Alexa Drey- the Gates of Striker Bay

by Ember Lane

  I pondered his question. It only had one answer. “No.” Then I remembered back. “It has its own charging station; I remember that. It made it seem more insignificant, so I chose it without hesitation.”

  “And then it grew, and each time it needed to help you a bit more it upgraded or altered in some way. Whose idea was it to deflect the charge back into the bird even after your magic hadn’t worked the first time?”

  “Not mine.” I said that without a shadow of a doubt.

  “So the rod thought for you. It valued your life enough to intervene. It knew the next magnification would destroy the bird. It wants you to succeed.”

  His truth encompassed me. I knew he was right. “I’m getting manipulated by a piece of metal? What next!”

  “No,” he said. “You’re being manipulated by the person who put the rod in your hands.”

  “So what do I do?”

  Pog took a spoonful of his stew. “You do what we always do: follow the path, find out where it leads.”

  It was innocuous, just an innocuous rod: hexagonal. I hadn’t noticed that before because the edges were rounded, and it molded to my grip so exactly. Its ends weren’t completely flat either, rather sculpted to a blunt edge, the flat sides folding into it. The surface of the metal looked smooth on the surface, but close up was pocked, cratered, like its casting had been hurried and its finishing only half completed.

  “Who put it into my hands?” I said out loud again.

  “Has it got a menu you can access?” Pog asked.

  Mezzerain scoffed, “You talk mumbo jumbo just to cause me pain; I’m sure you do. Sutech! Drag me away from this pair! They’re talking like a lump of metal has a soul.”

  But Sutech didn’t answer. His silence blanketed us. We all turned toward him. I set down my bowl.

  Our defensive wall had taken a battering during the battle. The sides had held up well, but the center now sagged in a V shape. Sutech was staring at the breach. I stood, walking over to his side. Pog took up position on his other side. Behind us, Mezzerain grunted in pain as he rose.

  Billy and Charlotte glanced up; they’d been deep in conversation.

  Faulk continued cooking, but his attention was drawn too.

  The rider stared at us, his eyes never wavering.

  He had long, brown hair, straggly, dirty, falling past his shoulders, flowing over a long, dark-green-checked cloak. He wore a beard, long like his hair but frizzy and matching his ranging eyebrows. In his hand he held a staff, vertical, precisely so, with a pennant attached to its top—a black one, with a white wolf sewn into it.

  I turned as a flurry of splashes came from either side of me. More riders closed in but didn’t breach the shield wall. They stayed beyond our perimeter as if they respected our boundaries. Beyond the wall, unseen, I could hear more gather.

  “What do you want?” Sutech asked, taking a step forward to show his defiance.

  The pennant-holding Cer tilted his head back assessing Sutech before his gaze settled on me. His lips began moving as if he were chewing over the answer to Sutech’s question, but all his focus was now on me. He made to turn his horse.

  “Wait!” I shouted.

  He stopped.

  “What do you want?” I asked the question hoping it would make a difference.

  He straightened, then from a standing start he hurled the remnants of the wall and walked his horse up to me. Mezzerain drew his sword, but the Cer appeared unconcerned and Mezzerain resheathed.

  “Rest,” the Cer finally said. His voice was throaty and sounded like he hadn’t drunk a drop of water in an age. “You will not be bothered further.”

  He brushed by me, bringing his horse to a gallop and hurdling the smaller shield wall. One by one, each of them vanished back into the fluorescent forest, leaving us to our own, mystified devices.

  “Well,” said Faulk, “that went better than expected.”

  Pog started giggling, breaking the tension in two. I cracked a smile and decided that heroes did come in all shapes and sizes.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Cers and the Pods

  There were twenty of them in total. They rode in a loose form, saying nothing, just ghosting through the forest like outriders, while we walked in their midst. Their silence infected us. Their lack of information, of any recognition that we existed as anything but a group to be herded, disturbed us in a way only ignorance can. But no monsters attacked us, and for that we could at least be thankful.

  I walked with Pog. Faulk trailed along with Mezzerain and Sutech. Billy and Charlotte were hand in hand. That was unnerving. That was worse. They’d clearly figured things out.

  We followed the Marroo Margins until it intersected with a larger river. The Cers turned us against the flow. Pog told me it was the wrong way, pointing behind and downriver. But his mantra prevented him from arguing. Follow the game, that was his philosophy, and he wouldn’t be changing it anytime soon.

  We left the embrace of the steppes and the fluorescent forest. The river’s opposite bank was flat, like the steppes couldn’t exist over the river. It lent the impression that one section of the land ended at that exact point and another began. Ruse had curious geology, too linear, too sectional, unnatural in every way and then graced with an ecology struggling to exist in tandem with it.

  The flat land resembled black desert, bleak and unforgiving, words that I’d become accustomed to using to describe Ruse. We traveled upriver for a good few hours before coming to a ford and crossing it. The river was ice cold, its biting water nearly sweeping me off my feet. Entering the wastelands—that described them better—we walked on. The Cers appeared to be in no hurry, happy to walk their horses at our pace.

  It turned out the land wasn’t flat at all; its blackness just made it look that way. We followed a trail, delineated solely by the compression of its black dust. Once noted, it was easy to see the path that led away, curving to contours that were visible close up. Our route rose slightly, taking us away from the river. According to Pog, we were still headed in the wrong direction but not sharply so, more skirting around our target. After an indeterminate amount of time, we began to descend, and the spread of a wide valley became clear. Pog pointed right—north, south, east, and west meant nothing here. A tower punctured the horizon. Its top spilled orange flame, spreading a fan of fire across this barren land. I could make out no further detail, but it was clearly our destination. It was the city of Slaughtower.

  The Cers ignored it, leading us down into the escarpment’s side and to a dried riverbed of black rock and smoothed pebbles. They followed it along for a few hundred yards until they rode another trail out. It led to a hollow, its black sides pocked with cave entrances, a dozen or so emanating the glow of fires within. More Cers milled around performing their chores. It looked like they were wrapping up the day. They barely took any notice of our arrival.

  We were led to a cave entrance, herded in like cattle. They posted no guard. They didn’t need to. We had nowhere to run. The cave was a good size with room to spread out, but we were all drawn to its central fire, the cave’s focal point. We clung close like the hostages we were.

  “Start the fire?” Faulk asked.

  I sent it a quick flash of magic, a petulant gesture. My nerves were shattered. This whole silence thing killed me. “Why do they have to be so quiet?”

  “The Cers,” Billy then informed us, “are a weird group. We think, well, I thought, they’d all died, but this bunch are as alive as you all, so I got that wrong. But I have seen dead ’uns too, so I didn’t really. Maybe some died and some didn’t, you know, when it all went wrong here.”

  “So these are killable?” Mezzerain said, drawing his sword.

  Sutech stayed his hand. “Why would you? They’re taking us where we want to go. Saves fighting random monsters. Take a rest when you can, Big Man.”

  Mezzerain grunted. “Feel like killing something.”

  “Valkyrians.” Sutech rolled his eyes. “You�
��d fight with your own reflections.”

  At a loss of what to do, I began cycling my mana and charging the Nexus Rod. It was now my default thing to do. A short while later, a female Cer slipped a tray of meat, some mushroom, what looked like a bowl of bugs, and a pitcher of water. Faulk and Pog set about making our dinner.

  “I suppose they know the difference between day and night,” Faulk muttered. “This looks like dinner.”

  We ate in peace; everyone seemed dulled. Our fear had gone and with it the heightened excitement danger brings. We all began to settle in. It appeared our day, for once, would be a peaceful one.

  Then a figure blocked the cave entrance, a finger stabbing out and pointing at me. “Rod bearer, come.” The figure turned and left without any further instruction.

  I followed. Sutech made to get up, but I told him no. I trailed the Cer across the hollow and into another cave. Like ours, a fire roared in its center, two Cers sitting cross-legged over it. The Cer who’d summoned me vanished as they bade me to sit.

  “Your bear the rod,” one said as I sat. “So you are the leader. You have two choices. Would you like to hear them?”

  His voice was precise, exact, like he wanted to be sure that I understood him but was content to say few words, enough to get his meaning over.

  “Yes.” I felt humbled under their stares.

  “You may go back—that is one choice. We will escort you, and you may leave unharmed.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Then you have one other option. You may go to the tower city. Fate will then decide what happens.”

  “The tower is our destination,” I told him without hesitation.

  “Why?” the other asked. I recognized him as the original Cer. This time I was struck by his eyes—hard eyes—the type suited to someone who toiled. He had brooding power. It unsettled me.

  “I must meet your master,” I told them.

  They both swapped looks.

  “We are our master. This land is our master. Slaughtower has a master. Do you mean to destroy him?”

  I hesitated, pondering truth or lie, but not for long. The feeling that I couldn’t hoodwink these men was too powerful. “Yes.”

  “Then sleep, and once rested, we will take you there.”

  My escort returned, along with my confusion, and he bade me from the cave. I’d assumed these Cers were an enemy, but their words told me otherwise. Upon returning, I relayed the brief conversation to the others. Sutech took it all in, but it was clear his trust of the Cers was small. Mezzerain offered no opinion. For the second time since coming to Ruse, we slept under the protection of this strange group of warriors. At some point during my rest, I became aware of a scratching noise followed by a slam, and what little light there was in the cave vanished.

  I jumped up, Pog too, and rushed the cave’s entrance, slamming into some obstruction. Conjuring a glowsphere, it became clear they’d blocked the entrance with wood. Sutech was up on his feet, his hawk eyes darting around but soon becoming resigned. Mezzerain rolled over and up, taking a run and barging at the blockage, but bouncing off it.

  Sutech cried, “What’s happening?” It was fairly obvious.

  We were trapped.

  The Cers had made their move.

  “He wanted all of us in one piece,” Pog whispered, and I was sure he was talking about Belved.

  Why had I so easily given us up and told them our intent? Was their silence that hypnotic?

  A rattling sound came from above us. We all looked up at the fire’s flue. A round tin dropped down, purple smoke issuing from it the minute it hit the floor.

  Purple, I thought. His color, Belved’s regal dye, I remembered.

  “They’re nulling your powers,” Pog told me. “Bind the rod; it’s all we have!”

  “Engage defensive mode!” I screamed.

  The rod snapped into my hands, sticking to my palms like glue. The purple smoke entered my lungs. It filled my blood, tranquility flooding through me. A last vision, a tower, like the City of Spokes, like the gates of Striker Bay, like all of them, only bigger, vaster, ten times the size, maybe twenty. It taunted me, goaded me to come. I would. They would take me. The Cers had us.

  Why? It was my last thought. Why were they happy to take me to him even when I’d admitted my intent.

  They knew I had no chance.

  I woke, my dreams empty. Now we were prisoners. This made sense. This I could understand even if it was counter to what I’d expected.

  We were in a wagon, its bed and bows made from mushroom trunks but strengthened through some kind of treatment. My mouth was gagged, my wrists chained, but apart as they were still molded to the Nexus Rod. That had been coated in a ruby wax, every inch including my hands. I had the sense that while I could break through the seal, the effort involved would drain the rod in the process.

  Each of the others had been tied too. Charlotte and Billy’s bonds shone brighter. He said it was a mix of silver and some other metal he couldn’t name. He shrugged as he told us he was kind of stuck. I filed the information away. I had a way to trap Billy should I ever need it. Despite our precarious position, that made me grin.

  The cart trundled toward the spire, and I guessed that was a positive. A sole rider pulled it, a half-dozen Cers on either side of it walking their horses as was their way. We all looked defeated. Even Sutech had an air of resignation. It was like we had no control over our destiny.

  “It saves walking,” Mezzerain said, “and I haven’t quite worked out their intent. For starters, why have I still got my sword? If they said more than one bloody word a day, it would help.”

  Mezzerain’s nerves were frayed.

  “They promised Alexa they’d escort us to the city. Doesn’t mean they trusted us not to slaughter them,” Sutech said. “That ever occur to you? We might be the bad ones in this scenario.”

  “A familiar feeling for you,” Mezzerain told him, grunting.

  “Probably why I recognize it?” Sutech snapped.

  “Why gas us?” I asked, though it had merely made me sleep a deep slumber.

  Faulk grunted. “How long have they been watching us? Did they see you kill that bird, those worms, the spider? Why wouldn’t they knock you out?” He laughed. “I’m surprised they faced you two to one in that cave. I wouldn’t have. They must trust you.”

  “Who are they?” I asked. “Shit, I’m confused. They on our side or not? I like a clear line.”

  Sutech focused his sharp attention on me. “They are on their side. You have to work out if it aligns with ours. Its not a choice for them. Is Belved their god?”

  I replayed our conversation in my mind. “No,” I told him. “They denied Belved.”

  “Then this is all for their own protection. They take us here as offerings rather than allies. It is the survivalist’s move. If we win, they have no enemies. If we lose, they have no enemies. Not all play for life and death.”

  We trundled on relentlessly. It was one thing sneaking up on a target and attacking, quite the other being trussed up and served up like some meal. Without anything left to do or say, I turned my attention to the land, but it had nothing to give either, just a flat expanse of dust. Ahead, though, the flaming tower loomed.

  It shot up, easily four hundred feet or more, and was at least a hundred across at its base. A beacon would aptly describe it. It looked like it should be emitting some kind of pulse from its top not the flaming orange of what I assumed was the priest’s cauldron. A gray disc spread from its base, like a city clinging to its mother. The disc had gouges in it, possibly streets, radiating out like spokes once more. Decreasing rings joined the spokes making the whole of Slaughtower look like a modern-concept city rather than a medieval fantasy. I wondered if the limping, listing Ruse had somehow saved power by dropping Barakdor’s illusion, but that just blew my mind, and I tried to cast it away.

  I was here to do a job, but that job was daunting now. So daunting. Slaughtower had a presence, and that co
wed me. The fire at its top raged. I wondered at its power.

  We descended into a dip, the cart suddenly accelerating. The Cer who pulled it chopped the ties and then rounded the back. He muttered some words before galloping off. Looking around, I could see the others had abandoned us too. The wax barrier melted, freeing my rod. Pog started releasing the others. He’d clearly slipped his bonds long before.

  Nexus Rod

  Charging in progress

  Shadowmana 81.7% charged

  Light mana 40.4% charged

  Rod Harmony – Level 5

  Magnification equates to 5 times current charge.

  Mezzerain booted the cart’s gate open, and we all got out, dusting ourselves off. We were all still confused as to whether we should be thankful to the Cers, or curse them.

  As if reading our minds, Billy said, “Thankful, definitely thankful. We dodged a load of monsters. They guided us well.”

  That would become clear in time.

  I guessed we were a half mile from the city. Pog had already wandered off. He called me over, pointing. “Look.”

  The lifeless ground suddenly became crenelated after a hundred yards, rows upon rows of rectangular lumps all circling the city. I ran back up the slope to get a better view. Pog followed. We looked down on them. Now that we’d seen them, there were thousands, all uniform, not one out of place, out of parallel or radius, all radiating, all surrounding Slaughtower.

  “What the hell?” Pog said, immediately racing back toward them.

  I darted after him, a strange feeling running through me. I knew what they were.

  He skidded to a stop in front of one, using his arm to clear heaps of black dust from its top. “Help me,” he screamed, his urgency kicking me from wonder to action.

  I used the Nexus Rod to clear a pile of the stuff. All the while my trepidation grew. We sloughed it all away to reveal a flat surface, scorched and yellowed, barely transparent. I stared down, shock rooting me to the spot. Pog was the same. We looked into a grave. The body of a woman stared blankly up. She was perfectly preserved—my age too. Her brown hair was pulled back severely. Her eyebrows were thin, straight. Her narrow eyes were determined—focused on a journey. Her mouth matched, like she’d readied herself for what was to come.