Crystil watched on a display the changes in power. The whole process took less than ten seconds. When she finished, she looked at the speed the ship could hit—it wasn’t satisfactory. She could only estimate how fast Calypsius could fly, but it was faster than she liked. She needed to remove more dead weight from Omega One.
Anything that wasn’t essential, or alive, was literally dead weight.
“Everything must go,” Crystil said, and she quickly ran to Cyrus’ room. She knocked, but no reply came. She headed to Celeste’s room and knocked, and Celeste opened the door with her hands. Cyrus laid on the couch on his stomach, his eyes barely open.
“We’ve got work to do,” Crystil said. “We need to remove everything in our rooms, the armory, the VR room, the lab, the medical bay, the kitchen and the cockpit to make this ship lighter. I’m going to need this ship to fly as fast as possible, and even just thirty pounds of extra dead weight could slow us down. Do you both understand?”
Celeste nodded. Cyrus gave no response, and Crystil could not let this one go.
“Cyrus,” she said, as warmly as she could.
“Fine,” Cyrus said, slowly sitting up. “It’s way too soon for cleaning season, but I have wanted to sunbathe on my bed some. I guess it could make it work.”
His smile gave away his attitude, and Crystil nodded her thanks, leaving with a massive smile.
She quickly cleaned out everything in her room, tossing everything she could outside the ship—her bed, her guns, her tablets, her notes. If it wasn’t going to help her fly, she wasn’t keeping it.
But when she came to the last item before her table, she froze.
It was a picture display, no larger than a couple inches, that projected images of her and Dyson from as far back as their first date to their wedding day to the last photo they ever took together. Crystil knew it had to go, but she felt callous just throwing it outside the ship with the rest of their furniture.
She quietly took it. She wanted to tell herself to just keep it, that something barely a pound wouldn’t make a difference. But the soldier in her, gearing up for perhaps her last battle, said it would all make a difference. She went to find Celeste and bumped into Cyrus instead.
“Cyrus,” she said, drawing his attention and eye contact for the first time that day. She wondered if he would accept it, but… “Can you do me a favor? Just safeguard this.”
He looked down at the small display, a cube of insignificance to him, but then looked into her eyes. She knew immediately he understood its meaning. He grabbed it from her, his hand pressing down on hers, and nodded without a word.
“Thank you,” she said, and she quickly wheeled back around.
49
Cyrus didn’t want to feel sympathy for his commander. He wanted to look at her as someone she couldn’t trust. It would’ve made life a lot easier and his state of mind clearer.
Instead, for her to entrust him… he didn’t know what to think of the sympathetic and grateful emotions that jumbled his mind. He certainly didn’t feel angry or annoyed at her anymore.
So instead, he quietly headed down the airlock one last time, placing the projector in one of his pockets while carrying a small table in both arms. Once he reached the open air, he tossed the table toward the pile of furniture at the edge of the forest, much to Celeste’s chagrin.
“What?!?” Cyrus said when his sister made an annoyed expression. “This furniture is so not in style on this planet. Besides, Omega One is an overrated place to live compared to the Kastori camp. The security is much better down there, and the cost is much more reasonable!”
Celeste maintained her annoyed expression, but a subtle turn of the lips told Cyrus his sister couldn’t take him seriously.
“You’d better be careful, the Kastori might decide to raise rent prices for non-magic practitioners.”
“All because we don’t practice magic? That seems rather unfair.”
“Watch, in six years, the Kastori will be inhabiting Omega One, and the rent there will be five times what it is now.”
“Ohhhh,” Cyrus said, and neither sibling could maintain a serious facade, breaking into laughter at the same time. For Cyrus, it felt good to just laugh for another few hours before the sun came down and the jokes became coping mechanisms instead of bonding agents.
“Oh, man. Our time here, it’s not quite the palace, but you know what,” Cyrus said, as he sat down on a couch, just within the sunlight. “I feel like I’ve gotten to know you better in the last couple of weeks than I did in the previous two years.”
“Well, I’d hope so, since we were both asleep,” Celeste said, mockingly crossing her arms.
“Indeed,” he said, admitting defeat. “You know what I mean, though.”
“I do,” she said. “And the same for you. Isn’t it funny. We ‘hang out’ as brother and sister on Monda but never really hang out. Just the two of us. Most of the times whatever girl you were dating was there, or Dad would be there, or even if it were just us, we’d have a guard nearby. I don’t feel like we ever got to have the true sibling experience until now.”
“And it only took a monster, the destruction of our home planet, and an angry commander to bring us together,” Cyrus said, and even Celeste chuckled. “No, but really, thank you, Celeste. You put up with a lot of things from me, and you manage to do it while keeping Crystil and me sane. Without you, we’re probably the monster’s waste by now.”
“Wow, Cyrus,” Celeste said as her brother laughed. “You. You’re absurd.”
“That’s me!” Cyrus said.
Celeste sighed, and Cyrus looked at his sister with pride. She really was the glue that kept their band together. Without her, they would’ve died at about fifty different spots—on the ship after VR training, on Anatolus after he left, in the cavern with the lupi… and that didn’t even mention her negotiations with the Kastori.
To think, I was worried she’d suffer a bunch of nervous breakdowns when we came out of hibernation. Looks like I was the one who suffered that fate.
“Yep, I’m that guy. And you’re the one who both loves me and isn’t afraid to hit me when I need it,” Cyrus said.
“Which I need to do more often,” Celeste said. “But thanks, Cyrus. It’s nice to know we got to this point before things might end.”
“Hey,” Cyrus said, surprised his sister would speak so ominously. “Don’t say that.”
“I said might, not will,” she said, turning to the sky. “But just… appreciate what we’ve done, because tonight is as likely a night as any for this to end.”
Cyrus could not argue with that. And as much as he loved goofing off, both to keep things lighthearted and to avoid depressing conversations, he had to face the end at some point too. He knew if he didn’t confront it now, and something happened to Celeste or Crystil… he could never forgive himself.
But nothing would happen, so it didn’t matter. Because he was Cyrus Orthran, heir to the empire, and if he couldn’t have that, he would have his own world, taking it from Calypsius.
And yet…
“Whatever happens tonight, whatever happens to us, know that I’ve always loved you and always will. I’m your brother before anything else, and with that comes all of the brotherly love I can provide.”
It was a hard thing for him to say, for Cyrus rarely expressed how he felt. He felt comfortable talking about relationships, but not love, not the end, and not to the people he cared about the most. But when he saw his sister’s eyes dampen, he, too, felt comfortable indulging. A sniffle broke the dam holding back his tears, and soon, the two embraced once more, not letting go until all of the tears had poured out.
As Celeste cried, Cyrus looked at the cockpit and saw Crystil standing up and leaving his view.
“You know, the way you two get along, I swear it’s like she’s your sister.”
“I know,” Celeste said. “She’s the big sister I never had. And she can be the big sister you never had, but you have to be willin
g to be that. Sometimes, you can’t worry about your support being reciprocated. Crystil sure didn’t give back the effort I gave her at first. But she came around. You should do the same.”
But the notion of her being that way didn’t sit right, no matter how hard he tried to believe it.
“I’ll think about it,” he promised, the emotion of his talk starting to creep up in his voice.
Suddenly, a precora appeared, looked at both Cyrus and Celeste, and scampered off quickly.
“He was afraid of your hair, so bright it blinded him,” Cyrus said, desperate for a light moment.
“And he was so overwhelmed by the size of your ego he needed to run away to breathe,” Celeste said.
Cyrus laughed.
“I’d say this was a beneficial break from our duties,” Cyrus said, bringing another short laugh from Celeste.
50
Crystil hatred of isolation was fading.
It should have been devastating to be in a quiet place and deal with ugly flashbacks.
But now, with tonight putting her life and her mission on the line, those paralyzing memories had begun to fade in favor of pleasant nostalgia.
As she watched Cyrus walk over to Celeste, Crystil’s mind raced back to when she’d seen him walk out in a storm, and she’d felt like a failure. Except now, with the gift of time to let the story unfold, she’d seen she had not failed. If anything, the incident had pushed Cyrus to become a better man.
Crystil also thought about that day when she went down in a heap with a shattered tibia with Celeste. She thought she’d lost her to poison. Instead, she had gotten her close enough to the ship for Cyrus to finish rescuing her.
Just like teamwork in the caves saved Cyrus from the lupi. Yes, people die. You tell your soldiers all the time. Listen to your own words. Dyson, Emperor Orthran, Eve, your brother. Those are tragedies that were out of your hands, not failures that stain your past.
She couldn’t completely accept the fact, as the commander wanted to assume all of the responsibility, whether hers or not. Did Celeste get hurt? Her instinct was to take the blame for putting the young girl in a compromised position. Did Cyrus walk off? Her gut reaction was to believe she had pushed him out.
But she could accept that the sign of a great commander was not just assuming responsibility, but recognizing what she could and could not control. It was bad luck that Dyson’s ship was destroyed—but it was also good luck for her since if it wasn’t him, it was her. It was circumstantial that she grew up without a father, not something she could affect.
Feeling a sense of peace was not something the commander could completely embrace. The Monda military had done a marvelous job of turning her into the perfect soldier, for better and for worse. But it was nice to feel better about herself before she went off on her most dangerous mission yet.
She turned back to her quarters, taking a nap with the few hours remaining before Calypsius came out. She felt confident she could finally have a pleasant dream.
51
The sun descended from its zenith in the sky, and with every further drop, each member of Omega One retreated further into their default personality. Crystil became silent, a stoic militant figure focused on the mission and nothing but the mission, even after her brief nap. Every thought that crossed her mind was a question, pondering how to defeat Calypsius and making sure she had covered all her bases. Cyrus talked frequently, often saying a minute’s worth of words when one sentence would have sufficed. He talked about how he was going to rename the planet Cyrus Land once they won, which drew the occasional laugh from Celeste, but mostly nervous silence otherwise from as the three humans convened in the cockpit of the ship, waiting for the arrival of the Kastori.
It was the one thing that worried Crystil. Celeste’s default state of mind in brutal situations was skittish and anxious. She could push past it before the first trigger was pulled, but they hadn’t gotten past that point. Would she react well when the battle began? Or would she revert to the scared girl who had made them fail on Omega One?
Despite planning for the worst, Crystil genuinely believed Celeste would come through. It would be a long battle, not a one-shot showdown, and even if she panicked in the first few minutes, she could pull herself together and fight.
Celeste stirred, and Crystil looked over the cockpit to see Kastori appearing.
“Game time!” Cyrus shouted. “Whoooo! Who’s ready to fry some Calypsius meat for breakfast tomorrow? It’s no bacon, but just as good as sausage!”
The two girls ignored Cyrus and made their way to the airlock, with Cyrus trailing just behind. Crystil noted the humans had no weapons, but she also quickly followed that by acknowledging weapons wouldn’t do much good against Kastori.
When they had finished climbing down the ladder replacing the airlock, Crystil saw multiple rows of Kastori waiting, all wearing their masks and staring at her. The sight made her queasy—it only took one of them, now ready to cast magic, to go against Erda and execute them. Crystil got a bad feeling that, at best, this was a moment where the Kastori would leverage their power to take everything away from them and, at worst, would execute them and take their technology for themselves.
“Kastori!” Erda shouted from the front. Crystil’s gut sunk lower, thinking this was the call to attack. “Remove your masks. You do not need them right now.”
Someday, I’m going to get over this and trust them.
Someday is way off, though.
Without hesitation, all of the Kastori removed their masks and exposed their faces. There were old, young, male, female, white, black, mixed-skin, tall, short, and every other type of Kastori. Erda turned back around and walked toward the humans, with Crystil taking two steps forward to establish herself as the point woman.
“Hello,” Erda crooned, a warm smile on her face as she stopped at a comfortable but close distance to Crystil. “Good to see you all again. Do not worry, Crystil, it’s all right.”
Crystil could believe Erda by now and, as long as Erda was around, began to acknowledge the other Kastori wouldn’t betray her. The moments without Erda—such as with Amira—frightened Crystil.
“I have brought my strongest red and black magic Kastori for this battle, including myself, for a band of thirty.”
“Thirty?” Cyrus said, the shock in his voice clear. “That’s it?”
Crystil found the notion strange. It didn’t take more than a couple to have a devastating impact. Thirty seemed like overkill, if anything.
“I fear so, Cyrus,” Erda said, running counter to Crystil’s notion. “We could have brought with us some white magic Kastori, but truth be told, in a battle like this, you will not have a lot of injuries that require medical attention. Just the living and the dead.”
Crystil let out a long sigh. At least it’ll be quick if it happens. But she didn’t like the idea of Cyrus or Celeste fitting into Erda’s latter category.
“It is a beautiful ship you have,” Erda said. “Crystil, can I confirm that I may fly with you?”
“Yes,” she said quickly.
“Thank you,” Erda said, and she looked past Crystil, took a couple of steps, and stood in front of the Orthrans. “My two most powerful black magic Kastori will be joining you to enhance your Nakar 17s. Reya! Pagus!”
Two figures quickly emerged from the crowd, both wearing black robes. Reya was an older woman, not quite as old as Erda, with short black hair and a weary—almost resigned—expression. Pagus was a young-looking black man, bald and taller even than Crystil, with a cocky grin. Crystil felt amused fake concern at what would happen if he paired off with Cyrus.
“Reya, you will go with Celeste. Pagus, you will go with Cyrus.”
“Boom, baby,” Pagus said, high-fiving Cyrus, and Crystil’s “worst” fears were confirmed.
“These two Kastori know every spell I know and have mastered the elements. Together, with your weaponry, they can finally bring down Calypsius.”
“Hi Reya,” Celeste
said, drawing only a quiet greeting from the older lady.
“Ready to make the sky erupt with fireworks from Calypsius?” Cyrus asked.
“Am I? Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen the stars? Man, a show might just blind me!”
The two shared a laugh as Crystil jokingly thought about sending those two beneath the surface, even if they won the battle tonight.
“As stated before, the Kastori not with a human will cast spells, but only with the intent of drawing his attention. We must act swiftly, and we must overwhelm the beast. Calypsius can heal himself, by our estimations in as quickly as fifteen minutes, and often shows no visible reaction to the damage we do to him. Quick, powerful action is required by your ship and your guns. Crystil.”
Projecting confidence, Crystil walked toward the middle, ready to address all Kastori and humans.
“Omega One has twenty thousand bullets and forty missiles in storage, which would be enough to wipe out an entire city—and should be enough to eliminate this monster. My ship has fuel to fly for days and will stay in the skies as long as necessary to win this battle. Though the ship is not the quickest, we have removed all excess weight. I am Monda’s best pilot and will push the ship to its physical limit.”
Erda nodded in acknowledgment and asked the three humans if they had anything to say. No one did. She turned to the Kastori.
“To everyone here, we have lived in terror of this monster for too long. We have suffered the shame of losing a planet that we loved and had cherished as our own, and because of my mistake, more have fallen. I saw the danger of this path, but I did not do enough to stop Typhos at the many points I could have. I will carry this burden with me for the rest of my life, no matter how tonight turns out, for we have all lost people that we loved, and destroying Calypsius will not bring those people back. But we can ensure that we do not have more people we regret are no longer with us because of the miraculous arrival of these three humans. They, justifiably so, feared us when they first met us and, again righteously so, still have doubts. You must understand where they came from—their world, ravaged by Typhos and his disciples, has been desecrated. What they knew of our race came strictly from their fight with Typhos. Understand them and earn their trust. For they, not us, hold the key to defeating Calypsius.”
Kastori Revelations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 1) Page 21