The Heir of Ænæria

by Thom L Matthews

  Now those memories were tainted. Her mother had died of plague, her father had kept his many secrets, and Sera had been taken from her. She had learned the truth just before accepting the mantle of legate. Slavers had indeed taken Sera from Vänalleato. But they weren’t working exclusively for Ænæria. No, Vänalleato sold her to the slavers!

  Arynn held the bodark bow given to her by Ben. Her fingers squeezed tight against the wood while she ruminated on all the betrayals she’d suffered. The bow had been important to him; she once thought Ben was important to her. Those memories of her time with him, day after day for weeks, nearly growing closer than she had with anyone else. Especially after her time thinking she’d never find someone again. The orange wooden bow was soft against her hands, worn well by the years of use and care. It looked like it had been polished every night by its original owner. Since then it had been chipped and blemished with blood and soot and mud. Funny how she’d used it to kill for the first time. After all, it had been given to her by Ben, who claimed to be above killing—all because of the death of the woman who’d given him this bow in the first place.

  She slammed the bow down against her knee, snapping the bow in half as she thought back to the night which changed everything for her.

  2

  Ben

  Freztad, Penteric Alliance

  Present Day

  Lightning shook the village between the cascades of heavy rain. The Gjoll poured over its banks and seeped through the soil from the farm’s piping. Had this been any other summer, in any other village, the crops would have been decimated. This was Freztad, though, and they had access to a treasure worth more than all the sols in Ænæria combined. Mimir’s seeds proved a worthy adversary to the weather. The sweltering summer air and flooding storms did little to dissuade their growth. Not a single planted seed hadn’t grown, and Ben doubted even weather like this could stop them.

  The first task on the farm had been to move upward rather than outward. The crops grew on shelves stacked upon one another all across the field, effectively increasing the farm’s productivity tenfold. The seeds grew, matured, and would be ready to eat in just under a moon. There would be enough food in Freztad to fill everyone’s bellies and eradicate any semblance of hunger.

  The other settlements had adopted the vertical farms as well, but they were much slower to catch on; their people weren’t adept farmers, often relying heavily on Freztad for produce. Ben would have preferred to oversee the cultivation across the other four settlements in the Penteric Alliance, but he simply didn’t have the time. Instead, he taught the others in Freztad as best he could and only hoped the other settlements adapted to the change.

  Ben had worked on Takashi Kabedge’s farm for years and often identified himself as a farmer. Along with that, he had also been a sentinel in training until their last commander, Rakshi, perished at the hands of wastelanders back during the Seed Moon. Traveling to the northern land of Ænæria had truly tested his skill as a warrior, and all of Rakshi’s lessons, for the first time. It was his identity as a warrior that was needed the most. Freztad and the rest of the Alliance would need that more than his knowledge of plants and harvest. The world needed it, too, because the threat of the Enochian invasion was looming over all of mankind, and Ben felt responsible to address it. He felt it was his destiny to stop the Enochians from wiping out mankind to rebuild the world for themselves. It was his duty as the closest thing to an Enochian on Earth.

  He was a Nephilim—half-human, half angelic being from the stars.

  “What do you mean you’re not human?” Darius asked. The former Rhion paced alongside the carved meeting table of Valhaven, the ancestral home of the Limmetrads of Freztad. An uneasy sweat beaded across his forehead.

  Aside from Rose, Darius was Ben’s best friend. He had traveled throughout Ænæria to aid Ben on his quest to bring Rose home from her father, the late King Xander. Darius had been born in the Plutonua province of Ænæria and was raised as a Rhion, an Ænærian soldier. Unlike many other Rhion, Darius had dared to defy Ænæria’s oppression. It was during his first open act of defiance that Ben had met Darius. Though they got off to a rocky start, Ben and Darius became very close friends in the few moons since then. Especially after Arynn disappeared.

  “He said he’s not completely human,” Mandi said with a not so subtle bite to her words. “Weren’t you listening?” Of all the people at the table, Ben knew Mandi the least. They’d had only a handful of interactions since knowing one another, but in that time, he’d deduced that she was every bit her mother’s daughter, as tactful and brilliant as the Miners Guild’s leader herself. Alejandra had run the entire covert organization right under the king’s nose. And, just like her mother, Mandi was a prudent confidant of secrets. That’s why she was among the first to learn about Ben’s powers.

  Ben chuckled nervously, adjusting the eyepatch over the hole where his right eye had once been before it was shot out in Ænæria. He looked at everyone in front of him and did his best to make eye contact before providing a more detailed explanation. The table was mostly empty since Ben had only wanted to disclose this information to a select few. Rose sat to Ben’s right at the head of the table. Darius was to be seated across from him, though he still paced the room. To Ben’s left was Mandi, and across from her was Trinity, a healer that he had met in Ignistad to heal Arynn. She was also in a rather complicated relationship with Darius—about which Ben knew very little. Next to Trinity was Mandi’s mother, Alejandra, the leader of the Miners Guild. To Alejandra’s right was her uncle and Ben’s mentor, Takashi Kabedge. To his right was Lydia, Ben’s aunt and Rose’s mother. Lastly, to Mandi’s left, were the twins, Kristos and Zechariah.

  These were the only people Ben wanted to know his secret, aside from his late father’s friends, Marcus and Jesse, who had already known; and of course, Mimir, who had been the one to reveal the truth to Ben in the first place. He hadn’t told his friends much about Mimir; he didn’t think they would understand the concept of a machine with sentience. Instead, he had merely told them that he was a man who lived inside the Vault, and he was the Vault Guardian before Ben and his father.

  “I’m what’s called a ‘Nephilim.’ My father was human. But my mother, Jean, was an Enochian.” Moons after learning the truth, it was still hard for Ben to accept. He’d wanted to know more of his mother his entire life. Growing up, he’d been bitter about his father for leaving him behind in Freztad and never coming back. Now he knew the truth about his father and regretted any ill will toward him; as for his mother—well, he didn’t know what to think. She hadn’t died giving birth to him like he’d thought. She’d just left his father, presumably on some important mission. Did she go back to her own world? Is she part of some Enochian resistance trying to protect the humans? The uncertainty of it all disturbed him.

  “And what, exactly, is an Enochian?” Kristos asked. “I still don’t understand.”

  “They’re a race of people from another world,” Ben said. “They look mostly human, so they’re probably from a world similar to ours—that’s probably why they want to take ours for themselves. They also have special abilities, making them most definitely not human.”

  At first, no one said anything. They looked at one another as if to ensure they’d all heard the same thing. The idea of beings from another world was rather foreign to most people in the Penteric Alliance, especially since they barely interacted with people outside their own lands. They were barely aware of people in their own world, let alone the possibility that other worlds may exist with life quite similar to themselves.

  Finally, Darius spoke. Now that Ben thought of it, Darius was the first person to mention to Ben that other worlds may contain life. It was one of their first conversations during a night of stargazing. “Is that why you went through that trance in Ignistad and Jordysc?”

  Darius was referring to some of the first few times that Ben’s powers had manifested. During a gladiatorial fight in Ænæria’s cap
ital city, Ignistad, Ben was nearly killed by his rival, Longinus. Just as he was about to die, Ben lost control of his body and consciousness. According to Darius, who had seen the fight—and recordings from the ravens Hüginn and Müninn which Mimir and Alphonse had built to watch Ben—he ran with impeccable speed and had the strength to lift and throw fully armored Rhion across the arena. Then in Jordysc, the previous hideout of the Miners Guild, Ben had lost control once again when he saw Legate Fenwin nearly kill Darius. He punched the legate and launched him across a burning room.

  Ben nodded. “Mimir has helped me gain much better control since then. He thinks my loss of control is a defense mechanism triggered by my Enochian side if I’m ever close to death or extremely angry. I get these red flickers in my vision and lose control. When I finish my training, I should have access to nearly all of my abilities without losing control.”

  Alejandra lifted an eyebrow at Ben’s words. Her hair had changed since he’d last seen her. Now she wore bangs just above her brow with a streak of blue dye. She changed her name and hair often as a way to avoid being easily identified and caught. Ben wasn’t even sure what her real name was, but he always called her Alejandra anyway. He knew too many people to start changing their names.

  “What are these abilities, Benedict?” she asked.

  “It’s sort of complicated.”

  Rose put her hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Just give us the abbreviated version.” She smiled kindly at him, and her bright green eyes put Ben back at ease. He knew she would accept him no matter what.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “First, I can recover from injuries rather quickly, and I’m immune to diseases—that’s why I was never infected by the blood bugs as a kid.” He looked carefully at Kabedge because the old man’s husband had been diagnosed with the illness caused by the blood bugs; it was the same illness which broke out into a plague when Ben was young and had killed all of the children beside him and Rose.

  “At peak condition,” Ben continued, “I should have the ability to increase my strength to five or six times that of a normal person with my frame and musculature, along with a massive stamina reserve. As of now, I have yet to run out of energy.” He didn’t want to say what he imagined would happen when he did deplete his stamina. Both he and Mimir suspected the red flickers would take over, and he would lose control until his body had literally nothing left to fuel itself. It was a scary thought, and he wanted to be careful about how much he disclosed. “The strength and stamina combined allow me to run pretty fast, too.”

  “How fast?” Kristos asked. “Like fast for a human or what?”

  When Kristos said ‘human,’ Ben assumed he meant compared to another animal. He didn’t get the impression that the twin was alienating him for being…well, an alien. “Right now, I can run a mile in just over three minutes. Mimir thinks I can go faster than a galloping horse by the time I’m done training.”

  Jaws dropped. Ben wasn’t sure if it was because of how fast he could currently go, which was something measured at the top of human potential, or at the fact that he could outrun even an emissary’s steed. The real test, in Ben’s mind, was whether or not he could move faster than a sun-carriage—the sun-powered vehicles driven by the Ænærians on missions of the highest priority.

  “How long can you maintain that?” Zechariah asked. His was the only face that didn’t seem to be full of shock. Considering he had been in Ænæria with Rose during her kidnapping, he had already seen so many strange things many of his other friends hadn’t. Perhaps he was at the point where nothing surprised him any longer.

  “In theory,” Ben muttered, looking down at his lap, “until I run out of stamina.”

  “So indefinitely?” Mandi asked. “That would be incredibly useful for us, Ben. You do realize that, don’t you? You could travel between battles, go ahead of the army to give reports, and with your strength, you could take supplies from them and they would never be able to stop you. This is huge!”

  Ben didn’t share her enthusiasm. He was dreading going to war with the Ænærians. Not just because he didn’t want to fight or kill; he was working on that to understand he was fighting for a greater good. He also didn’t want to fight against the people he needed to ally with to fight the Enochians—the true enemy. Both wars were inevitable, but that didn’t mean they both needed to end in disaster. The whole situation needed to be handled delicately. Using Ben as a superweapon wouldn’t exactly work to gain the Ænærian’s trust.

  The room was silent, and Ben felt everyone looking at him, judging. They were probably afraid of him. Growing up, Ben had become used to being an outcast and having people regard him as ‘different.’ As far as he knew, no one had been afraid of him before. He didn’t like the feeling.

  “Kid,” Kabedge said. Ben looked up at the old man and saw that he was smiling. “Don’t worry. We don’t want you putting yourself in unnecessary danger. We can’t sacrifice someone for the sake of everyone else.”

  “Besides,” Kristos added. “You’re one of our most important assets. We need you to lead us through all this nonsense.”

  “I don’t know about that, Kristos,” Ben said. He turned to his cousin. “Rose is the real leader. The Penteric Alliance already knows her, she has real experience.”

  “There’s the other aspect of it, too,” Darius added.

  Rose groaned. “Let’s not talk about that right now. Okay, Darius?”

  “It’s important, and we need to talk about—”

  “Zip it, Dary,” Trinity said, looking at Darius sternly.

  “There’s no doubt that Rose is the leader.” This came from Lydia. She hadn’t spoken the entire meeting, and Ben had nearly forgotten she was there since she was outside his limited range of view.

  Great, Ben thought. She’ll take every opportunity she can to mock me. Ben had hoped that saving Rose would at least make his relationship with his aunt a bit more bearable. Ever since he had returned to Freztad with news of her dead ex-husband and brother, she seemed to ignore him. Then again, Ben hadn’t really been home much since his adventure in Ænæria, so he wasn’t exactly giving her a fair chance.

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have a role to play, Benedict,” Lydia continued, taking Ben by surprise. “I was wrong to pass judgment onto my brother all these years. If what you say is true, then he was right all along, and there is a way to save this world. Now that he is gone, it seems it is up to you, and I don’t want his death to be in vain. You shouldn’t be bogged down by the politics of war. You have something greater to prepare for.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Ben responded after making sure he had heard his aunt correctly.

  “Don’t say anything,” Lydia said. “Go to Svaldway. Complete your training. Let Rose and the rest of us handle the war with Ænæria while you’re gone.”

  Sometimes Ben forgot that his aunt has once been the chief of Freztad. She was even the one who had formed the Penteric Alliance with the other settlements south of Ænæria. Kabedge had always told Ben that she was a strong-willed woman—and one of the greatest leaders he had ever seen. For as long as Ben could remember, Lydia had just been his spiteful, miserable aunt who was bound to a wheelchair and secluded herself to her room. Perhaps almost losing Rose had broken her out of the weights of melancholia that had brought her down for so long.

  “So, you all believe me? About my abilities, the Enochians, and the other world?”

  “Of course, we believe you, Ben,” Rose said. “You’re not a liar, and I think everyone in this room knows that pretty well. If you say this is true, then it must be so.”

  “I don’t know,” Kristos said. “I’ve never heard of beings from another world. It sounds really crazy. So crazy that I wouldn’t think you could be making this up.” He paused, grinning.

  “I think that means he believes you,” Zechariah said. “And I do, too. Rose is right. You’re not a liar. Is there anyone here that thinks otherwise?”

  Everyone shook their heads
. Ben couldn’t believe it—everyone in the room believed him, despite how ludicrous it had sounded. No one had ever taken him this seriously before. He was right to trust them.

  “How long do you need to train, Ben?” Alejandra asked.

  He sighed heavily. “A year. At the rate I’ve been going, Mimir thinks that will be enough to give me full control over my abilities. I don’t want to be gone any longer—and a year already feels like an eternity—because I do want to help. I just want to make sure I do it the right way.”

  “Atta-boy, Ben,” Kabedge said. “Your father would be proud. Go and take your time. We’ll make sure Freztad is still here for you when you get back.”

  Ben smiled and thanked everyone around him Rose struck her gavel against the wooden block at her seat to declare the meeting dismissed. Everyone, besides Lydia in her wheelchair and Darius who hadn’t even sat down in the first place, rose from their seats and started talking. The hall was suddenly filled with loud chatter, despite being filled with only ten people. While everyone was distracted, Ben took Rose to the side.

  “There’s one other thing I wanted to mention,” he said to Rose. “But it’s only meant for you.”

  Her forehead creased in puzzlement. “What is it?”

  “You know those ravens my father and Mimir built to follow me around?” To anyone else, this would have sounded crazy, even after the conversation they group had just had. Rose was the only other person alive who had been in the Vault, so she had a better understanding than the others.

  “What about them?”

  “The last time I was at the Vault, Mimir and I made some changes to them. They’re able to communicate across long distances—kind of like the radios the Miners Guild uses—but the Ænærians won’t be able to intercept their messages. I’m going to leave Müninn with you, and all you have to do is give him a message, and he’ll have it sent to Hüginn, who will be with me. That way you can contact me if there are any problems and you need my help. You can also send Müninn off to scout ahead and tell you what he sees. They’ve heard enough speech that they’re pretty good at recreating enough on their own to give brief descriptions.”