“Ga Halle,” the shapes said, their gravelly voices stretching out each syllable.
Ga Halle—Ga Halle bearing her crown of twisted horns, Ga Halle with bloodred eyes—stepped forward. The shapes parted for her as she strolled, lithe as a feline, right up to Cade.
“Release your hold on the Rokura,” Ga Halle whispered into Cade’s ear. “You aren’t strong enough to possess it for much longer. Surrender, and you can live.”
“You’re insane,” Cade said, breathless.
“Your brother had what few people had. He was absolute. His goodness was complete; it was total. I, too, am absolute. Just in my own way.”
Cade shied away from Ga Halle; he found it difficult, almost impossible, to look into her fiery eyes, and he couldn’t determine what she could do to him in this place. He kept waiting for her to strike him, to tear one of the horns from her own head and drive it through his heart. He imagined his blood wafting into the air and turning into soot as he lay there dying. He hoped this wasn’t real. The vision, the place, none of it. But he knew that hope was false. The place might not be real, not exactly, but the moment between him and Ga Halle was. It was happening to him; it was happening to her. Still, that didn’t mean it made any sense. At least to Cade.
“What are you talking about?” Cade asked.
“Good. Evil. Two sides. Two paths to power. You don’t have enough good in you, and you’re certainly not evil—and that dooms you to fail.”
Cade opened his mouth to speak, but he choked on his own growing feeling of dread. He knew she was right. He was going to fall, and something words couldn’t express was going to rise in his wake. Ga Halle—whatever she had become.
“My transformation is complete,” Ga Halle said as the three shapes gathered at her back. “I am the absolute I need to be, and now it is time that I came for you.”
“Ga Halle,” Cade said, his pleading tone surprising even him.
“There’s no turning back,” Ga Halle said as she and the shapes receded. “No undoing what’s been done.”
Cade still couldn’t move. Even as he felt the ground begin to tremble and crack, he couldn’t so much as take a step. Suddenly, it felt to Cade like the ground was getting soft, brittle. As he fought to tear his feet away—where he’d run to, he didn’t know—Cade realized that the ground was dissolving. He barely had time to acknowledge that fact before everything that was beneath him broke apart and vanished, leaving him to fall and fall and fall through nothingness.
Until he jolted back, awake in another place he didn’t know. He shot up from the metal slab he’d been lying on and gasped like he hadn’t breathed in days. And when Cade felt a hand grasp his shoulder, he snapped his body around and grabbed the neck of whoever was behind him. Adrenaline raced through his body, compensating for the disorientation and fatigue that otherwise would have sent him falling to the floor. It was that overwhelming adrenaline that kept Cade’s hand wrapped around Percival’s throat for a moment past recognizing it was him.
“Cade,” Percival gasped. “Let … go.”
Cade took three calming breaths, each one deeper than the one that preceded it. He loosened his tightly constricted jaw muscles and then finally relinquished his hold on Percival’s neck.
Percival took a step back and rubbed his throat while Cade studied his surroundings. They were in a cell, that much was obvious by the shielded door that shimmered across the room’s only point of entrance or exit. A single metal slab hung from a flawlessly smooth indigo wall, and it was clear by the size of the space and the one sleeping accommodation that this room was made for a single occupant. Which, Cade assumed, could only mean that he and Percival weren’t going to be staying there long. And not because they were going to be let free.
“You were having a nightmare,” Percival said, stretching out his neck’s discomfort. “I tried waking you, but you wouldn’t respond.”
Cade pressed his fingers over his eyes, trying to piece together everything he’d seen. He remembered every detail; he just couldn’t figure out how any of it made sense.
“I don’t think it was a dream,” Cade said. “It was too clear, too real. It was more like a vision. I’ve been having them lately, but … I don’t know what they are or why I’m having them.”
Percival cast a gaze at Cade; his expression was inquisitive but laden with a shadow. “These visions … what are they showing you?”
Cade folded his arms across his chest. The remembrance of what he’d seen made him cold all over again. “Ga Halle,” Cade replied. “It’s always Ga Halle. I was in some … strange place. It was dark everywhere. The ground, the sky, everything was dusted in ash. Ga Halle was … I don’t know, part of some kind of ceremony. She was being transformed into something. Something horrible.”
“Who performed the ceremony?” Percival asked. “Anyone you recognize?”
Cade shook his head as he struggled to find words to describe the shapes—priests, witches, whatever they were—and the form they took. “There were no people there,” Cade said. “Just these three … specters. These three black, kinda viscous shapes.”
Percival narrowed his vision as if trying to bring his thoughts to bear out of the emptiness of their cell. “The dark seeds of Mankarta,” he said.
Cade rolled his neck over his shoulders and groaned. He didn’t want to inquire any further, because he knew what Percival’s answer would reveal: This was all just more of Ga Halle’s bothodung that Cade would have to deal with. Still, he asked, “What are the dark seeds of Mankarta?”
“Purveyors of the occult. It’s said that they’re immortal conduits to the galaxy’s dark energy, whatever that is. Even if we assume they’re more than just legends, the question is why Ga Halle would have anything to do with them. She does little without reason or at least without knowing what her gain ought to be. But the dark seeds are evil incarnate, thoroughly.”
“Then I guess it makes sense for Ga Halle to hit it off with them so well,” Cade said. He stretched his stiff, sore body, and he was taken back to the pain he’d felt when Ersia’s guards had prodded him like cattle into the palace and then electroshocked him until he was unconscious. His body still tingled from however many volts had been pumped into his spine.
He shook off the pain and continued, “In this vision, Ga Halle was going on about how the Rokura was rightfully hers and how she was going to take it from me. Which is nothing new. But the thing is, this time it was different. It felt different. These dark seeds, they did something to her. And … I don’t know. She kept talking about good and evil and being absolute in one or the other.” Cade paused, and the cell was silent. He squeezed his eyes closed, and he knew he had to share the truth he’d been trying to deny since he’d encountered Ga Halle in his vision above Kundar. The truth of what the future held for himself and everyone around him. He spoke his words solemnly. “Percival, if I saw her right now, I don’t think I’d be able to stop her. She’s … whatever’s happened to her, she’s not the same.”
Percival’s eyes flickered from Cade to the floor. He smiled, then it died on his face. When he looked back up, he bore an expression of sympathy that bordered on pity.
“I haven’t…,” Percival started, but his words trailed off into a gentle sigh. “I haven’t taught you as much as I should have.”
Cade sank back down onto the bunk and squeezed his shoulders, bringing his elbows together to form a steeple at his chest. He turned his attention to the shielded door, the only thing in the cell he could fix his eyes on other than Percival.
“It’s not about the teaching, Percival,” Cade said. “It’s about things neither one of us can change. Whatever it is that guided you and Tristan and even Ga Halle, it doesn’t guide me. I’m not that person. I’m sorry, I’m just … not.”
Percival slid onto the bed next to Cade, though he kept his gaze ahead. “It’s all a lie, Cade,” he said. “The whole myth of the Paragon—it’s not real. Not in the way you think it is.”
&n
bsp; Cade scoffed. “Said the person who pulled the mystical weapon from its stasis.”
“I pulled it out because I was certain I could do so. My whole life, I’d been told that seizing the Rokura was my destiny, and I believed it. I believed the Master Rai when they told me becoming the Paragon was an inevitability. Tell me, did they do the same thing with your brother? Did they build him up like he was a god walking among us? Did they position him to be the supreme best in everything he did?”
Cade feigned like he was thinking about Percival’s line of inquiry, but he knew the answer. They both did.
“I’m not special, and I never was,” Percival continued. “Neither is Ga Halle. The only thing we shared was this absolute belief in ourselves. I got over my inflated view of myself; apparently, she did not.”
“But … why? What’s this all for?” Cade asked, feeling his heart sink.
“Belief can be a powerful weapon, Cade. If Ga Halle gets the Rokura, that dark influence you feel within it will take control. Why? It’s not necessarily because Ga Halle is evil; it’s because anything she does with that weapon justifies itself. How can she be wrong, after all? She’s the Paragon. Once you convince yourself that you’re the highest power—once you’re absolute—then by your own virtue, you can never be wrong. That’s ultimately what everyone wants, Cade. They want a god to come along and tell them what to do and what’s right and what’s wrong. The Masters saw what Praxis was turning into, they recognized the deep discord happening across the entire galaxy, and they knew there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. But a Paragon? Now that’s a different story. All they had to do was make one.
“But things went wrong, and the Masters blinked. Their absolutes turned out to be anything but, and without their godhead, they figured there was nothing they could do for the galaxy, and they didn’t come around again until they got desperate enough to try with your brother. And just like last time, everything went terribly wrong.”
Cade fell back on the metal slab of a bed. “Maybe that’s what the Rokura’s real secret is—it holds the power to create tragedy.”
For the first time since Cade woke up, he heard a sound coming from outside his cell. A distant, echoing sound of a series of locks being opened. Someone was coming.
“Listen, we don’t have much time,” Percival said, getting down on his haunches so he was eye to eye with Cade. “Everything I taught you was wrong; I realize that now. I wanted you to believe the way I believed—that you had to be convinced of your power and your control. It’s—” Percival started, then he gave way to shaking off his regret. “Don’t believe in me, or Tristan, or even the Rokura. Believe in yourself. You’ve done it before, back on the War Hammer.”
“Which was a fluke.”
“Which proved that you could beat Ga Halle.”
“No,” Cade snapped, fighting back tears. “All that showed was how, deep down, I want to die.”
Percival frowned as he stood up, and Cade watched as his upper lip curled into a stubborn snarl. “I don’t buy that for a second. I know you, Cade. Like it or not, I do. And I know you weren’t willing to sacrifice yourself because you wanted to die. No. You were willing to die so everyone else would live. That is your power; that is what makes you worth following. It’s why I follow you.”
The door’s shielding faded; as it did, two stocky guards armed with a kind of compression pike Cade didn’t recognize came into view. Wordlessly, they entered the cell, and the larger of the two twisted Percival’s arms behind his back and slapped on restraints that covered his hands, fingertips to wrists. Percival didn’t resist, but Cade sprang to his feet and stood between the leading guard and the door.
“What’s going on here? Where are you taking him?” Suddenly, Cade felt panicked. He felt afraid, but not about what was going to happen to him. He was worried about Percival, and in his concern for his mentor, a thought flashed across his mind. Maybe, just maybe, Percival was right.
The guard leading Percival out didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. Before Cade could utter another word, the guard’s partner drove his forearm into Cade’s throat and pinned him against the wall.
“Let me go!” Cade rasped, resisting the hold the guard had on him. But it was no use; he was too weak and the guard was too strong. “You don’t know who we are! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Save it, Cade. Save it for whatever’s coming,” Percival said as he was dragged past Cade and out of the cell. “And just know … know that I’m sorry. I failed you, Cade. But if I can’t convince you to believe in yourself, then at least be convinced that I believe in you.”
Cade felt a momentary easing of the pressure being applied to his throat, but it was immediately followed by the guard grabbing him by his shirt and tossing him onto the slab.
“We’ll be back for you soon enough,” the guard grumbled. “The trial awaits.”
Though he knew it was futile, Cade rushed toward the cell’s open doorway. Just as he reached it, the shield popped back into place, and he ran right into its solid mass. The impact knocked Cade onto his ass. He didn’t stay down, though. In an instant, Cade was on his feet and at the cell door; he tried to look down the hallway, but the shield was too thick to see through. Cade had no idea where Percival was being taken or what would be done to him when he got there. He couldn’t even see what direction he was heading.
“Percival!” Cade screamed, pounding his fists against the shield. “Percival!”
But it was no use. Percival couldn’t hear him. No one could hear him.
Cade was all alone.
* * *
Until he was dumped into the arena.
A guard removed the mask from Cade’s eyes, exposing a massive fighting pit—and he was in the middle of it. He could almost smell hot blood wafting in the air, rising from the faint crimson stains that streaked across the dirt ground. The crudity of the pit, though, was contrasted with the grandstand’s glossy sheen. Like the castle’s exterior, walls of deep gold streaked with a royal blue marked the arena’s perimeter; impressive, winding pillars rose to the ceiling with banners depicting what Cade assumed to be Ersia’s royal crest—a winged beast armed with a golden pike—draped down their sides. Cade glanced at the audience; the seats were filled with guards and the other denizens of Monaskis. They sat silently, leering at Cade with disdainful eyes.
“Hello,” Cade called out. “I’m glad you could all make it to see me do … whatever I’m going to be doing.”
There was no response.
Cade peered at the ground and sighed unpleasantly. “I do not have a good feeling about this,” he said to himself.
His spirits were lifted, though, when he spotted the Rokura sticking out from the ground. It’d clearly been slammed, blades first, into the dirt just ten feet away from him. The solace he took seeing the Rokura, of all things, made the depths of this situation’s awfulness abundantly clear: He was captive in the core of a dead planet, Ga Halle was breathing down his neck, and now he was trapped in a fighting ring where he’d be forced to prove he was something he was not. And if he didn’t, he and Percival would be killed. And his friends would likely be next, followed by Praxis having an uncontested tyrannical rule throughout the galaxy.
So, things were not great.
Like usual, Cade figured he’d just have to react to however things unfolded. The first step was retrieving his Rokura. For better or worse, it was the only weapon available to him, and he had a feeling he was going to need one. The moment he stepped forward, he was blasted with a beam of light shining directly in his face. Cade shielded his eyes just as music started playing from somewhere, music that cued the audience to roar. And roar they did. Their feverish, frenetic cheers reminded Cade of the drone fighting pit back on Kyysring, and it made him realize just how far he’d come. At the onset of this journey, he’d finally gotten to see the infamous drone pit for himself; now he was going to die in one just like it.
A few moments of pompous music a
ccompanied by obnoxious cheers passed, and the light was removed from Cade’s face. When his sight finally returned, his gaze was directed to the center of the arena. There, perched on stilts just above the pit’s scarred gray walls, was a glass-shielded luxury suite—home to Ersia and her inner circle of guards. And Percival, just to Ersia’s left, bound to a chair. Xeric stood menacingly over him.
Ersia was finishing a ceremonial series of benevolent waves to the crowd when she swung her focus onto Cade, looking at him as if he were a Kyysring street rat. Which he kind of was, but still. She stepped toward the suite’s edge, and Cade kept his eyes on her the entire time, knowing the menace that was shooting from his glare. He and Percival had come to Monaskis in peace, seeking guidance and wisdom, and this person—who kept herself and her people conveniently hidden from the galaxy and its many problems—was obstructing Cade’s quest to free the galaxy from tyranny. Who knew what Ga Halle was becoming or what she was planning while Cade and Percival languished in Ersia’s custody? Who knew what kind of danger Kira, Mig, 4-Qel, and Kobe were in, danger that Cade should be protecting them from? And it was all because this Monaskin queen—whatever that was even worth, considering the entire galaxy thought her race was extinct—refused to even hear him out. Cade didn’t have time to suffer fools, and as far as he could tell, Ersia was a grade-A fool who knew nothing of him or what he had to do. Yet she’d made herself an impediment anyway.
“You come to us claiming to be the Paragon,” Ersia said, her voice carrying sharply through the hushed arena. “As such, Monaskin culture demands you prove your claim.”
“And who said I have to care about you or your demands?” Cade yelled back. “I know you think this little exhibition of yours matters, but it doesn’t. My companion and I—that guy you have tied to a chair—are trying to save the galaxy. Maybe if you all weren’t living with your heads up your butts hidden deep in this rock, you’d understand what is at stake and get out of our way!” Cade flashed a conciliatory smile that he hoped would assuage what he’d just said. He’d gotten carried away and forgot that he needed Ersia’s help. “Though, you know, to each their own, and we could really use your help. Please and thank you.”
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