by Elon Vidal
“I’d have to say that you should look out for someone who is going to betray you. Something evil, something in the dark magic. And that no matter who it is, you need to protect yourself. It may even mean that that person doesn’t realize they are going to do it, but when they do, the seeds will be there.” Nerka crossed her arms and huffed out a sigh. “Any more riddles or are you ready to attempt to fight me in training today?”
Ella laughed. “No more riddles. And I’m ready for my daily attempt. In fact, I feel extra confident today. I might even land a blow or two before I end up head over heels on the mat.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I might have had a breakthrough in my daily distraction that gave me some clarity and I think I will be a more difficult opponent for you.”
Nerka shrugged and then turned to lead Ella from the library. “If you say so.”
Ella laughed but then grit her teeth, thinking of the Eye in the bag and the distraction it caused. The distraction getting to her mom instead of rescuing QT caused. Commit to training, commit to training.
At some point, she would need to rescue QT, wherever he was. Likely with the Underworlders. That would certainly not be as peaceful as coming upon her mother murmuring nonsensicals under a banyan tree. Those Underworlders wouldn’t give him up without a fight.
And they would certainly not stop attacking her after she fell to the mat. Usually, Nerka stopped hitting her at that point.
Ella smiled, rubbing a bruise on her arm. Usually.
CHAPTER TWO - OMENS
It was barren rock all around. Grey. Cracked. Craggy and craven. No vegetation. No life. Yet, different from the toplands of Methula where life still thrived beneath the surface in the caverns, tunnels, and carved infrastructure where vital societies teemed. Where people emerged at night to traverse the wind-polished granite of the southern hemisphere at night.
This was not Methula Four.
This was Alpha, the moon in synchronous orbit.
Ella was floating over its surface.
Or flying.
Or swimming.
The air was thick. Clinging to her skin, not wishing to let her go, like there were messages in its molecules that wanted to be read through her pores.
She was leaving footprints but when she looked down at them, they vanished. Like just her attention meant they demanded to be resolved into the surface.
Like her presence was a threat to the pristine solitude of the place.
Why am I here?
Am I here?
Over the horizon, she saw movement.
But nothing lives here…
As she soared toward it, the structure grew in size.
It was large. Tree-like. A canopy flaring from a hefty trunk. A canopy without leaves, just the fine, defined fingers of many branches wishing they still had the shelter of luscious life. Vines hung down all along its branches, swinging in a testament to life still wanting to hold on.
Red windows dotted up the trunk, shining their light. Glittering.
They turned to look at her, all at once.
Ella shivered.
Eyes in the trunk of a great machine.
It creaked and groaned as it looked at her, making winding sounds as if gears were rolling inside of it.
The tree lowered part of its canopy, limbs that hoisted its leaves high to the star-studded sky and crawled toward her, the eyes staring at her, unblinking.
It was a dead banyan tree.
The eyes were the lives of all her relatives.
Ella shook her head.
That doesn’t make sense--
All its relatives?
Where am I?
Ella wanted to scream.
She tried to turn, she tried to run. But she was floating. There was no resistance in the hollow air. She floundered, her arms flapping, trying to turn herself as the tree bore down on her, gears grinding, screeching even though that didn’t make sense in the vacuum, the red eyes flaring.
A vine swung out from its canopy, aiming straight toward her body, ready to flick her from the low atmosphere of Alpha’s surface and send her spiraling into the void of space.
It struck her straight across the body--
“Ella!”
Ella’s eyes bolted open. She was sitting on the ground, a training staff in her hand. She heaved a sigh, even before looking around. Not again…
Nerka was standing over her, holding a similar staff. Ella rubbed the place where Nerka had hit her on the arm.
“Where are you today?” Nerka demanded. Athos’s fennec fox ears cycled backwards and forwards as he hurried forward, not quite concerned for the easy hit Nerka had struck against his star pupil, not quite upset, either.
Ella grumbled unintelligibly and stood up, rubbing her arm. “I think I fell asleep.”
Athos looked at her, mouth slightly agape. “You fell asleep while training against Nerka?”
Ella shrugged, a little sullen. The red eyes of the tee trunk returned to glare at her and she tried to keep the sensation of doom from sending shivers down her spine.
“Nerka, let me have a word with Ella, will you?”
It was Nerka’s turn to shrug. She turned away, going off toward the Virtual Reality trainer where some other students were fighting dragons and sea monsters. Something clearly much more interesting to her than her daily beatdown of Ella.
Athos led Ella to a bench, taking her staff and sitting her down. He looked at her seriously and then rubbed some salve onto the bright red welt on her arm. The coolness seized against her skin and felt tight, then calmed in the next moment. It was a relief. Usually, Ella was able to fend off most of Nerka’s strikes. It really didn’t make sense that she would have been so stupid as to drift off… That just didn’t make sense…
Athos was looking at her with his bright yellow eyes, searching hers as if for some type of answer that Ella didn’t know how to give. She shifted uncomfortably, prepared to make a joke.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Ella sighed. “I’ve been having a dream about Alpha. Over and over. It is never quite the same, but it is usually about some type of machine attacking me and I can’t get away.”
“Have you ever had one like this before? Like, while you were supposed to be awake?”
“Not really.”
“Have you been using the Eye a lot?”
“Define a lot.” Ella tried a sideways grin to lighten the grimace she wanted to give. “It isn’t really working, as much as I try. Every now and then I get a little bit. I figured, law of averages, right?”
Athos frowned. “That’s a powerful relic. You need to be careful. Remember your Durgic laws. Give and take. I think you are taking more than you are giving. Your dreams are more than dreams, Ella. They are omens and the power of the Eye might be misplacing some of the light within you.”
Ella remembered QT talking about dreams being omens, too. Again, she ached for her friend. Not just because she missed him, but because she felt like she was failing him by not finding him, yet. “Are you saying I didn’t really fall asleep? It was more like I was having a dream take me over while I was awake?”
Athos nodded. “Something like that. Because you are out of balance.”
Ella sighed. “I think every time Nerka challenges me on the high beam with staffs, we prove how out of balance I am. I mean, that last time I think I fell from ten feet, at least.”
Athos rubbed his forehead and shook his finely furred head. “This isn’t a joke. You need to be mindful. These are not matters to press too much in the wrong direction. You must maintain your balance, especially since you aren’t achieving a positive result with the Eye. We might need to try a different pathway. If you are only able to control it when you are very calm and doing your special light magic, or when, yes… I think…” Athos hesitated, then pressed his paws together under his chin. “Yes, I think we are going to see if we can mimic your life actually being threatened so you can practice control
ling the Eye.”
Ella raised her eyebrows. “How are we going to do that?”
Athos’s eyes narrowed and a slight, sly grin came over his fox features. Ella couldn’t help but grin back, though a thrill of something akin to fear went up her spine.
“Why, by actually threatening your life, of course.”
CHAPTER THREE - PERMISSION
The hand-hewn stone walls of the Harra home were draped in lovely woven tapestries of desert colors. Delicate threads in deep purples of the sunset, rain-wettened sandstone, silken topaz, and the beautiful complementary coloring of bright turquoise that had been passed down in the family for centuries. Incense burned in ceramic holders shaped like dragons and seriports. Curtains fluttered at the windows, in far too happy of a movement, because everything inside the home was slowed and swollen with a sadness that Ella found almost too thick to confront.
Even though a week had passed, it seemed like QT’s absence was an even larger abscess. Ella knew it was entirely because Hamit was the Master of the Scorpene Guard, arguably the strongest, if not the most powerful, man of the most devout brotherhood and set of warriors in the southern hemisphere.
Ella knew it had to be excruciating to not be able to find his son.
It was one reason she was so reluctant to ask him for permission to see Lunardia Turum. It was also one reason she thought that he might say yes. Ella was outside any bounds, outside restrictions. She could go places Hamit couldn’t. She might be able to be his inside source. She could ask questions at the tip of his tongue, and eventually, lead him to the sources that they both suspected.
Saana, QT’s mom, looked like she hadn’t slept much in the week that had passed. Thie whites around her dark eyes were red from crying, her hair was slick with grease from not having showered. Her clothes looked mussed and strained from many days and nights of wearing the same. Ella was worried for her. Quresh was only fourteen, a few years younger than Ella, but he was already being well trained as a Guard of the Scorpene and, for all Ella knew, he was doing well in that training. But, he had always been more reserved and hesitant than Ella. Perhaps that was what scared Saana: she wasn’t sure how well QT. was doing when faced with his own capture.
Ella had no doubt that he was doing all right. She knew the strength that was in her best friend. It was one reason they bonded so well. She had faith in him. Wherever he was, whatever he was facing, it was only making him stronger. Still, she needed to get to him.
The special mint tea was delicious, as always, and gave Ella a little bit of strength as she sipped at it. Hamit didn’t speak much, but Ella knew him well enough to know that his gentle regard was really just a mask for intuition that was well practiced and insightful. He probably already knew why she was there.
Saana took Quresh’s younger siblings into another room to leave Ella and Hamit to speak after the tea was done, which Ella appreciated. Even she could sense the weight of what Ella was wanting to ask. If Saana didn’t know, she couldn’t ever answer the questions if asked.
“You want me to let you speak with Lunardia Turum.”
There it was. Hamit did know.
Ella nodded. “I believe that she may know more about why her father was killed.”
“She does not.”
“Or about where Quresh is being held.”
“She does not know that either.”
Ella shifted uncomfortably.
“Do you think we wouldn’t ask these questions? She is being held at my safehouse because we rescued her after she jumped from the gyrocopter that was transporting her and her father. It was shot down, likely by--” Hamit caught himself. His hands balled into fists, but then they smoothed out. He breathed out deeply. There was the line he couldn’t cross. Politics. He couldn’t accuse Sintila without more foundation for the claims. “We are investigating the cause of the crash. We are keeping Ms. Turum safe at an undisclosed location until then, since her mother was also killed in an attack at the same time. She is not accepting visitors.”
Ella bit her lip. “I have a few other questions for her.”
“What might that be?”
“I want to ask her more about the Crystal that Heroki Sintila mentioned might be in the Turum mines.”
“I asked her about that, too.”
Ella shifted again, not enjoying being under the intense gaze of Hamit when he was defending, rather flatly, his very professional job. Finally, she squirmed and said, “We might be able to ask her better.”
“We means you and Nerka Ombra, who is one of the Chosen Wielders.”
“Yes. Sir. Yes, sir.”
“What makes you think you could do better?”
“I’ve been studying the Crystals, and, as you know, I have the Eye of Evermore Sight, which you and Athos said I would be destined to hold. I just think I might be able to get more out of Luna. Besides, maybe she will respond better to people closer to her own age…” Ella didn’t really have any more arguments to make. If Hamit said no, that would be it.
Hamit held his back rigid, then sighed and nodded. “All right.”
Ella’s grin was hard to fight back.
“All right. So… you will show me and Nerka to the safehouse?”
Hamit’s eyes narrowed but his lips twinged upward in a slight smile. “I will beam a secure map to your wrist crystal to show you where to go. Ella, I have to emphasize: no one can know that you and Nerka are going to meet with Ms. Turum and no one can follow you there or home. You have to make sure. I am trusting you, because you and Nerka are good at what you do and proved yourselves in the Equatorial Forest. However…”
You lost my son on Tau…
He didn’t have to say the words. Ella heard them.
“I swear to you, Hamit. We will be very careful.” Ella meant it with every ounce of her strength. She never wanted to let him down again. She owed it to QT. She owed it to their entire family.
She hesitated a moment, then, “Is Saana… is she okay?”
Just the faintest look of fear passed across Hamit’s face, but it was enough to make fear crawl through Ella’s belly. The way his wife had reacted to his son’s capture had clearly alarmed him. “It would just be so much easier if we at least knew where Quresh was, I think.” He rubbed a hand through his dark hair. “I mean, we know he was taken by an Underworlder who was posing as or is in actuality an employee of Sintila Labs. So, is Quresh with Sintila, or is he with the Underworlders? Either way, I can’t pursue an investigation. One, because of politics, the other because I have no point of access.”
“Have you tried talking to Saion?”
Hamit looked at Ella blankly.
“About finding a way to the Underworld, I mean. I tried, but he was…” Ella chose her words carefully. “Less than receptive… I was quite afraid he might turn me to dust, frankly. He might be done helping me for a while. He seems to think helping me get the Eye of Evermore Sight was service enough. But, maybe he would be willing to talk to you…?”
Hamit looked puzzled. “It has been a long time since I have asked for help from an entity…”
Ella imagined that was so. Hamit was the Master of the Scorpene. It was probably a long time since he had had to ask for help from anyone.
She stood up, her daggers brushing the seat as she stood. Hamit looked down and noticed them approvingly at her waist.
“Getting any better with wielding those?”
“Of course,” she lied. “I am grateful that you gave them to me. They may not be Nariasi blades, but I want to be deserving of them. Maybe someday, I will be able to battle with you.”
“Don’t wish for things you don’t understand, young one,” Hamit said, a genuine smile accompanying his guffaw.
Ella smiled back. “I’m trying to break into other dimensions, Hamit. All I do is wish for things I don’t understand.”
CHAPTER FOUR - THE PRINCESS
It was clear that Lunardia Turum lived in a different world than Ella Larisse had ever experienced. Even tho
ugh she was a protected witness being held in a Scorpene safehouse she had everything that she could ever dream of delivered to her at her simplest command. Whatever struck her fancy.
It was bizarre to see the Scorpene bend before her. Their every focus seemed to be on making sure that she was comfortable, but that was exactly what Ella was witnessing.
It had to be because they thought Luna offered an edge into the case to find their Master’s son, Ella thought as she gazed, stunned, at the fine silks, succulent foods, rare metals, and luxurious items that Luna had asked for in her week of shelter.
Luna was also now the heir to the largest mining corporation on Methula Four. The Scorpene had to pay its dues in the wide world of politics, just like everyone else…
Ella shook her head. Not like me… Her parents had raised her to ask questions of what could be outside the bounds of those restrictions. That was what Keepers tried to do: protect the most important elements of Methulan life from those things that kept society restricted. The way her mom had been sacrificed during her quest to seek out salvation for the banyan trees.
And still, the banyan trees’ habitat kept receding and Methulan life kept decaying.
It was one of the more understandable advances Sintila Labs made, to create backups of all living beings on Methula to ensure the continuity and recreation of all species if the final apocalypse happened. Essentially bringing all the living creatures, from the tiniest bug to the largest 1eriport back to life through massive attempts at genetic engineering – assuming there would be anyone left to run the labs if the worst came to be.
It was admirable in one way, devastating in another, to know they were planning for that eventual end.
“That could be one reason they are looking for the Crystals…” Ella murmured to herself as she looked at a giant sphere of amethyst that was merely a paper weight but could resemble a Crystal, if it was just glowing and emitting the power to bend the constructs of reality to its will. “How else are they going to bring things to life? Seems like there’s a missing element…”