The Burning World

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She remembered something about the Draki Prime. And a cage. And a cannon.

  A third seer whistled through the space between the two men. A phantom seer, one that felt perpendicular to his brothers’.

  Daniel, whose ashen face gave away much more emotion than Dunn expected.

  “What?” she asked.

  “We saw,” Daniel and Marcus said in unison.

  “The fog cleared,” Daniel said. “We knitted it together.”

  “What she wants,” Marcus said. “What must be done.”

  “One of you on each side with parts of the talisman in your bellies so that you can communicate.” Daniel pointed at Daisy. “To build a weapon to fire the Burner Progenitor into the heart of whatever is about to befall us. And Rysa is…” He trailed off.

  Because Dunn and Daisy were alchemists. Dunn knew the power set of each of her First sons when she carried them in her womb. With Vivicus, she’d felt his fluidity. With Andreas, she’d sensed his calm and his charisma. With Severo, she’d never felt better in her life.

  With Daisy, she’d wanted objects. Metal. Shiny things.

  Yet now, Daisy was a silent woman doing everything she could to not lose what she held most dear through an activation thrust onto her without her permission.

  Harold, at least, had taken up the task of supporting Daisy. He sat next to her with his hand on her forearm.

  “Hadrian,” Daniel said, “what is the timetable?” He really did look pale.

  She hadn’t thought to ask about a timetable, but it made sense. Trajan had set plans into motion that took days—or weeks—to come to fruition. Getting the Burner to Vesuvius and bringing Terry back here was not a simple job.

  Dmitri had just moved into place. Trajan had just outed the Fates and Shifters.

  Obviously, Trajan thought they had time yet to prepare. Not a lot of time. Perhaps a few days before the what-will-be became the what-is.

  “According to Trajan, we have five days before the end begins.” Hadrian said.

  “Oh, no no no.” Daniel leaned against the table. “No.”

  Hadrian stiffened.

  Daniel looked as if he were about to throw up. “Five days? No, no. Timothy said they know now that we know. We aren’t the only ones with a connection into new-space.” Daniel sat down. “He says they’re coming. The end of the world starts in five hours.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hadrian stabbed the point of the Janus’s midnight talisman into Dunn’s belly and the velocity of the universe picked up Daniel’s soul. Picked him up, sucked him into its hurricane, and blasted the body he shared with Adrestia with the sands of time.

  You are doing this, she growled. You brought the new into my flesh. She wanted to scream. His throat tightened and his chest heaved to fill his lungs but Daniel held control. Daniel dealt with the cramps and the semi-usable visual optimizers. Daniel controlled her radar-like seer.

  At the same time, on the other side of the Wind River Mountain Range, another powerful Fate also dropped into a vision.

  Timothy was there. Timothy was here.

  Daniel staggered backward into the conference room’s wall. Marcus gripped his arm, but Marcus’s Parcae-sickness-damaged body betrayed him as much as Daniel’s wide hips and low center of gravity.

  “Timothy,” he breathed.

  The gale-force winds of new blowing through Trajan’s black-ops base were not from Dunn. They were not from the small woman with the swords gripping Dunn’s face, either. They weren’t from Hadrian or Adrestia or Ms. Pavlovich.

  It all emanated from Timothy.

  Something crawled from Marcus’s past-seer, through Timothy’s present-, and directly into Daniel’s future-seer, that told him this conversion—this perfect storm of opportunity—was just that. A window that Daniel’s always-perceptive, always-cunning brother had been watching and waiting for since they both died.

  A window that, for a century and a half, Daniel’s future-seer had been telling him would open in some form or another. Timothy knew what to do. Daniel had been drawn here for just this opportunity.

  Timothy had been out there in the new-ether all this time. One hundred and fifty years. He hadn’t been hiding, like Daniel. Timothy had been studying.

  A moment from their childhood treaded through all three of their seers: Their papa, a tough, tall man from whom Daniel and Marcus had inherited their sinewy build and physical strength, tapped a drawing spread out over their family table. They had books, though not many. After Rome fell, no one but monks and kings had scrolls and books. But they had a Palatini papa and an Ulpi mother and a Jani father. They had what they needed to learn.

  Papa drew his finger along the outline of a stream. “Fishing,” he said. “Done here.” He tapped the stream. “What else, boys?”

  Marcus had answered with examples of chores and work, and of battles. Marcus had always been better at holding knowledge. Daniel had thought of possibilities. But Timothy, after listening to his brothers, had understood the core meaning of Papa’s question.

  “Many systems intertwine and overlap,” Timothy had said. “Like seers.”

  “Yes,” Papa answered. “Always watch for interactions you do not expect.”

  Timothy had leaned forward, and tapped the stream. “Always take advantage.”

  Always use an opening caused by an unexpected interaction to your advantage.

  Daniel looked over Timothy’s shoulder at Dunn and the woman yelling silently in her face. Neither of them seemed aware of Timothy. Then he looked back at his brother, who flickered like a ghost caught on videotape.

  “You were an accident, weren’t you?” He wasn’t complete. Timothy had been pulled into new-space but hadn’t been given a body to hold him to the real world.

  And unlike Daniel, Timothy might just be a real shade of the man he once was.

  But that wasn’t stopping him from taking advantage of the winds blowing through the new.

  Timothy floated in the air next to Dunn like some sort of jagged science fiction hologram. “Tell me you see him,” Daniel said to Marcus.

  Marcus groaned as he leaned against Daniel’s shoulder. “No, but I feel him.” He closed his eyes.

  Maybe he saw Timothy because of the data in his visual optimizers. Maybe he saw his brother because of what Hadrian did to Dunn. Maybe it was because of the woman with the swords.

  Or maybe the bits and pieces of the universe fell just right for this moment to happen.

  Timothy raised his hands as if he wanted them to pay attention—and his seer locked onto Marcus’s.

  Rysa Torres Drake—and Ladon and the Great Sir—flickered around Timothy.

  A vision, one experienced by another Fate at the same time Dunn spoke to the Whispering One. Timothy yanked it through Marcus’s past-seer and played it for them in the present.

  They were at the plateau they all knew, where the sun shone too big and too cold. But that sun had moved away.

  Or the plateau had moved away from that sun.

  “How much time do we have?” Daniel asked. How, right now, was not important. Or what. Or even where. Just the when. They needed to know when.

  Timothy flickered with the overlay of the other vision. He leaned close to Dunn and sniffed at her hair, then did the same to Hadrian.

  He manifested directly in front of Daniel. “I am Dragons’ Legion,” he said. “I protect my own.”

  Marcus sucked in his breath.

  “We are all Dragons’ Legion,” Daniel said.

  Behind him, on the screen-like overlay of the other vision, Rysa Torres Drake stood between Ladon and a… monster.

  Marcus forced his body to stand tall. “They are legion,” he whispered. His past-seer flared through the room, then slammed down hard on the flickering ghost of their brother. “They are coming.”

  “We protect our own,” Timothy said. He flickered again.

  Adrestia screamed and raked at the back of Daniel’s mind.

  Stop! he yelle
d at her. Don’t you understand what’s happening here?

  Daniel forced her back at the same time he reached for Timothy. “How? When?”

  “Right question.” Timothy turned his ghost face toward the sky and raised his ghost hands upward. His musical seer reached out to Daniel—to Addy’s radar-like pinging present-seer—and locked on. Where she pinged, Timothy added music. Where she swept, he added harmony. Marcus added low, shielding notes. And Daniel reached into the stream.

  The fog cleared. The what-was-is-will-be came into bright, terrifying focus: Timothy, the shade, gave Daniel numbers he’d stolen from the monsters’ systems. Coordinates. Algorithms.

  Daniel carried stolen software in his optimizers.

  But Timothy was a shade, which meant he did not have all his faculties. And without all his faculties, he was unable to describe to Daniel what the numbers meant—or to hide from those from whom he stole.

  The coming monsters learned about Timothy. About Rysa Torres Drake and Earth’s two dragons.

  About the traitors and how they’d just lost the element of surprise.

  And the world just ran out of time.

  Timothy vanished. Daniel’s future-seer popped like a bubble, but the sense of orientation, of mathematics and position, remained.

  Dunn gasped. The woman holding her face vanished.

  Hadrian told them they had five days.

  “No,” Daniel said. “We have five hours.” Because the attack started now, before the Legion could, in fact, protect its own. “I think…” Did he dare say it?

  “What?” barked Hadrian.

  “I think the Dragons’ Legion is about to be the only thing between us and a legion of…” He couldn’t say it.

  “Dragons,” Dunn said.

  Not the Great Sir and the Great Lady. Not Earth’s dragons.

  Monstrous dragons.

  Harold propelled out of his chair. “What are we supposed to do?” He didn’t move toward Marcus or Daniel. He just stood there, stunned. “That’s why we’re here, right? To figure out what to do? How to stop this?”

  Dunn looked down at her bloody t-shirt. Her wound had completely vanished, but not its stains. “Five hours?”

  She looked at the still-quiet Daisy.

  Her face softened. She blinked. And Dunn, the Progenitor of the Shifters, made a choice Daniel could not read.

  Though he could guess: She’d just had all her choices stolen from her. The attacks started in five hours and, he suspected that the Whispering One had given her an ultimatum she did not like. One, most likely, that involved further harm to Ms. Pavlovich.

  Five hours was not enough time to figure out how to build what they needed to build, to get it ready for the arrival of the Burner Progenitor, and to aim it. Even if, as Hadrian suggested, they didn’t set it off for five months, Dunn—and Daisy, especially—were about to be sacrificed on the altar of this particular volcano, and Dunn rebelled.

  She made the only choice left to her.

  She punched the table. Her fist came down and a loud crack echoed through the room. Then she stood ramrod straight. Her eyes narrowed. “How do I leave here?” she asked.

  “Up the elevator to the floor below the entrance bunker, then take the tunnel to the second outbuilding to the west.” Hadrian fished in his pocket and pulled out a card. “This will get you into the garage and to my personal automobile. It’s the BMW in stall two.”

  Of course his Beamer was parked in stall two. Stall one would always be reserved for Trajan.

  “The tank is full. It’ll get you to Cheyenne with no issues. You can fly out from there.”

  “Fly where?” asked Harold.

  Dunn swiped the card from Hadrian’s hand. “Answer his question.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Hadrian said.

  Whole cities—whole nations—burning. They needed to be in the right place at the right time to stop the coming dragons.

  All these centuries, the Fates had been so right yet so wrong at the same time.

  “It matters,” said Daniel.

  Dunn pinched her eyes closed. “Bag,” she said.

  Hadrian scrambled toward the credenza behind the table. A moment later, he reappeared with a nondescript, black attaché case. “You need to stay. Trajan built the base here for a reason. You’re supposed to be here. Trajan said that you and Ms. Pavlovich need to be here when the Burner arrives.”

  “Why?” Dunn pushed all the talisman shards into the bag. “So I can do one last crazy action because the Whispering One says I should?” She closed up the bag. “What’s that gotten us so far?” She pointed at Daniel. “I made myself into a male to father Trajan because she whispered that’s what I was supposed to do. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to get my body to make sperm cells that worked? I hated being male! I hated the lie. And look at us now! What do we have? A ghost in a murderer? AnnaBelinda knocked up by a Tsar-ling? Me knocked up by my own descendant just so I can make a new First destined to die building what? A cage? A cannon? For what? To fire the Burner Progenitor at the sun? If we have five hours left, there’s no way he will be here in time to do any good.”

  “We’re supposed to build the weapon here,” Hadrian said. “We’re supposed to be ready when it starts! Even if we miss the first battle, even if we don’t set off the weapon for five months, we need to win the war!”

  Dunn kicked Hadrian in the shin. Just hauled off and kicked him just because she could. “Do you know why I am the way I am, young men? Answer truthfully.”

  Hadrian opened his mouth, but she kicked him again. “The boys answer.”

  “You’re old,” Marcus whispered. “We’re old. We got set in our ways.”

  Dunn sniffed as if she smelled something terrible. “Fates, perhaps.”

  Harold stared at Daniel. “No one wants to hide. No one wants to be hunted,” he said. “No one wants others to control who they are.”

  Dunn sniffed.

  Harold continued to stare at Daniel. “It does things to a person. The longer your disguise rubs your skin, the thicker your calluses grow.”

  Dunn walked over to Harold and touched his cheek. “I knew there was a reason I made you long immortal.” Quickly, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “You are a good person, Harold Demshire. Better than me.”

  Harold blinked.

  Dunn blinked also. Her face scrunched up as if she heard something no one else did. Then she adjusted the strap of the attaché bag. “I don’t care,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to stay here. We’re going to Cheyenne.”

  Dunn knelt in front of Daisy. “Let’s go,” she said.

  A bolt of healing followed. Daisy inhaled and her body visibly loosened.

  Dunn stood. “I’m going to live my last day as me, boys.”

  She mattered. Daisy mattered. They all mattered.

  But where Dunn went mattered the most. “We’re coming with you, Dunn.”

  “No,” she said, and walked out the door. “Leave me alone. Do not interfere in my life, boys.” She pointed at Hadrian. “Do not send others to do the interfering.”

  Dunn, with the shards of Janus’s talisman in a bag over her shoulder, took her daughter and exited the conference room.

  Hadrian dropped into one of the conference chairs. He rubbed his cheek as he watched them go. “Trajan’s parent always has the last word.” A sour snort-like chuckle made his chest bow out.

  They couldn’t follow. They couldn’t interfere.

  “Damn it!” Daniel threw a pad of paper across the room.

  They’d never been friends—or family—with Hadrian or the Ulpi. Trajan had been culpable for the murder of Daniel’s parents. Not directly responsible, but when did a Prime Fate of power ever do anything directly? A millennium later and Daniel still held a belly full of disdain for the man.

  And Hadrian, too. How could such a great emperor become Trajan’s lap dog?

  He looked small. Fragile. He’d cracked under the pressure of
protecting his master’s empire and his broken bones could carry that boulder no more.

  “Get up, Hadrian,” Daniel said. “Do what you were meant to do.”

  Hadrian frowned. “We all need to do what we were meant to do in the little time we have left.” Hadrian waved Daniel away. “She needs to be here.”

  Daniel threw more paper at Hadrian. “We need you to lead, Emperor. You and Trajan and Pavlovich all walk the Earth because we’re going to need you to lead us through this.”

  Marcus nodded. “I will personally kill all three of you if you fuck over the people of this world.” He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall again.

  Hadrian’s next chuckle sounded more amused than sour. “This world is Trajan’s, not mine. It has been Trajan’s since the moment he took the title of Emperor.” He waved his hand in the air.

  “Whatever.” Daniel pointed at Hadrian. “Lead us out of Dunn’s order not to interfere.”

  Hadrian frowned, but then he, like Dunn, made a choice Daniel was not privy to. His frown turned into a bitter smile. “So you see ghosts, do you, Daniel Drake?”

  “I suppose I do,” Daniel said.

  A pained grin locked Hadrian’s mouth. “Then I have a ghost I need you to spy for me.” He pulled out his phone. “I need a helicopter,” he said.

  Were they going to follow Dunn? They couldn’t. “Where are we going?” Daniel asked.

  Hadrian finished his call. He stood and tugged on the hem of his jacket. “You’re going to the Denver International Airport. I need you to talk to the other Progenitor who says he understands what’s going on.”

  The Burner Progenitor.

  “Perhaps he can offer an alternative.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Cheyenne, Wyoming…

  The monster reared onto his hind legs. He stretched his long, dragon neck and reached into the roiling, burning clouds with his massive dragon hand-claws.

  Six talons ripped into Rysa’s chained body. Six talons punctured her psyche, because the monster knew, now. The monster had become aware of just who infested what he believed to be his…