On the platform, the executioner readied himself to fire once more, but Dawn planted herself firmly in front of Ansel.
“Don’t!” Vance said. He threw out a force which knocked the executioner right off his feet and down the platform steps.
“Dawn! What are you and Blair doing?” Ansel spun her around with both hands.
Dawn yelled above the clamor, “Come with me. We’re not letting Vance win this time!”
“Watch out!” He twirled her away from a dense force that strummed through the air. “Take the Eye and toss it like a coin.”
He pressed her down into a ducking position as another set of attacks from Vance whizzed above their heads. Hand in hand, the two leaped from the platform and sprinted downhill for the gate. Dawn took the Eye of Elektron from her pocket and tossed it as she was told. A burst of light erupted from the center, expanding until transparent yellow panels encircled them, repelling the electricity strikes.
“Built-in feature of the Eye,” Ansel explained.
They could see a dense wall of yellow panels form along the front gate where the Pathfinders had gathered, protecting civilians from Sumrect assault. Meanwhile, the one hundred prisoners broke from their formation. The Crimson soldiers struggled to keep order while the Pathfinders fired at them through the steel bars of the front gate. For the moment, it seemed they were no match for the Pathfinders.
Then, a darkness fell over Crimson grounds. A conglomerate of clouds coagulated into a menacing mass above the Pathfinders. Thunder boomed. Purple lightning split the darkened sky. It struck down like claws onto the front gate. Sparks flew as the electrical currents clashed with the yellow shields. The yellow wall crumbled, causing rows of Pathfinders to tumble backward.
“He’s more powerful than before…” Ansel whispered in her ear.
Dawn looked to the platform and spotted Vance’s conspicuous golden figure. Head tilted back, he had both hands raised toward the sky, from which rose a vortex of dark wind and water.
“Retina activated,” Ansel said to her when they neared the front gate, which had been locked this entire time.
“We need Blair.” She searched the black clouds above but could not locate the red bird.
“Ansel! Dawn!”
A Pathfinder who had fallen earlier from the lightning attack called out to them.
“Kai!” Despite the madness, Dawn was thrilled to see him.
Kai scrambled back to his feet and dusted the dirt off his knees. “We are all here. The Langs, the Brightons—”
“Stand back, Kai!” Ansel yanked Dawn away from the steel bars.
His warning came right before another wave of lightning forced the Pathfinders to retreat farther away. Many did not get back on their feet the second time. Thankfully, to the far left, Dawn saw Myles and Basil flash a thumbs-up and return to firing their centinums at the Crimson soldiers.
Lightning struck again.
The dense shower of crackling currents battered the yellow shields. They flickered unsteadily under the assault.
Dawn glanced back at their assailants. Regina and Quinn now joined Vance on the platform, saturating the air with snaking dark smoke that burned everything in their path. An electric cuboid field had been constructed to contain the prisoners. Some human workers ran into the barrier and were instantly electrocuted to the ground.
“Aim at the platform!” Myles’s roar rose above the mayhem. A group of Pathfinders, including Max and Basil, took aim and fired in unison. Three blue shields erupted to deflect the shots, generating a series of explosions like fireworks.
Great, they are all blue Sumrects.
Dawn turned to Ansel. “We need your help! There’s a way for you to break the spell—”
“Not possible.” He swept her to the left just in time, for lightning hit where Dawn had stood a split second earlier.
“‘By nothing flesh is he confined.’ Nothing flesh, Ansel!”
He frowned. “Now is really not the best time for Etherian phrase analysis.”
“You are not confined by the flesh, Ansel. You are confined by your mind—”
She was cut short by an explosion uphill.
On one side of the electric cage, a large hole materialized. One after another, the prisoners hopped out of the container through the opening. Dawn recognized Henry’s form immediately. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him escape with the others.
“Our help has arrived. Delia and the Phyon Sumrects are here,” Ansel said.
Sure enough, the Sumrects, led by Lorenzo, came charging out from behind the obsidian house just as Vance was preparing to conjure up a fourth round of lightning strikes. Lorenzo threw another electric current at the giant cuboid while Winston, Alexander and Jarret fired a stream of voortems toward Vance and Regina, halting them in their assault on the Pathfinders. Nico, Blair and Delia went around the prisoners and headed straight for Ansel and Dawn, taking down Sumrect soldiers along the way.
“To the gate!” Blair hollered at the top of her lungs. While she ran, she broke the chains between the prisoners’ feet with concentrated and precise icklians.
Together, with the Pathfinders’ help, Ansel’s Sumrects gradually gained the upper hand over the Crimson soldiers.
✽✽✽
“Launch the Morvs! All of them!” Vance screamed at Quinn, stomping his feet.
Consumed with outrage, he sensed the control he had earlier slip slowly from his grasp. He was not going to allow a human girl and a morpheo to snatch the long-awaited victory right out from under his nose.
Vance knew of only one person who could have taught Lorenzo and his crew combat techniques unique to blue Sumrects. Clearly, Ansel foresaw this moment well before his capture. But the game is far from over, Vance thought. He parted the air with his hands to create a clearing in the clouded sky. And then he waited.
✽✽✽
“Over here, Blair!” Dawn flailed her arms over the group of prisoners accumulated at the front entrance.
“Make way, make way!” Delia panted behind Blair, squeezing through the human prisoners.
“A vunn please, Blair, for the workers. The Morvs are coming,” Ansel said, glancing at the clearing in the sky.
Blair nodded. Soon, a light blue dome cascaded down over the Crimson workers. Unlike the ones she produced during practice, this dome was evenly colored throughout and held sturdy despite the constant stream of currents striking it from various angles.
“Beautifully done,” praised Ansel.
Morphed into Steve once more, Blair beamed. “I have been practicing for you.”
In no time, she located the retina scan on the gate. Prying open Steve’s right eye, she leaned into it. Her eye almost aligned with the scanner when a powerful wind knocked her off her feet.
A horn blared.
Dawn looked up in horror as five Morvyanns appeared in the sky. They hovered low, blocking out the sun and casting their ominous shadows over Crimson grounds.
“Our friends must have destroyed one from their fleet…” Ansel remarked, tossing Blair a glance.
She did not pause from her task. Like a seasoned warrior, Blair returned to her feet after the winds subsided and positioned her eye back to the retina scan. The box on the gate emitted three beeping sounds before it flashed green.
“Perfect,” she muttered.
With help from Ansel and Delia, Dawn pushed open the heavy gates.
Meanwhile, the first Morvs dropped from the vessels onto Crimson grounds.
It was the moment of truth.
Dawn observed the Morvyanns intently, hoping the Sumrects’ hijacking efforts paid off.
“Come on!” Behind her, Kai cried to the Morvs as if they could hear him. “Go get Vance’s soldiers!”
The first Morv to raise its centinum hesitated briefly to register the bodies. She felt Ansel tighten his grip on her hand while the Morv pointed the silver barreled weapon at the platform. For an instant, it seemed that their plan had succeeded, yet whe
n Dawn was about to let out a breath of relief, the silver robot swerved its centinum toward Lorenzo and fired.
Chapter 26
Thousands of Morvs rained down from the hanging vessels, landing amongst the Sumrects, prisoners, onlookers and Pathfinders. Some crashed into the dome and slid down the sides as workers inside cried in terror. Lorenzo’s shield sprang up to deflect shots fired from the advancing Morvs. Winston, Alexander and Jarret soon followed suit. Cocooned in white shields, they ceased firing and were forced to retreat from the platform. Because Sumrectian power from the Eye of Elektron could not bypass Morv detection, the yellow shields, which had served the Pathfinders well up till now, became prime targets for the Morvs.
But Ansel remained calm.
Upon registering the disappointment on Blair’s face, he pointed to a batch of faceless soldiers that had landed behind Vance. “You all didn’t fail. Look! Three vessels converted!”
The Morvs surveyed their messy environment before aiming their centinums directly at Vance, Regina and Quinn who shielded just barely in time.
“Yes!” Blair jumped, joining in the Phyon Sumrects’ cheer which had risen above the chaos.
As Ansel watched the reprogrammed robots turn against Vance’s Sumrects, he smiled.
Their plan worked.
✽✽✽
Vance panicked for the first time. Half the Morvs on Crimson grounds were attacking his own soldiers. Even though a hundred more Crimson Sumrects flooded in from the west, they still struggled to counter the Morvs’ relentless fire.
“Why are the Morvs killing our Sumrects?” Regina screeched.
“The machines must have been rewired to target us instead of them.” Growling, Quinn sent a Morv flying high into the air.
“They are using our weapons against us! What are we to do?”
Vance glared at Regina, his lips curled in disgust. “Stop them, you dolt!”
That’s okay. They are still outnumbered. He shut his eyes to concentrate on his lucean, feeling the truth of the spell course through his veins.
Abruptly, the sky erupted with a light so bright nothing could be seen within a one-mile radius.
✽✽✽
Ansel threw Dawn into his arms as the note C vibrated through both their bodies. The Morvyann above the platform shuddered to a stop before its mammoth form came crashing down, forcing Vance, Regina and Quinn to leap down and take cover.
Ansel grimaced with the realization that Vance would crush the entire Estate if he had to.
“Get as far away from here as possible!” he yelled to the Phyon Sumrects. He could tell they were laboring to stay shielded from the attacking Morvs.
Then came the second blinding explosion.
The world disappeared again into light. For ten long seconds, cries filled the air. When reality roared back to life, both Sumrects and humans stampeded downhill while the backmost Morvyann dropped onto the roof of Crimson Estate.
A loud screech penetrated the bedlam below.
In the sky, a brilliant indigo bunting shot through the third-floor window of the collapsing glass structure. The magnificent bird weaved among the faceless soldiers. Some turned and trailed behind the bunting while it circled higher and higher above the hanging vessels.
When he saw the bunting, Ansel lost all his composure.
“Moira!” Engulfed in the rare feeling of fear, he called Moira’s name again and again as he started back uphill against the flow of human workers now funneling out the front gate.
He was not the only one.
Regina’s screams for her child could be heard at a distance, her voortems striking the silver soldiers in pursuit of Moira.
The indigo bunting spiraled until it was out of the Morvs’ reach. Ansel fixated on the bird. Just a little higher, faster—
“Ansel! Listen to me!” Dawn caught up to him from behind. “You are not bound to the spell anymore!”
Focused, he did not break stride.
“‘No Sumrect can escape the bind.’” She huffed and puffed, her voice filled with urgency. “But you are no longer a Sumrect… You are human!”
His footsteps slowed.
“‘By nothing flesh is he confined.’ Turning human already freed you from the spell! The only thing keeping you powerless is your own mind. It is your belief in the spell that still binds you to it. It is your faith in the spell that feeds its effectiveness.”
Ansel turned from his ascent and once again pulled Dawn away from a ball of electricity in the nick of time. He stared at her with strange, fervid eyes.
No, Dawn, nothing of the flesh confines me…
He knew what he must do. Yet even at this critical moment, he faltered.
There was only one way to defeat Vance and save the prisoners, but he would have to reawaken a part of himself he had worked incessantly to keep dormant.
Another explosion submerged their reality in ten maddening seconds of blinding light.
The third Morvyann plummeted, this time, right on top of the blue vunn Blair had created. The vessel perched precariously on the vunn, cracking the dome. Luckily, Delia had crocheted a shimmering web of electricity, which repelled the Morvyann from beneath, thus keeping it afloat in the air. For now. Blair blasted an opening in the vunn so the workers could exit while Delia worked furiously to reinforce the thinning web.
From his position halfway up the hill, Ansel assessed the situation like he did decades ago during battle. Delia had roughly a minute before the Morvyann would collapse upon the prisoners. With all converted vessels gone, the Phyon Sumrects stood little chance of winning against the blue Sumrects and their two hundred Sumrect soldiers. The Pathfinders had been very effective in reducing that number, but many yellow shields had already fizzled out. They were fighting a losing battle, and it was only a matter of time before Vance would crush every living soul at Crimson Estate.
Unless…
Ansel glanced at Moira, soaring higher into the atmosphere. He gazed at the insistence on Dawn’s face—a look he had come to know too well. She was right. Humans, unlike Sumrects, had the power to break Etherian spells with a simple change of mind, a shift in paradigm.
But he was not human.
He could not break the spell. Neither did he want to. A reversal of the spell meant regaining the powers he had lost, but it also meant reversing the trade he once made. Amber’s soul would never grace this world again.
There was a way to save them all, but it could cost him everything…
He drew a deep breath and removed an Eye of Elektron from his shirt pocket. At once, iridescent light burst from the core as the Eye recognized its maker. “Dawn, take out your Eye.”
She shot him a puzzled look but did as she was told without questioning.
As he raised the orb, his hand shook—not because he feared what he was about to do but out of shame for what he was about to reveal.
He held the smooth glass orb between his fingers. “Open the gate, Dawn… for me.”
“What do you mean?”
A halo appeared around Ansel’s wrist.
“Turn the Eye… to the left … I can’t open the gate alone…”
She remained frozen. Alarm flooded her features. His gazed latched onto hers, and he spoke in an urgent tone, “When he has awoken, close the gate immediately by turning the Eye once more to the left…”
Dawn stared at him and shook her head slowly. “You mean to the right… Left opens to Etheria—”
“Turn it to the left. Please.” He begged without meeting her eyes.
For the fourth time, the world disappeared into light.
“Please, Dawn,” he repeated with his eyes closed. Like you have done in the past.
He felt it this time. The Eye burned in his hand as the gate opened to Etheria. Finally, after twenty years, he let himself break free.
With each passing second in the glaring light, like a battery being charged, Ansel felt the familiar force return to his body.
✽✽✽
/> When the world reappeared around Dawn, the fourth Morvyann spluttered into silence and glided forward into the vessel Delia had been struggling to keep from crushing the humans below. Even though Lorenzo and Blair had joined Delia in expanding the web she started, the Morvyann on top of the vunn still wobbled dangerously.
The narrow gate bottlenecked the one hundred prisoners exiting the Estate all at once.
“Run, Kai!” Dawn shouted toward the chaotic mass of prisoners and Pathfinders.
The hair-raising sound of smashing metal fueled the panic from below. As one vessel rammed into the other, sparks sprung, and smoke seeped from the collision site.
“It’s going to explode!” A voice could be heard above the rest.
At that instant, just as the Morvyanns swayed perilously, a torrent of ocean water sprouted from behind the house and raged through an invisible channel in the sky, enclosing and buoying both vessels in its current.
Ansel! Dawn glanced to her right where Ansel stood earlier. What she saw made her scream out loud.
Deathly pale and haggard, Ansel resembled the robed Etherian she saw in Vance’s gilded room. Eyes closed, he was muttering to himself in a foreign language.
No! That’s not possible… She grabbed him by the arms.
The icy coldness of his arms jolted her into a horrific realization. He regained his powers… but at what cost?
She staggered back, shaking her head. Could it be that Vance had been right about his brother all along? Could it be that the rumors about Ansel were true?
He flicked his hand, and the ocean current reversed direction, carrying the Morvyanns back toward the cliff.
An awestruck hush fell upon the crowd. Those who recognized the lympham vaenos gaped at its splendor while those witnessing it for the first time observed with apprehension. Only the Phyon Sumrects and Pathfinders seemed to understand what had just occurred and broke out into a triumphant chant.
But Dawn did not join in.
The Eye of Elektron: A Clean Urban Fantasy (The Sumrectian Series Book 1) Page 28