by S McPherson
‘Lunch is served,’ he calls. His words travel through the grounds as loud as if he’d yelled into their ears. The Counterpart recruits gawk at him in disbelief.
‘Decibolitry,’ he chuckles, hands still curved around his mouth. ‘Stops one from straining one’s voice.’
Clearly deciding this explanation will have to do, they each amble inside, allowing Dunt to lead the way to the dining hall. It’s a huge room, originally intended for balls, but having no real need to celebrate after moving to Melaxous, the hall is usually abandoned.
Lexovia watches them go; pride mingled with determination tingles from the tips of her toes. This is going to work. They may have lost many of their own but there’s no reason why the Corporeal can’t be as good, perhaps even better if they continue to train as vigorously as they did today.
‘So, Mi Elentri, will you be joining us?’
Lexovia looks up to see Jude standing at the top of the steps. He’s shirtless, his top slung over his shoulder, and his chest drips dirty sweat. She’s about to ask where he’s heard that phrase, but he already seems to know her question. ‘Everyone’s calling you that,’ and he shrugs. ‘Dunt’s orders.’
‘You take orders now?’ and she raises an eyebrow as she rushes up the steps to join him.
‘Only the ones I like.’ He slings an arm around her neck.
Lexovia cringes, screwing up her face as his bare flesh slick with sweat, strokes her skin. ‘Disgusting.’
‘You know you love it,’ Jude says before wiping his sodden forehead on her cheek. She screams and pulls away as he laughs. The jovial sound echoes through the corridors and all the way down the staircase leading to the dining hall.
NOT WITHOUT REASON
I know I’ve arrived in Vedark. The same familiar stretch of powdered earth that was in the vision sent through the tooth, now surrounds me. I have not, however, arrived in the same place. In the distance, rock curves from the earth like giant hands trying to claw their way out. But which one has Milo bound to it, I cannot say. I swallow, my mouth dry.
How am I going to find him in this field of nothing? My steps are padded by the pillowing soil as I trek across it, keeping the gethadrox in my clutch. There are no sounds beyond my gentle pants and not a single star shines in the tarnished silver and rust coloured sky. It’s as if the sky itself is bleeding, each drop a glob of light…but not a star.
Cold snatches my thoughts and the sour stench of poison digs its way up my nostrils and crawls into my brain.
‘At last,’ purrs a prowling voice as deep as the lance of fear it carves through me. ‘I thought you’d never come.’
I swivel around, hands poised, a spell on my lips. Diez. He holds up his hands, innocently.
‘Now, now,’ he grins. ‘I would never hurt you.’
I remain taut, feet firmly planted in a fighting stance. ‘Where’s Milo?’ I growl.
He cocks his head, questioningly.
‘The boy whose tooth you tore out,’ I snarl, surprising myself with the bite in my tone; ‘where is he?’
A piano keyboard of fangs greets me as Diez’s smile broadens. ‘Oh. Him.’ He does a turn around me, looking me up and down, his cloak billowing behind him like a distorted shadow.
I ball my hands into fists, turning as he does. Why is he looking at me like that? I scan the arid wasteland around us. And where is Milo? He must read my expression for he stops, barely a footstep away.
‘Is he all you care about?’ Diez looks almost disappointed. ‘Is that only as far as you see?’ He reaches a withered hand toward me and I step back. His hand doesn’t drop, not right away. He holds it out as if cupping my face. If he were to take a step forward, he would be. ‘Dezaray,’ my name seems to drizzle from his tongue like syrup. ‘You and I were forged to save the world.’
I bite back a scoff, part of me trying to make sense of his words, and say nothing. Taking my silence as acceptance, Diez steps forward. I note a burning hunger in his lucid eyes, one that craves me, but not in a way one would expect most men to crave a woman. Diez’s desire is an ocean, vast and raging beneath a seemingly peaceful surface. And though I may be a vital piece in this jigsaw puzzle, I am definitely not the whole picture.
I lick my lips, my mouth as baked as this windless night. I smell a musk as inviting as butter on warm toast. but it’s tainted, dampened by the stench of rot and decay. Diez steps even closer, the edges of his cloak caressing my legs, and his stink intensifies. I cannot decide whether to take a bite or run and never look back.
He grins as though he can read my every thought. I promptly throw up my mindle shield. I am a mountain, I tell myself. He is the wind. He chuckles and my skin crawls as though stroked by a snake.
‘Do you fear me or your own potential?’ he asks.
I don’t move, crippled by his stare that seems to twist my soul.
‘Don’t you want to save the world?’ and he twirls my hair around his finger, and though I flinch, I don’t move away. The cyan blaze of his eyes seems to swirl around me, wrapping me in an imagined cage.
‘What are you talking about?’ I eventually say, as if his hand were around my dry throat, my head tilted, my voice cracked.
He leans in, his nose almost grazing mine. My mind screams, my heart races like the hooves of stallions tearing up the night and my eyes cry without tears. Move, Dezaray. But still I stand, unsure now whether I or Diez is the mountain, and which one of us is the wind.
‘We can save humanity,’ he hisses, his hot breath whistling across my lips. ‘We can build a new world.’ He pulls back, but only a short way, and I feel the hold of his penetrating gaze lift ever so slightly. ‘When the world war broke out, the Coltis refused to let us in, keeping us out by force and killing innocent humans in the process, no matter how hard people pleaded, how much they cried out for them to take their babies. At least save the children.’ I feel the biting force of his rage and almost tumble backwards as he turns away, furious.
‘My brother was sixteen.’ He clasps his hands together, bits of his flesh flaking off under the crippling grip. ‘There were plenty more like him and plenty younger. But they just stood there,’ he almost booms, his voice echoing like thunder in the distance. ‘We heard the whistles of missiles, felt the blows of destruction coming closer, but they just stood there, a wall to keep us out. A wall of death incarnate.’ He paces back and forth, the red earth turning to the colour of blood around his heels. ‘They could have let us through. We could have found a way, but they wouldn’t even give us a chance.’
I watch, stunned at the venom in his voice but more so by how I understand it. I force myself to close my eyes for fear of getting wrapped in the web of his stare again, but when he falls silent too long, I open them.
He’s standing still now, almost serene, all rage seeming to storm around him like a tornado, leaving him becalmed in its eye, his chest rising and falling with purpose. I have a feeling everything Diez does has purpose.
I wrap my arms around myself, the gust of fury rippling from him chilling the air like the presence of ghosts.
‘And now?’ I say. My hair wafts in my face and I squint as clumps of powdered earth swivel around us. ‘You intend to somehow save the world?’
As rapidly as the squall had begun, it settles. Diez snarls, his eyes blaze and his head tilts from side to side as he studies me. ‘I intend to save the world,’ he looks up at the blood spattered sky, ‘by building a new one.’ And then his eyes settle on me. ‘A world that is safe for all mankind. A world where the innocent can flee the blight of corrupt men, and not die because of privileged pricks and their egos.’ A genuine smile creases Diez’s features and I see a hint of the boy he once was. A boy with hopes and dreams. From his words, it seems that boy still lives on within him, twisted and malformed but still there. ‘Coldivor is that world.’
‘Counterparts cannot co-exist in the same realm. Mankind would die not live—’ but he snarls and now I understand. He does not mean for counterparts to
co-exist, at which realisation his repugnant stench of decay and waste overpowers that alluring scent of something sweet and foreign that had inveigled its way into the air between us. I supress a gag, taking a step back into the soft soil beneath my feet.
‘Now she gets it,’ he sneers. ‘We have to think of our own Dezaray. We can save the world. Our world.’
I shake my head. He speaks with such rationality and divine purpose, but doesn’t he realise he’s talking about the deaths of thousands, old and young?
‘We can save the human world,’ I say, slowly, deliberately, ‘by destroying the Coltis,’ but I’m stunned when Diez simply shrugs. My fingers twitch for the strings that seal the satchel hanging from my shoulder, in which the xyen rests. ‘What do you plan to do?’
‘Join me,’ he breathes, wonder whirling in the cyan vortex of his eyes and carrying his words. ‘At the orange moon, taste Elutheran power. Let it surge through you and unlock your true potential. You will be a greater, darker threat than Lexovia, and when partnered with me,’ he waggles his eyebrows, ‘and my army of Exlathars, we will purge the lands of Coldivor.’
‘But…’ I frown. ‘You sent my brother to kill me.’
‘I sent your brother to test you.’ He waves a dismissive hand. ‘If you died then you were not who I know you could be. But…here you are.’
I’m staggered as I try to stop the darkness that is Diez from clotting the crevices of my mind. ‘You’ve been spying on me.’
‘You are very valuable,’ he hums. ‘My secret weapon. So secret that not even you knew it.’
Bile rises in my throat, worry churning in my gut. ‘You’re insane.’
‘What about you? Do you want to be crazy with me?’ at which I leap back, shocked at hearing my own voice sail from his lips, a perfect match for the very words I myself had spoken. ‘Shall I go on?’ I tremble, relieved that his voice has at least returned to his own.
‘Where is Milo?’ My words come out fiercer than I feel, and I cling to them for strength.
‘Join me,’ he urges. ‘Don’t you see? Sometimes for true greatness, sacrifices must be made. We can save the world.’
I edge back as he advances. ‘I don’t intend to save the world,’ and I thrust my hand into the satchel, yanking out the xyen. ‘Ku-ta,’ I whisper, as Yvane instructed, and the weapon elongates. Diez glowers at me, like I’m a question he can’t answer. ‘But what I do intend is to change it.’ The branded leaves of the xyen fork towards him like the hand of a clawed beast. ‘Where is Milo?’
Diez stops coming towards me and clasps his hands in front of himself. ‘I told you I wouldn’t hurt you, Dezaray. There’s no need for your weapons.’
‘Where is he?’ I yell. My desire to be free of this place and this demon in human skin, overrides my fear like a battering-ram.
‘You see them as us but they are not,’ Diez simpers. ‘They are just creatures, Dezaray.’
I clutch the cool marble of the xyen as though it were an extension of my own arm and stroke my fingers over the gethadrox curled in my other hand. ‘Where is he?’
To my surprise, he seems to admit defeat—at least for now—and shrugs, ‘The boy escaped.’
My stomach sinks. If Milo escaped then why didn’t he return to Coldivor?
I yelp as Diez closes the gap between us in the blink of an eye, skirting past the xyen as though it were no more than a feather, and I avoid his burning stare.
‘But to show you I am on your side,’ he murmurs, ‘I will guide you to where he is now. Hand me the tooth.’
‘Ku-ta, Ku-ton,’ I whisper, and the xyen folds once again and I push it into its satchel. It will clearly do me little good against Diez, anyway. I rummage in my bag and hand him the velvet box holding Milo’s tooth.
‘Don’t move,’ Diez growls, shifting ever so slightly. Lifting my gaze to his, I find his eyes are closed. His body pulses a current through me from which I long to step away, but for some reason I remain, trusting he’s truly scouring the Nynthst to locate Milo and that any move I make might disturb him. I clamp my nostrils shut against his overbearing odour, one that clogs my throat and makes my eyes sting. I press them shut.
‘One click to the left.’
I jump at his words, shrinking away as he grasps my hand holding the gethadrox and taps the centre of the device. Its circular disk rises.
‘One click to the left,’ he repeats, shoving the box with the tooth into my other hand. I turn the glass top and an opaque arrow bursts from the gethadrox. I neither pause nor say ‘Thank you’, or even ‘Goodbye’, but then, something in his look tells me we’ll be meeting again…and soon.
AND SO IT GOES…
Strategies are put in place right after lunch. As much fun as whacking away at each other all morning had been, Lexovia decides that, for the Corporeal’s truly to learn, they will need to be separated into focussed groups to assess and hone their ability. Seeing how the Counterpart recruits seem to be responding well to the younger Coltis, Lexovia divides them all into five groups of five, putting Howard in charge of the Fuertés and Sakiya as head of the Ochis. Dunt is given the Travisors and the Spee’ads go to Orwin. Both Dunt and Orwin are much older than the rest but are friendly enough not to come over as intimidating. Yvane is then given the remaining five; a collection of Teltreporthis, Prevolids and a Premoniter.
The team leaders are more than pleased to take on their roles and Howard immediately directs his group to the training arena. Yvane leads hers to the laboratory, deciding they will begin with spells and potions. Sakiya takes hers into the garden, to conjure orbs of flame. Dunt remains in the great hall and Orwin choses to take his outside the walls of the Court, where the Spee’ads will have the freedom to run for as long and as fast as they can.
Some of the other Court members join in, assisting as combat partners and teachers when needed. Others carry on with their usual day-to-day deeds: tending to the injured, formulating strategies or fashioning weapons and potions to take down the Exlathars. Some patrol the empires with the Rijjleton Guards.
Well suited for all tasks, Lexovia adopts the role of supervisor, going between all the teams to offer her skillset.
She starts with Orwin. He’s arranged his recruits in a line, one beside the other, and gestures to a spot in the distance that none can actually see.
‘You will know it when you get there, though trust me that this is part of the trick; to run that fast and yet still see where you’re going.’ Orwin waggles his bushy red eyebrows, pacing haughtily in front of them. The tuft of hair on his head bounces as he struts back and forth, his dark eyes looking them each up and down. ‘On my say you will run. Think beyond your Corporeal cage. Throw your heart and soul into it.’
The recruits nod, clearly determined. Lexovia notices the one they call Swift rocking on the balls of his feet, eager to be unleashed. Beside him is the boy who apparently caused some trouble for Dezaray and the mission shortly before Lexovia showed up. His name is Jeff. He’s lanky with nearly as many tattoos scrawled across his skin as his lover, Ibrahim. Finally, her gaze rests on Nathaniel. He grins mischievously before returning his attention to Orwin who is marching along one side of the recruits.
‘Take your positions. Deep breaths,’ he orders. ‘Now,’ he roars, and the five recruits take off, fast but no faster than would be ordinary. Lexovia follows them at a steady jog.
‘Come on,’ she enthuses, ‘faster.’
‘You should be there by now,’ Orwin calls as he whisks ahead.
Swift is the first to stop. His arms flop at his sides. ‘It’s not possible,’ he gasps as he indicates Orwin, now a dot in the distance, ‘to go that fast.’
‘When you’ve seen as much as I’ve seen, nothing is impossible,’ and Nathaniel pats him heartily on the shoulder.
Swift shakes his head. ‘This is, bruv. There’s no way I can run that fast.’
‘You’d be surprised what you can do when you break the bars of your mental cage,’ Lexovia notes. She remem
bers too well what it’s like to be crippled by self-doubt. When the world had first told her she was the most powerful—stronger and faster than all the rest—she’d hidden away for an entire week afterwards. How could she, at such a young age, be what they said? They trained and groomed her, insisting she was the one, but Lexovia didn’t want any of it, nor did she believe it. She just wanted her mother back. It took a while for her to see what they saw, and then eventually she saw beyond. ‘Just run.’
Swift eyes her doubtfully.
‘Run,’ she insists.
With a shrug, Swift does so.
‘Faster,’ she calls, running alongside, Nathaniel on his other. Jeff and the other two Spee’ads have already gone ahead, though at a steady pace. Swift pushes onward, grinning as his body does what it was made for. ‘You’re not even breathless, are you?’ and Lexovia nudges him with her shoulder.
Swift considers, puffing out his chest and inhaling. ‘Not at all.’
Lexovia grins. ‘Run.’
And again Swift does, though he still doesn’t tap into his inner Spee’ad he does manage to charge ahead. He passes the others and ends up being second to Orwin. Nathaniel cheers his approval before racing after. He catches up quickly at a faster than average speed, but still not at his maximum capability.
Lexovia smiles as she watches them dwindle into the distance. They aren’t going to be warriors overnight but believing in themselves is a good place to start.
Satisfied, she turns and slowly makes her way back to the Court, finding beauty in the little things around her. She admires how the sand twirls and flutters in the tepid breeze, how insects scatter from her approaching feet and the way the sky arches over them like a violet umbrella. Far off, she spies the skeletal branches that mark Deadwood, though amidst their frail frames stand trees that boast thick and dominating trunks, ones that spawn leaves of greens and golds. Lexovia sighs, savouring the silence, the fleeting glimpse of normality. Melaxous isn’t much to look at, and a stench of sulphur often slates the air, but it’s the only home she’s ever really known.