for his own. All her forces had to do was stalemate him a little longer. He wouldn’t be able to pay his army, and Gatlan would fall to her. These strangers were an unknown; they could be useful or they could be dangerous, and so long as they were working for her, it would be nice if they were both. However, that was the point: they either needed to be made use of or neutralized. They couldn’t be allowed to remain roaming free.

  “I will have my knights start an immediate search. Hopefully his friends landed close by,” Eleanor said, smirking confidently.

  Although she was fairly certain it would not be that easy. What little her magic sense had gotten from Ortiz—which certainly wasn’t the detail Yannick had managed—had shown that Ortiz had left with his group but landed alone. Her knights would already have found any others that had been near Ortiz; it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that they had spread far and wide, likely landing within the boundaries of other kingdoms.

  Eleanor sighed. She was so close to conquering Gatlan. Perhaps she should move up her timeline, King Oswald really shouldn’t be allowed to remain inhabiting her new castle any longer. If he was removed from power, then whether his knights found a stranger or two would no longer be an issue; the war would be over and she could move on to the next kingdom.

  She would have her power, and she would finally be free.

  *****

  Leo smelled the smoke even before he saw its swirling, dark tendrils rising from the trees up to the blue sky above. Hand steadying his assault rifle, he jogged forward. Mathis had remounted the horse an hour earlier, but had kept the horse to a slow trot to allow Leo to walk with him. Mathis dug his boots in the stallion’s flank, urging it faster, to follow Leo towards the smoke.

  The trees started to thin out, showing a clearing. Leo slowed and crept to the side of the road, using the tree line as cover. It was a village, or the remains of one. There were a few dozen wooden dwellings surrounding a square that contained a stone well. Little remained; the fire had burned through everything. Not all the shacks had completely collapsed—a few held on to a vestige of a shape—but a mild breeze would soon send the stubborn timbers crashing down into the ashes.

  What was worse than the burned-out shells of what had once been people’s homes were the burned bodies. They were everywhere, lying on the ground, inside the wreckage of the shacks—a few appeared to have been trying to make it to the forest, perhaps hoping for shelter against whatever had attacked them. The burned corpses lay twisted just a few feet from their fool’s hope of a shelter. Fire would have burned the wood more easily than it would have burned the village. They were very lucky it hadn’t spread. In fact, this went beyond luck; it was suspicious.

  “What happened here?” Leo breathed solemnly, his eyes taking in the carnage. He had seen similar scenes in warzones. The scent of charred flesh wasn’t new to him, but it was always disturbing, especially given that some of the bodies were far too small. Children had died here.

  “The demon that plagues Kaslea.” Mathis dismounted, bowing his head in respect, but making no move to leave the safety of the tree line. “It is a great dragon. It started to terrorize the kingdom three months ago. Many knights have gone against it. None have survived.”

  “A dragon?” Leo repeated stupidly.

  Sure, a dragon had fire and claws, but a dragon was also a mystical creature, a creature of magic. Mathis had to be mistaken; there had to be a logical scientific explanation for what had happened here. Although, he had to remember that this wasn’t Earth, and that if Roswell Greys were real, why couldn’t a dragon be real? This was an alien world, after all, and a dragon didn’t have to be a magical creature—it was just a creature, one alien to Earth.

  It was hard to overcome the instinctive assumptions. Humans were all creatures of their own experience, but he had to keep an open mind. Anything could be real, anything could be true, and anything could be helpful. Besides, a dragon was something that his unit could maybe deal with. He hadn’t met anything yet that could stand up to a hail of gunfire or a chunk of C4.

  Even the suited Roswell Greys had fallen to grenades and close-quarters knife attacks. Prying the faceplate off and then blowing their brains out had proven the most
effective attack. A dragon didn’t wear armor, beyond its own natural scales, and would hopefully not be too difficult. That should win them some friends in Kaslea.

  “You have not encountered such a beast?” Mathis asked, though it had already been made clear from Leo’s reaction what his answer would be. “You are fortunate.”

  “Yeah, I’m kinda getting that,” Leo muttered, stepping forward and into the village.

  He sidestepped the bodies, automatically counting but wishing that he wasn’t. This was clearly a tragedy enough without trying to put numbers on it. A whole village had been wiped out. However, aside from the obvious damage, Leo couldn’t help but wonder why things weren’t worse.

  That was an awful thing to be contemplating, especially when surrounded by the dead, but only the village had burned. The damage was clearly recent; he could still feel the warmth from the burning timbers, and smoke still spiraled into the sky. Leo wouldn’t have been surprised if they were the first people to come across this disaster. No one was here, as they still would have been if they had come across it and fought the flames. Somehow, the fire had burned out on its own and hadn’t spread to the forest.

  Leaving aside the fact that the fire, unchecked, should have spread with the wind and hadn’t, if a dragon was responsible for this, why did it care whether it roasted a village or a forest? Surely, if it had been swooping down for dinner, or because it had been angered, then it would have been breathing fire pretty indiscriminately. The dragon should have set light to the trees, not just burned the village to the ground with precision.

  Perhaps it was because he found the idea that dragons were real a step too far. He just couldn’t get the physics or the biology behind how it was legitimately possible for an animal to breathe fire. Maybe it wasn’t a dragon, in terms of a blood-and-flesh dragon; it could be an illusion, some form of technology. The purpose behind it was unknown, but then, everything about this world was unknown.

  It was in the center of the village, not far from the well, what had likely once been the trading hub for the village, that Leo saw something that made his blood run cold. There was a body here, a body unlike the other villagers. Metal didn’t burn like flesh, and certain fabrics retained their shape. There was no denying it; the body in front of him was one of their own, a member of his unit.