Outcasts of the Worlds

by Lucas Paynter

  “Flee, please,” Aaron’s voice practically begged. “I would take perverse pleasure in running you through.”

  Flynn remained crouching. He had been gullible—trusted an apparently benevolent deity. She could have deposited us into the heart of a volcano if she—No. We have something she needs, something her allies—or master—need. That’s all that saved us.

  Poe still fought, but his blade was struck from his hand and flew off to Flynn’s far left. The Searing Truth met the ground and he was surrounded. Exhaustion and the weariness of rage unslaked drained his senses, and with a furious scream he plunged the Dark Sword into the ground, submitting. He knew how the fight would end if he didn’t—he would kill many others; but he too would die.

  Zaja, Chari, and Mack were each held at spearpoint, disarmed but alive. It had taken three to restrain Jean—one to hold each arm, another pressing his weight on the back of her body. A fourth unhooked her mace from her belt, pulling it away just as Jean attempted to slam her head into the female soldier’s.

  “Stand. Slowly,” Aaron ordered.

  Keeping his hands up, Flynn complied. He could turn quickly, possibly disarm Aaron—he knew how he would move—but he could not ascertain his friends’ odds, save that they were bleak. How he had changed. Once upon a time, he would have turned and saved himself, letting them all die if need be. He felt the weight of that knowledge as he took in his surroundings. The six had touched down among four times as many soldiers, all dressed as Aaron was, in the courtyard of an ancient castle, draped with dead ivy. A great spire rose from the castle, reaching higher than Flynn could crane his neck. It was bricked with resplendent white stone, interlocked with the old gray stone of the fortress. The entire courtyard was encircled with a looming, continuous wall; there was no way out.

  “You were confident we would come this way,” Flynn observed.

  “It was risky,” Aaron replied, “but probable.”

  “Roxanne?”

  “Our snake in sloughed skin,” he confirmed, before turning to his lackeys. “Shackle him, and make them tight.” Aaron sneered at the last part, remembering their previous encounter. “He’s limber.”

  They were not gentle. Heavy manacles weighed on his wrists, his arms twisted a little to ensure they were bound firm. Flynn grunted in pain.

  “Flynn!” Jean barked, still struggling herself.

  “Jeepers, be a little gentler!” Mack proclaimed to his own shackler. “What’d we ever to do you?”

  Aaron circled around, leaving one soldier to hold Flynn in place. He raised Flynn’s chin, avoiding looking at him directly, as if something unclean about him would spread if stared directly upon.

  “Tried to sell me out to a pack of lowly hunters,” Aaron recalled. He moved abruptly, punching Flynn in the stomach. “Me! The inconceivability of it!” The air evacuated Flynn’s lungs and he gasped as Aaron prattled on. “I don’t know what inspired such profound change in and about you, but this adjustment in your nature may yet make you useful to my august Lord.”

  “Useful?” Poe grunted. “What do you intend for us?”

  Aaron moved toward Poe, telling him, “Dear Guardian, we have special plans for you. You were the point of this, really … the others may likely die, in the end. If it is wished by—”

  “Well, at least he’s making reliable and time-tested super-villain threats,” Mack said to Jean. This mockery did not escape Aaron’s attention.

  “Pfft, like he has the stones to finish us off,” Jean ridiculed.

  Irate, Aaron crossed over to them and grabbed the crouching Jean by the coat, pulling her up. “Do you think so little of my skills as assassin and executioner?” he demanded. “You think I would not kill a helpless and unarmed woman?!”

  “I’d like to see you try, fuck-head,” Jean goaded.

  Aaron clenched his free hand and the skin stretched back, the bone growing to a cloven fist as it had before. He opened it, nearly ready to bring the claws into her stomach.

  “Lord Arronel!” one of the soldiers implored.

  Arronel? Flynn was curious. He hadn’t heard that name before. Aaron paused, then shook his head and laughed at how Jean had almost bested his temper.

  “Their fate is for Lord Renivar to decide now.” Turning to walk away, he ordered, “Imprison them. If they try anything rash, only the Guardian is of genuine import.”

  They were no longer worthy of Aaron’s time. Flynn knew without doubt where they had landed—on the doorstep of their enemy: They had come to Terrias, the very site where Airia Rousow and Kayra Kwarla had tethered Taryl Renivar centuries before.

  *

  Zaja was staggering a few paces in front of Jean. When they’d touched down, a guard had taken her whip and restrained her. Jean saw the guy frost up and keel over. It had obviously taken a lot out of Zaja to do whatever she’d done, because afterward she was breathing hard, too weak to fight. Even now, she hadn’t gotten better. It had all happened so fast. And now another prison awaited her. She could bust out, but had a sinking feeling it shouldn’t be as easy as that. Not while Taryl Renivar himself waited in the same building as she and her friends.

  Poe was kept at the front of their little parade, Flynn at the back, and everyone else sandwiched in between. Jean slowed a little, letting Flynn’s pace catch up to hers.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Better, yeah,” he answered, taking a deep breath.

  She leaned close and whispered through her teeth, “First chance I get, I nail that prick to the wall.” Her eyes indicated a guard who was walking behind Flynn, carrying Poe’s Dark Sword. The other weapons had been taken as soon as they entered, likely to be stowed away. They’d have to double back and gear up, but it probably wasn’t far—

  “Don’t,” Flynn ordered. Casting his eyes ahead, he asked, “Zaja?”

  Jean relayed what had happened and Flynn fell silent—he was scheming; she could tell.

  It was cold in the lower levels, she realized. Her hands and face felt it; her bare neck picked up a draft. Prison cells, in her experience, weren’t much warmer, and she had seen a few. And if she knew it, Flynn knew it.

  “We’re outnumbered and largely unarmed,” he concluded. “You need to take Zaja and get out of here.”

  “I’m just lookin’ for a good spot to spring us—” she started.

  “Hey, both of you!” one of their escorts ordered. “Shut it!”

  Flynn glanced back skeptically, as though a roach had barked commands at him. He breathed his next words in a low tone. “Not us. Just you.”

  “Fuck tha—!” Jean’s terse protest began.

  “I’ve had enough of your bullshit!” Flynn suddenly declared, ramming his elbow into her chest, shoving her against the wall. She grunted from the pain and was ready to bury her knee in his crotch, when Flynn leaned close as the guards tried to pull him off her. “You don’t ditch your friends, I remember! But this isn’t the time!”

  As Flynn was pulled away, Jean dropped the few inches he’d pushed her up. She knew her breast would be bruised later, but was glad that Flynn had the balls to play rough.

  “They have Poe,” Flynn yelled. “They have me! That’s what they wanted most! You don’t matter, Jean!” He looked to Zaja. “Neither does she! So don’t act like you’re special!”

  They were pushed back into a march, catching up with the others who had stopped at the commotion. Jean narrowed her eyes at Flynn, muttered, “Fuck you anyway,” and picked up the pace to distance herself.

  She moved closer to Zaja, who shuffled miserably. A guard stayed near, ensuring she wouldn’t collapse while maintaining a safe distance from the blue girl’s dangerous grasp.

  “Hey, Blue,” she hissed.

  “Yeah …?” came Zaja’s addled response.

  “Remember how you busted those locks back in—what’s that place—Kana?” Jean’s eyes met those of Zaja’s escort, who watched her suspiciously. “Up for a repeat?”

  Dazed, Zaja nodded. Withou
t waiting another moment, Jean slipped behind Zaja’s escort, planting her foot in the back of his knee before following up with a side kick to the back. She preferred fists, but they were still fettered in heavy chains.

  Turning quickly around, she squatted slightly and placed her shackles in Zaja’s hands, kicking to keep at bay those soldiers willing to leave Flynn and the others unattended to deal with her. Jean felt a chill run up her forearms, felt them numbing. Zaja dropped to her knees after finishing the work.

  Slamming her manacled wrists against the wall, Jean felt the sting of icy metal digging into her forearms. The soldiers were scrambling to overtake her, and she was frantic, beating at the chains again and again, kicking and head-butting her attackers. Jean was nearly overwhelmed, and she knew the kind of treatment that prisoners who put up a good fight could expect. There was one solution: She could drop to her back, lay her hands flat, and bring the whole castle down around them. It would end this mess then and there, keeping Poe out of their hands. But if it wasn’t enough to kill a god, then it might well be a waste.

  Just as a slew of arms and blades overwhelmed her, something cracked. Jean twisted her wrists against each other, hard. The brittle chain coiled and snapped. All the weight of the soldiers had been against her torso and legs, when her fists unexpectedly came out. A chaotic brawl followed, but Jean broke through the melee, her coat bearing several bloody slashes. A mob divided her from her friends and, knowing she couldn’t take them all, she did what she’d sworn to never do: Jean pressed her palm against an attacker’s torso. Abruptly, her victim’s armored chest erupted with the sound of metal contorting and bone crunching as the force of Jean’s power blew him away.

  She recalled then the hallway in Civilis, and the cold promise she’d repeated to Flynn twice since escaping: I ain’t gonna be taken alive. Hoisting Zaja upon her shoulders, she charged down the hallway, slamming her free hand upon soldier after soldier, trying not to make herself sick in imagining the shards of bones that were tearing their owners’ insides apart. Glancing back, the soldiers who’d stayed behind were hurrying her friends along. Folded over Jean’s shoulder, Zaja promptly blacked out.

  Following the scent and sound of open air, Jean burst through the old wooden door they’d recently been led through to find the castle courtyard emptier than it had been. Running to the surrounding wall, five times her height and built of ancient stone, she set aside her human baggage and placed her hands upon it. If she forced the whole wall down, all at once, Jean knew it would probably collapse on them. She closed her eyes, listened.

  Fuckers’ll be here soon.

  Concentrating was difficult, but between the smaller pulses she released—the same kind that let her tease the lock open in Civilis—she found a weakness that would break where she needed.

  A dozen footsteps and the desperate rattle of armor.

  Gritting her teeth, Jean pushed and breached the outer wall. Rubble fell and dust rose, and she hoisted Zaja up and walked bow-legged through the smoke, coughing her way outside. They were atop a low mountain. Beyond it and wrapping around the land was a city of tents that went on for miles, whose horizon met the low-hanging sun and three moons, which had appeared in dusk’s ominous green sky.

  The soldiers were still coming. Carrying the limp and useless Zaja, Jean ran outside and slid down the stone and soil of the hill, choking in the dirt that kicked up as she tried desperately not to slip and send them both tumbling to their deaths.

  *

  Before this day, all of Chari’s prisons had been social constructs: the culture she was part of, the home she hid inside. Prior to learning the truth of her new friends back on TseTsu, she had let them end up imprisoned before chancing the same fate herself. In the upmost level of the spire that capped Taryl Renivar’s place of binding, a chamber had been set aside with eight cells, segmented by golden bars. Chari wondered if they realized the irony of this.

  Led through the back way, they never got to see the man of such myth. Even if she had, Chari wouldn’t know him by sight. He had been dead—supposedly, at least—for millennia.

  Imprisoned alongside her in separate cells were Flynn and Mack. Poe was missing, separated along the way, but filling his place was a girl she did not recognize. Chari was in the cell closest to her, and moved nearer to see her. She had long brown hair and gentle features such that she almost seemed TseTsuan, if not for her darker complexion. But all over her body, shining through the blanket that covered her as she slept, were runic carvings. The incisions ran only skin deep, a thin layer shaved off and scarred shallowly. More subtly than the girl’s eyes, the runes likewise glowed with a soft blue hue, one Chari found she couldn’t study for long. The symbols cut into the girl’s body were in the same language she’d seen in the temple on Sechal, and it stung the mind to dwell upon.

  “Some luck, huh?” Mack was awake as well. “Jeannie’s gonna have to save me … again.”

  “We have grounds at least to believe help may be coming,” she replied. “Isn’t that some comfort?”

  “Kinda yep? Kinda nope.” Mack hung on the bars, pressing his face against the space between them, contorting his cheeks. “I saved her bacon, the first time we met. But ever since then it feels like I’ve been the damsel who’s distressing.”

  “And you’re inferring she needs to be in distress because she’s the maiden?” Chari asked wryly.

  “Maiden?” he smirked. “And no! Can’t I just want to be the guy without her being a she being a thing?”

  Chari shifted uncomfortably. She was used to men serving women more often than the other way around. There were male lords, priests, and so forth, but she had grown up knowing a particular balance of power, and it seemed odd thinking of it any other way. “I … suppose so,” she replied reluctantly.

  “It’s not the best reason of reasons, and I know that, but liking Jeannie’s been a lot of why I do what I do.”

  Chari was at a loss for words. She had often counseled people on affairs of the heart with hollow words of the Goddess’s wishes and what was meant to be. But in her experience, there had only been brief liaisons where she had gotten what she needed and maybe given some fulfillment in return.

  “I think …” she spoke hesitantly, “if you really wish to retain Jean’s friendship, you may have to sacrifice the pursuit of her. I have witnessed your lesser feats and they have fallen upon blinded eyes.”

  Mack responded with silence. Then a smirk, and an explanation. “It’s funny, ‘cause when we fought that Aaron guy I blinded his … eyes. Yeah.”

  She saw the humor, but it did little to raise either of their spirits. All they could do for now was sit and wait for Mack’s hero to come.

  *

  The steady patter of water dripping into a bucket broke Zaja’s slumber. She felt a modest weight encompassing her torso, her arms, and her legs. Whatever she was laying upon itched, and she squirmed in an effort to scratch as the world came back to her.

  As Zaja’s vision returned and she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she saw a roof half gone, and storm clouds drifting in overhead. The rainfall was sparse, not like the downpour they’d been caught in outside the gates of Heaven.

  There were no lamps or candles in the room, but it was easy enough to see. Sitting up in her makeshift bed of straw and patched blankets, she saw one end of a table upon which sat Jean’s barrette and tattered leather jacket. The sound of gulping came from the other side of a half-broken wall, indicating that someone sat at the other end of the table, out of sight. Gathering one of the blankets to her, Zaja stepped upon the cold earth and suppressed a shudder from the chill that ran up her leg, asking the most natural question that came to mind.

  “Why aren’t I wearing any clothes?”

  Jean kicked back in a chair, her feet on the table as a large jug dangled from her finger. Her hair was down, and she had a few cuts on her face and arms that had healed over in thick, red scabs.

  “Two days of tender fuckin’ care and that’s
all I get?” Jean grunted back. She slid the jug across the table, and Zaja managed to catch it before it fell off the other side, cradling it awkwardly without loosening the blanket that covered her. “Drink. Rather have somethin’ harder but the good shit’s in short supply around here.”

  Turning away, Zaja adjusted the blanket, exposing her shoulders as she wrapped it into an overly long, makeshift dress. She blushed that Jean should be the first person who wasn’t family to see her like this. Jean, meanwhile, scratched at her armpit, oblivious.

  Zaja took a drink, somehow expecting something worse, but no, it was just water. She didn’t realize how parched she was until she nearly drained the half-empty jug. Her thirst quenched, she realized what she’d just heard. “Two days?”

  Zaja’s memory was fuzzy, even before they’d left the World Between Heaven and Hell. There had been violence and a rush of cold.

  “You heard me. Tumbled down the hill into a whole city of tents, managed to get clear and put a small quake in the ground.” Jean’s pride faded as she went on, “Knocked a few homes down. Made enough of a mess, but … saw folks helpin’ each other. Like, one for one. Never saw so many run into a disaster.”

  “So where are we now?” Zaja asked. “Where is this place?”

  “Yeribelt,” Jean replied. “Near as I can tell, there used to be a town here before all the folks with the tents set up camp.”

  So we’re in one of the old houses, Zaja concluded. She saw her clothes in a pile on a chair, and was dismayed that Jean hadn’t even had the courtesy to fold them in two days. Saying nothing on it, Zaja moved to collect her belongings.

  “Had to traipse through mud and dust and dirt before I found this place,” Jean admitted, casting her gaze aside. “Yer clothes were soaked, so I had to get you clean and covered. If it’s any comfort, washin’ naked teenagers ain’t my idea of a good time.”

  Retreating behind the wall, Zaja got dressed. Her clothes had dried, but if Jean had cleaned them, she had done a shabby job—nothing she’d brought from Quema even resembled its original color anymore.