Whispers of Yesterday - Chapter Six
Sep. 16th, 2011 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: Yeah, I promised The Break of Day. Instead, ya get Whispers of Yesterday. Some scenes in BOD are proving quite tricksy. *grins* Please enjoy!
Title: Whispers of Yesterday
Series: Infinity's End, Book Two
Warnings: smut, het smut, hints to slashy goodness, violence, language
Description: Now firmly entrenched in the Theravada -- and firmly involved with Gale as well -- Ione discovers the hidden sides of both Grayshire and Theravada. She questions her own decisions -- and her feelings -- as the war takes on a more murderous, personal turn for the worst.
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Chapter Six
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Twigs crunched beneath her feet and the air had a sharp, crisp bite to it. Not that Ione minded. She preferred cooler weather, after all, and was glad that the sticky humidity of summer had all but been left behind. Plus, autumn meant apple cider, her favorite drink. And Talemar, in the midst of fall, was gorgeous. Though Ione couldn’t appreciate that beauty at the moment, not with sweat trickling down her back and a worrisome sense of unease growing inside of her.
Ione was confident in her own skills. She’d had to be in order to ensure success as a member of the Brigade. But there was something about the Varos Flats, about the way the others had reacted in regards to it, the horror stories Malcolm had told her, the things Ione knew and the things she didn’t, that made her wary. Made her just a little uncertain and uneasy. She was nervous; she couldn’t hide it or fight it.
Licking her lips, Ione tried to chase away the disquiet, heightened by the fact Fenris wasn’t at her side. In all her years bonded to the wolf, he’d never been far from her side and she’d never faced danger without him nearby. She felt a bit like a fledgling, wandering away from the nest for the first time. It was unsettling.
Ione cleared her throat noisily. “What’s it like?”
She waited, but no answer came. Ione turned, looking at Gale, who seemed trapped in thought. Brow furrowed, eyes hidden, completely focused.
“Gale.”
He blinked, as though coming out of a long dream, and looked at her, a distance in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. That niggling realization, one that pointed out the truth of how little they knew each other, flared to life once again. Ione batted it away.
“Hmm?”
Ione let his strange distance pass. In all likelihood, Gale was probably just worried and letting it distract him as well. She knew that he didn’t like the idea of her being here. But at least he’d learned to not try and stop her.
Rolling her neck to ease the cramping in it, Ione flexed her fingers. “What’s it like? The Varos Flats, I mean.”
Gale grimaced, the look of a man who had tasted something bitter. “A case of something better seen than described.”
“How so?”
“Varos is dead, Ione,” Gale answered, and lifted a hand, scratching fingers across his scalp as though searching for the right words. “It doesn’t breathe. There’s no pulse of life. It’s just…”
“Void,” Siobhan inserted helpfully, looking up at Ione with a beaming smile, energy practically vibrating from every limb. Oh, how nice it would be to be so energetic first thing in the morning. The sun had barely crested the horizon! “Even without the taint, the forest spirits avoid it. Varos is like the antithesis of Talemar.”
Ione felt a chill creep up her spine, settling cold and icy in her gut. Even the sun, peering through the leaves of the trees, couldn’t warm her skin. “And the core?”
“Azriel told you, didn’t he? About the civilization that Varos had been?”
Ione nodded, but it was Siobhan who answered, dropping back to Ione’s other side, highlighting the woman’s short stature. Ione hadn’t had to look down at anyone in over a year, not since the last time she had fought alongside Raine.
“The stories claim that the taint began in the capital, at the house of the queen who ruled Varos,” Siobhan recited, her voice fluid and rhythmic, as though it were a tale she had spoken many times before. “The core is considered the origin and of course, the breeding ground of the Merihem. They’re drawn there for some reason. As much as they are drawn to and hunger for life.”
Ione soaked up Siobhan’s words like a sponge. It was all so fascinating to her. The Varos Flats and the Merihem had always been like fairy tales to her. Meropis had treated them like nightmares, but only a distant concern. Threats of Merihem had been used to cow misbehaving children like monsters in the closet or under the bed. Truth and reality had never held much weight, not even for the patrols of the Brigade.
“What kind of research is Uncle trying to do here?” Ione asked, her gaze shifting from the forest to the path ahead of her, where Kieran and Helene were walking side by side. The former was pointing out various bits of flora and fauna to the latter, a little bounce in his step that Ione should have expected considering her uncle’s enthusiasm for his research.
“I’m not sure,” Siobhan answered, wrinkling her nose in a fashion that made her appear much younger. “I know he’s trying to crack the code of the taint in order to find a cure for it. If I had a guess, I’d say he wants a purer sample of whatever caused the poison.”
On Ione’s other side, Gale nodded thoughtfully. “That would explain the reason why he wants to go to the core. The origin is the best place to find an unaltered sample.”
“Provided we don’t get killed first,” Siobhan agreed in a chipper tone that didn’t match her off-putting words at all.
“And now I’m filled with so much confidence,” Ione said, and sucked in a deep breath, forcing herself to concentrate on the familiar flow of her own mana. And the familiar press of Gale’s beside her, twining at the edges of her aether.
Siobhan chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Master Kieran has a plan.”
Strangely, that didn’t encourage Ione in the slightest. She knew her uncle after all. Knew just how much of a scatterbrain he could be. And even if there was that serious, focused side of him that alarmed her at times, Ione knew him. Planning ahead of time had never been his forte.
“How much farther is it?”
“We’re almost there,” Gale answered, and that odd note had entered his voice again. He was tense, Ione could tell that much without asking him. She could read it in every line of his body, in the anxious buzzing of his aether.
Ione reached out, squeezing his arm. “What is it?”
He startled, as though he had forgotten she was beside him. Gale shook his head. “Nothing. Just an odd feeling. My imagination, I suppose.” His actions belied his words however. He was scanning the forest around them as though every bush hid a pair of eyes, watching their every move.
His unease was infectious. It made Ione feel just a bit jumpy as well. Her eyes flickered to Kieran and Helene, but neither of them seemed bothered by something intangible. And Siobhan was eagerly playing with some brightly-colored spider she had found on a leaf, letting the eight-legged creature crawl over her hands and muttering under her breath about its rarity and its unique hunting style.
“How will I know when we get there?” Ione asked, shifting the bag on her back, and the weight of the sword at her side. She still wasn’t used to the physical weapon, but Gale had insisted she bring it along for the sake of experience. Since he had been so gracious in other arenas, Ione had granted him that one concession.
“You’ll know.”
Ione frowned, Gale’s curt answer betraying his disquiet. There was that feeling again, of looking at another person, of wondering just who this man was. Her cheerful, uncertain and blushing lover had all but vanished, replaced by Gale Arlen, former head of the house of Arlen, former assassin and other more scrupulous deeds. Her mind still couldn’t reconcile the two as being one and the same.
She opened her mouth to question him further, to try and draw him out of whatever dark place he was slipping into, when Ione felt it. Less a cold chill creeping up her spine and more an absence, as though someone had sucked the very life out of the world. She could breathe, but the air was thin, empty.
Ione drew to a halt and looked down at a demarcation less than a foot away from her, as clear as a line drawn in the sand. The others stopped as well, until the five of them stood side by side, staring into the Varos Flats while still standing in the safety of Talemar proper. Ione’s feet were on green, green grass and springy soil, but a few more steps, and she would have trampled over barren ground sparsely populated by dead, twisted weeds.
Ione couldn’t stop staring, her thin breath caught in her throat, even her heart aching at the sight. Behind her was lush greenery, a forest in full bloom, steadily heading toward late fall and winter, yes, but still alive. The warmth of the sun banked at her back as did the humidity of the waking morning. Dew glistened on leaves. A bee buzzed noisily. Behind her was life.
And before her was death. Gale was right. The Varos Flats were nothing but death.
Flats was perhaps the wrong word to use. It implied there were no trees, just miles of empty land. This was not true. There were trees, if that was what Ione could call them, their dead, twisted trunks pushing toward the sky with arms reaching as though crying out for some sort of aid. Their branches were utterly barren, and if leaves had ever been on them, Ione couldn’t tell. Moss, grey like ash, hung from every surface, drooping toward the ground in dry, desiccated clumps. But more than the sight, was the sound. There was none. It was utterly silent without so much as a rustle or a chirp.
Ione felt her insides clench, and she was glad that they had left their familiars behind. It would be quite the painful sight to them.
“I see what you mean,” Ione said quietly, and dropped one hand, letting her fingers brush over the hilt of her sword.
Merihem were in there. Not visible at the moment, but the threat of their presence seemed to hang over the Flats like a disconcerting cloud. Ione felt herself twitching for no reason, a feeling of being watched sitting on her shoulder like a gargoyle.
“Well,” Kieran said brightly, so brightly that Ione couldn’t tell if his enthusiasm was real or forced. “Time’s wasting while we stand here staring. Shall we enter?”
And when he put it that way, Ione was hard-pressed to put up a protest. Especially since she had volunteered for this, and she’d be damned if she proved Gale right by backing out now. She wasn’t exactly afraid… just cautious.
“Remember,” Kieran added as they stepped into the Varos Flats, the sound of their boots crunching the dead vegetation abnormally loud. “We have to stay alert. I’ve no doubt the Merihem already know we are here.”
That was reassuring.
Conversation died as they stepped into the Flats, a single file line of five men and women, who twitched without identifiable reason. Ione’s eyes never ceased roaming the dead, spindly underbrush. Even Kieran’s enthusiasm seemed to have petered out, instead replaced by an unnerving focus that only heightened the tension. Suddenly, the dead vegetation had eyes, and they were watching the team from Paragon.
The day dragged on, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky, until it hung over them in the unusually oppressive heat of near-afternoon. Ione sweated under the layers of her clothes, wondering why it was so much hotter here in Varos than it was in the forest. Here, it felt like they were sweltering in the midst of summer, rather than cooling off in late fall. She wondered if it had something to do with the lack of life. She was sure Kieran could probably give her some lengthy and complicated explanation yet she didn’t ask. She’d rather save her breath.
Ione had no idea where they were going, or how much further it would be to the core. She was simply following her uncle and Siobhan in front of her, with Gale behind and Helene bringing up the rear. The path they followed was narrow, hemmed in on either side by prickly bushes and twisted vines, coiling around the trees as though choking the massive trunks. Occasionally, Ione would catch glimpses of structures that appeared to be the destroyed shells of buildings or homes, but they were always buried beneath the twisted, desiccated vegetation. Walls half-crumbled, roofs caved-in, completely deserted and nearly taken back by Kaiyu before the infection had taken over and done the rest.
Ione tilted her head back. The sky above them was plainly visible, bright blue and clear, and incongruous to the still death surrounding them. She couldn’t see a single bird flying above the trees, as though they didn’t even dare fly over the Varos Flats. Ione didn’t like it.
It was made worse by the fact they didn’t speak. It was as if there were some unspoken agreement not to converse, as though that would draw the Merihem faster. Instead, the five of them were so damned focused on putting one foot in front of the other, steadily creeping their way to the core of Varos, where the infection was strongest and the risk greatest.
The place between Ione’s shoulder blades itched, as though she were being watched. Gale was behind her, but Ione knew he wasn’t staring at her. The oddest sensation of tiny feet creeping up her back, like a spider or something equally unnerving, swept over her skin. Ione gripped the hilt of her plain sword tighter, wishing Fenris were at her side.
A feeling of wrongness invaded Ione’s thoughts, gripping her tongue, making her heart pick up in pace. She broke into a sweat, unable to shake her growing concern. Her instincts were all but screaming at her, shrilly whistling in her ear, demanding to be heeded.
Something wasn’t right.
“Umm, guys?”
A dark blur shot out of the surrounding trees, disturbing the overhanging moss as it sprang from the shadows, heading straight for Kieran. A warning leapt to Ione’s lips, but her uncle had already noticed his attacker, sword raised and ready. Ione hadn’t even realized he was carrying one. A quick flash of metal and the black shape went down, landing on shadowy limbs and cocking up toward Kieran, a sound much like a hiss emerging from its form.
It was a Merihem, or at least, Ione assumed it was one. Having never seen or faced one, she had to assume that the strange conglomeration of darkness was one of the tainted beasts. It was hard to say whether or not it had form. There was evidence of a body, of limbs and something that could pass as a head. Two eyes peered from the bulbous head-shaped part of it, sharp and gem-colored, bright like rubies.
It moved fluidly, as though lacking skeleton and anything solid, its shape shifting from one to the next, though leaving impressions in the soft earth beneath it. It hissed again, revealing a mouth marred by sharp, stained teeth that were quickly wetted by a pink, fleshy tongue.
It might have once been a familiar beast. A dog perhaps, or a large cat. But now, it was only Merihem, hungry and broken.
“Don’t physically touch them!” Kieran shouted, his blade whipping through the air.
Them? Ione blinked. She only saw one.
Behind her, Helene shouted, and Ione whirled. Three more Merihem had approached from behind, different sizes and different flowing shapes. Eyes of green and gold and ocher.
Helene drew a weapon from a hook at her side, a rod that extended with a flick of her wrist, weighted down on one end with heavy metal. She swung it like a pro, cracking one Merihem over what must have been the head as though the weapon weighed next to nothing.
Ione gaped, and then blinked as though coming out of a long dream. She couldn’t afford to stand here staring, not with the Merihem’s hunger practically palpable. When the only sound of the battle was her companion’s reactions.
Ione reached inside herself, and stepped forward, intending to help Helene. Siobhan swore, unladylike, behind Ione, no doubt facing an enemy of her own. And Gale was already at Ione’s side, blade drawn, serious and focused.
Ione whipped her hand through the air, summoning the very wind, forming a blade of pure aether. She twisted her arms, directing it toward the advancing Merihem, her aim focused on the shade with ocher eyes that seemed pinned on Ione. She couldn’t fight the chill that crept down her spine, the eerie sensation of being considered its next meal.
Her wind scythes flew through the air, cutting a violent swathe as it slammed into the Merihem’s body with an audible thump, like a fist hitting a pillow. But the Merihem barely stirred, absorbing the blow as though it had been as harmless as a paper cut, advancing forward again.
Breath caught in her throat, Ione unconsciously backpedaled and slammed her foot against the ground, twisting her wrist and summoning a flurry of stones. She yanked them out of the barren earth, pelting them at the Merihem, summoning more wind to her side in their wake. She couldn’t touch the beast; her martial arts were useless.
The bits of jagged rock slammed into the Merihim, only to bounce back and fall to the ground, completely ineffective. Ione felt it then, a sensation as though some hand had reached inside of her, pulling on something inside her. Something necessary to her existence. It was pain and it burned and as Ione stared at the Merihem, those calm, ocher eyes met hers. Their eyes locked, the tugging increased, and dizzy, Ione stumbled.
There was a boy, laughing, smiling. He ran through a field of flowers, daisies, she thought. It smelled of springtime, a sea of dandelion fluff floating dizzily through the air. The boy danced, spinning and spinning with arms outstretched.
Gale stepped in front of her, until all she could see was his narrow back and the dark grey of his well-fitting robes. The connection broken, Ione gasped, sucking in a desperate breath. It had felt like cold claws had gripped her lungs. Like something had taken her heart in hand, watching fascinated as it foolishly continued to beat.
His robe fluttered as he lifted his hand, sword rising and falling rhythmically. The blade made no sound as it cut through the Merihem, but the beast itself made a strange, breathy noise, as though a waterskin had been abruptly deflated after being filled with air.
“Don’t look them in the eye,” Gale said, his voice strangely soft and deep in the following silence.
Ione gulped in heavy breaths. “That was…?”
“Not a dream. An afterimage of the past, perhaps. Of what the Merihem had once been.”
Her heart felt as if it had been gripped again, this time by emotion rather than an enemy hand. That laughing, smiling boy had become a Merihem? When? How? Ione felt sick, her stomach churning unpleasantly, threatening to expel her breakfast of fruit-covered pancakes.
“It’s better, in the long run, if you don’t know what you are destroying,” Gale added, much more softly, as though sympathetic to her raging emotions. “Because if you hesitate, they will devour you. That image no longer exists and right now, the best we can do for them, is to destroy them.”
It sounded terribly final, and Ione hated that they could do nothing more. She hated that the boy dancing in the back of her mind had turned into this ocher-eyed creature, whose body was slowly dissolving into a black sludge that stained the ground, and put off a putrid stench. At least, the strange blotches of utter black on the ground she had spied earlier were now explained.
There was so much Ione didn’t know. So much that Grayshire had hidden. In the end, she really didn’t know her own former allies either. She hadn’t known the truth of her own home. Deceit and misleading and secrets, everything had been wrapped in subterfuge. Ione hated it.
Her body was shaking and Ione struggled to get a grip on herself, watching dully as Gale moved, so fast, always so fast, and took out another Merihem. His movements efficient, quick, blade falling with accuracy so as not to cause any suffering. He honestly considered it a mercy killing, but Ione was of the mind that if she were to ever be infected, that someone kill her before she turned into such a thing. She believed wholeheartedly in Kieran’s ability to eventually cure the taint, but Ione would rather die than suffer in such a skin.
Ione half-turned, watching as Kieran and Siobhan destroyed their own opponents without blinking, her uncle wielding a strange short blade with surprising skill. But more than that was Siobhan’s own choice of weapon. A pair of circular blades with six sharp protrusions that had a grip in the center of each with a cross-guard for defense. She wielded them fluidly, every motion in line with the grace of her body. Ione was impressed.
Her skin prickled and Ione turned, a shout catching in her throat as a Merihem burst out of the vegetation toward her. Ione jerked, training taking over as she dropped under the attack, lashing out with a sharp burst of wind. It smacked harmlessly into the Merihem’s loose-limbed body with a soft sucking sound, as though it had been absorbed and Ione rolled to her feet, heart pounding in her chest.
The Merihem whipped around, sapphire eyes staring at her and Ione hastily dropped her gaze, focusing instead on its shadowy body. Ione tensed, her hand sweeping up a handful of dirt and tossing it at the Merihem, magic focusing the clod into a dangerous projectile. It crumbled on contact with the Merihem, dropping harmlessly to the ground.
It hit Ione that her magic was completely useless against these creatures. It was like they sucked all the power out of anything, all of the energy that Ione had expelled. Her hand fell to her sword, pulling the blade just as the Merihem sprang at her again.
Ione twisted, her sword whipping through the air, cutting through the Merihem as though sliding through shadow. It felt like it had no form to her and she threw herself off balance from the unnecessarily heavy blow. Ione tumbled to the side as the Merihem hit the ground to her left, hissing as it flopped around weakly. A smell, not unlike that of burning flesh and rot, rose up in its wake.
She watched, stared, as it half-melted and half-disintegrated into the pile of black ash that would stain the ground.
“This is why I insisted you bring your sword,” Gale said as he approached her, offering a hand.
She reached up, letting him pull her to her feet. “You could have said so sooner,” Ione muttered, sheathing the blade and telling herself that her hands weren’t shaking.
“Would you have believed me without experiencing it?”
She wasn’t sulking either. “Yes,” she said, but there was a niggling doubt in the back of her mind. She couldn’t imagine explaining such a sensation to someone else. It was as if her very magic had been sucked out of her, and if she hadn’t stopped, it would have kept on being depleted until there was nothing left of her. Nothing but skin and bones.
Frowning, Ione looked at her uncle, who had wiped off his own weapon and sheathed it as well. “Why doesn’t magic work?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” Kieran answered, dragging a hand through his hair. “We suspect it has something to do with how they were tainted in the first place. As though it wasn’t a poison to the body, but to the inherent magic of a person.”
“Which is why a normal human appears to have been sucked dry while a magic-user becomes another Merihem,” Siobhan said, stooping to take a few samples of the substance left behind by the destroyed Merihem. She scooped a small sample of the ashy leavings into little vials that were then tucked into her pouch. “We think they attack not just because of hunger, but also because of a desire to return to a normal life.”
Ione felt her mouth go dry. “They have a conscious?”
“Not like you or me, no,” Siobhan said, her pale eyes squinting as she held up a vial to the sky, examining the substance within. “But we do suspect that vestiges of their former conscious occasionally rise to the surface. Which is how they project, for lack of a better word, those afterimages that you experienced earlier.”
Siobhan rose to her feet, dusting off her knees and carefully tucking the last of the vials into her satchel. “In reality, we still know very little. We can’t exactly ask the Merihem what happened or why. And the moment they die, they become this ash so an autopsy is impossible.”
Which made Ione wonder how they had learned so much already. A part of her didn’t even want to know, would rather she remained ignorant.
“We’d better keep moving,” Helene said from behind, expertly flicking her wrist and making her weapon shrink again, to be returned to the loop at her side. “We’re almost there.”
“How can you tell?” Ione asked, pointedly skirting around a dark splotch on the ground. It felt… disrespectful somehow. As though she were trampling on someone’s grave.
Helene didn’t answer. In fact, the silence that rose abruptly was unsettling. Ione looked behind her, finding Gale standing there, still as stone, body tense. Helene was much the same. She had whirled toward the thorny bush, her hand falling back to her weapon. And in front of Ione, her uncle was frowning and the color had drained from Siobhan’s face.
That prickling between Ione’s shoulder blades became a mad itching, strong enough that she twitched.
She tried to catch Gale’s eyes, wanting an explanation, but trained enough to know not to speak. Her companions were obviously waiting for something, having received some sign that warned them to be cautious. But of what? More Merihem?
Her mana trembled. No, this foe was no Merihem. Not with the aether that Ione could sense. Their enemies were skilled, but they couldn’t hide themselves from a magic-user paired with not just one familiar, but two. Ione could feel them and she knew that the others could as well. There was no doubt that these newcomers were Grayshire sent.
Ione let her aether curl around her, cloaking her body in a defensive layer, as her companions tensed around her. Ready for battle.
“Show yourselves,” Gale demanded, his voice strong as he straightened, that distant look in his eyes. Focused and determined.
Bodies melted out of the forest, a dozen men and women, cloaked in dark shades that blended well with the desiccated vegetation. Faces wrapped and concealed, weapons small and easily hidden but no less deadly. Aether carefully cloaked, but not vanished, cool and collected.
Ione knew those uniforms. They were the Special Ops, the Brigade’s specialty force that performed all manner of subterfuge and delicate missions chasing after the most dangerous of criminals. And apparently, they were now assassins as well.
“Traitors to Grayshire,” a voice announced from ahead of them, flanked at either side by two taller forms, eyes glaring from cloth-wrapped faces. “You know why we are here.”
Ione stiffened, a cold feeling washing over her. She knew that voice. Knew it as surely as she had known Faye’s magic. The sharp grey eyes that stared at them accusingly were distinct. Even if Ione hadn’t seen her since they went their separate ways after graduating Conservatory and entering the Brigade together, Ione would know that voice.
Ione pushed her way between Kieran and Siobhan, until she faced the obvious leader of the Special Ops Douzaine.
“You’ve never been so much of a coward that you’d kill someone without showing your face,” Ione accused, her body vibrating with tension, her aether a frazzled buzz around her.
A low chuckle echoed through the forest before a slim hand with equally slim fingers cloaked in black lifted, peeling away the cloth wrapped around the leader’s face. Stormy grey eyes framed by long lashes, freckles dotting pale cheeks, and spiked red hair came into view, all framing a pixiesh face that seemed better suited for an entertainer rather than a top notch member of the Special Ops.
Anisa grinned at Ione as though she hadn’t come to kill them. “Long time, no see, Ione. Fancy running into you here.”
*****
a/n: Next time will bring an update to The Break of Day. I mean it this time. Sorry for the cliffhanger!
Feedback is always welcome and appreciated.
Title: Whispers of Yesterday
Series: Infinity's End, Book Two
Warnings: smut, het smut, hints to slashy goodness, violence, language
Description: Now firmly entrenched in the Theravada -- and firmly involved with Gale as well -- Ione discovers the hidden sides of both Grayshire and Theravada. She questions her own decisions -- and her feelings -- as the war takes on a more murderous, personal turn for the worst.
Chapter Six
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Twigs crunched beneath her feet and the air had a sharp, crisp bite to it. Not that Ione minded. She preferred cooler weather, after all, and was glad that the sticky humidity of summer had all but been left behind. Plus, autumn meant apple cider, her favorite drink. And Talemar, in the midst of fall, was gorgeous. Though Ione couldn’t appreciate that beauty at the moment, not with sweat trickling down her back and a worrisome sense of unease growing inside of her.
Ione was confident in her own skills. She’d had to be in order to ensure success as a member of the Brigade. But there was something about the Varos Flats, about the way the others had reacted in regards to it, the horror stories Malcolm had told her, the things Ione knew and the things she didn’t, that made her wary. Made her just a little uncertain and uneasy. She was nervous; she couldn’t hide it or fight it.
Licking her lips, Ione tried to chase away the disquiet, heightened by the fact Fenris wasn’t at her side. In all her years bonded to the wolf, he’d never been far from her side and she’d never faced danger without him nearby. She felt a bit like a fledgling, wandering away from the nest for the first time. It was unsettling.
Ione cleared her throat noisily. “What’s it like?”
She waited, but no answer came. Ione turned, looking at Gale, who seemed trapped in thought. Brow furrowed, eyes hidden, completely focused.
“Gale.”
He blinked, as though coming out of a long dream, and looked at her, a distance in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. That niggling realization, one that pointed out the truth of how little they knew each other, flared to life once again. Ione batted it away.
“Hmm?”
Ione let his strange distance pass. In all likelihood, Gale was probably just worried and letting it distract him as well. She knew that he didn’t like the idea of her being here. But at least he’d learned to not try and stop her.
Rolling her neck to ease the cramping in it, Ione flexed her fingers. “What’s it like? The Varos Flats, I mean.”
Gale grimaced, the look of a man who had tasted something bitter. “A case of something better seen than described.”
“How so?”
“Varos is dead, Ione,” Gale answered, and lifted a hand, scratching fingers across his scalp as though searching for the right words. “It doesn’t breathe. There’s no pulse of life. It’s just…”
“Void,” Siobhan inserted helpfully, looking up at Ione with a beaming smile, energy practically vibrating from every limb. Oh, how nice it would be to be so energetic first thing in the morning. The sun had barely crested the horizon! “Even without the taint, the forest spirits avoid it. Varos is like the antithesis of Talemar.”
Ione felt a chill creep up her spine, settling cold and icy in her gut. Even the sun, peering through the leaves of the trees, couldn’t warm her skin. “And the core?”
“Azriel told you, didn’t he? About the civilization that Varos had been?”
Ione nodded, but it was Siobhan who answered, dropping back to Ione’s other side, highlighting the woman’s short stature. Ione hadn’t had to look down at anyone in over a year, not since the last time she had fought alongside Raine.
“The stories claim that the taint began in the capital, at the house of the queen who ruled Varos,” Siobhan recited, her voice fluid and rhythmic, as though it were a tale she had spoken many times before. “The core is considered the origin and of course, the breeding ground of the Merihem. They’re drawn there for some reason. As much as they are drawn to and hunger for life.”
Ione soaked up Siobhan’s words like a sponge. It was all so fascinating to her. The Varos Flats and the Merihem had always been like fairy tales to her. Meropis had treated them like nightmares, but only a distant concern. Threats of Merihem had been used to cow misbehaving children like monsters in the closet or under the bed. Truth and reality had never held much weight, not even for the patrols of the Brigade.
“What kind of research is Uncle trying to do here?” Ione asked, her gaze shifting from the forest to the path ahead of her, where Kieran and Helene were walking side by side. The former was pointing out various bits of flora and fauna to the latter, a little bounce in his step that Ione should have expected considering her uncle’s enthusiasm for his research.
“I’m not sure,” Siobhan answered, wrinkling her nose in a fashion that made her appear much younger. “I know he’s trying to crack the code of the taint in order to find a cure for it. If I had a guess, I’d say he wants a purer sample of whatever caused the poison.”
On Ione’s other side, Gale nodded thoughtfully. “That would explain the reason why he wants to go to the core. The origin is the best place to find an unaltered sample.”
“Provided we don’t get killed first,” Siobhan agreed in a chipper tone that didn’t match her off-putting words at all.
“And now I’m filled with so much confidence,” Ione said, and sucked in a deep breath, forcing herself to concentrate on the familiar flow of her own mana. And the familiar press of Gale’s beside her, twining at the edges of her aether.
Siobhan chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Master Kieran has a plan.”
Strangely, that didn’t encourage Ione in the slightest. She knew her uncle after all. Knew just how much of a scatterbrain he could be. And even if there was that serious, focused side of him that alarmed her at times, Ione knew him. Planning ahead of time had never been his forte.
“How much farther is it?”
“We’re almost there,” Gale answered, and that odd note had entered his voice again. He was tense, Ione could tell that much without asking him. She could read it in every line of his body, in the anxious buzzing of his aether.
Ione reached out, squeezing his arm. “What is it?”
He startled, as though he had forgotten she was beside him. Gale shook his head. “Nothing. Just an odd feeling. My imagination, I suppose.” His actions belied his words however. He was scanning the forest around them as though every bush hid a pair of eyes, watching their every move.
His unease was infectious. It made Ione feel just a bit jumpy as well. Her eyes flickered to Kieran and Helene, but neither of them seemed bothered by something intangible. And Siobhan was eagerly playing with some brightly-colored spider she had found on a leaf, letting the eight-legged creature crawl over her hands and muttering under her breath about its rarity and its unique hunting style.
“How will I know when we get there?” Ione asked, shifting the bag on her back, and the weight of the sword at her side. She still wasn’t used to the physical weapon, but Gale had insisted she bring it along for the sake of experience. Since he had been so gracious in other arenas, Ione had granted him that one concession.
“You’ll know.”
Ione frowned, Gale’s curt answer betraying his disquiet. There was that feeling again, of looking at another person, of wondering just who this man was. Her cheerful, uncertain and blushing lover had all but vanished, replaced by Gale Arlen, former head of the house of Arlen, former assassin and other more scrupulous deeds. Her mind still couldn’t reconcile the two as being one and the same.
She opened her mouth to question him further, to try and draw him out of whatever dark place he was slipping into, when Ione felt it. Less a cold chill creeping up her spine and more an absence, as though someone had sucked the very life out of the world. She could breathe, but the air was thin, empty.
Ione drew to a halt and looked down at a demarcation less than a foot away from her, as clear as a line drawn in the sand. The others stopped as well, until the five of them stood side by side, staring into the Varos Flats while still standing in the safety of Talemar proper. Ione’s feet were on green, green grass and springy soil, but a few more steps, and she would have trampled over barren ground sparsely populated by dead, twisted weeds.
Ione couldn’t stop staring, her thin breath caught in her throat, even her heart aching at the sight. Behind her was lush greenery, a forest in full bloom, steadily heading toward late fall and winter, yes, but still alive. The warmth of the sun banked at her back as did the humidity of the waking morning. Dew glistened on leaves. A bee buzzed noisily. Behind her was life.
And before her was death. Gale was right. The Varos Flats were nothing but death.
Flats was perhaps the wrong word to use. It implied there were no trees, just miles of empty land. This was not true. There were trees, if that was what Ione could call them, their dead, twisted trunks pushing toward the sky with arms reaching as though crying out for some sort of aid. Their branches were utterly barren, and if leaves had ever been on them, Ione couldn’t tell. Moss, grey like ash, hung from every surface, drooping toward the ground in dry, desiccated clumps. But more than the sight, was the sound. There was none. It was utterly silent without so much as a rustle or a chirp.
Ione felt her insides clench, and she was glad that they had left their familiars behind. It would be quite the painful sight to them.
“I see what you mean,” Ione said quietly, and dropped one hand, letting her fingers brush over the hilt of her sword.
Merihem were in there. Not visible at the moment, but the threat of their presence seemed to hang over the Flats like a disconcerting cloud. Ione felt herself twitching for no reason, a feeling of being watched sitting on her shoulder like a gargoyle.
“Well,” Kieran said brightly, so brightly that Ione couldn’t tell if his enthusiasm was real or forced. “Time’s wasting while we stand here staring. Shall we enter?”
And when he put it that way, Ione was hard-pressed to put up a protest. Especially since she had volunteered for this, and she’d be damned if she proved Gale right by backing out now. She wasn’t exactly afraid… just cautious.
“Remember,” Kieran added as they stepped into the Varos Flats, the sound of their boots crunching the dead vegetation abnormally loud. “We have to stay alert. I’ve no doubt the Merihem already know we are here.”
That was reassuring.
Conversation died as they stepped into the Flats, a single file line of five men and women, who twitched without identifiable reason. Ione’s eyes never ceased roaming the dead, spindly underbrush. Even Kieran’s enthusiasm seemed to have petered out, instead replaced by an unnerving focus that only heightened the tension. Suddenly, the dead vegetation had eyes, and they were watching the team from Paragon.
The day dragged on, the sun rising higher and higher in the sky, until it hung over them in the unusually oppressive heat of near-afternoon. Ione sweated under the layers of her clothes, wondering why it was so much hotter here in Varos than it was in the forest. Here, it felt like they were sweltering in the midst of summer, rather than cooling off in late fall. She wondered if it had something to do with the lack of life. She was sure Kieran could probably give her some lengthy and complicated explanation yet she didn’t ask. She’d rather save her breath.
Ione had no idea where they were going, or how much further it would be to the core. She was simply following her uncle and Siobhan in front of her, with Gale behind and Helene bringing up the rear. The path they followed was narrow, hemmed in on either side by prickly bushes and twisted vines, coiling around the trees as though choking the massive trunks. Occasionally, Ione would catch glimpses of structures that appeared to be the destroyed shells of buildings or homes, but they were always buried beneath the twisted, desiccated vegetation. Walls half-crumbled, roofs caved-in, completely deserted and nearly taken back by Kaiyu before the infection had taken over and done the rest.
Ione tilted her head back. The sky above them was plainly visible, bright blue and clear, and incongruous to the still death surrounding them. She couldn’t see a single bird flying above the trees, as though they didn’t even dare fly over the Varos Flats. Ione didn’t like it.
It was made worse by the fact they didn’t speak. It was as if there were some unspoken agreement not to converse, as though that would draw the Merihem faster. Instead, the five of them were so damned focused on putting one foot in front of the other, steadily creeping their way to the core of Varos, where the infection was strongest and the risk greatest.
The place between Ione’s shoulder blades itched, as though she were being watched. Gale was behind her, but Ione knew he wasn’t staring at her. The oddest sensation of tiny feet creeping up her back, like a spider or something equally unnerving, swept over her skin. Ione gripped the hilt of her plain sword tighter, wishing Fenris were at her side.
A feeling of wrongness invaded Ione’s thoughts, gripping her tongue, making her heart pick up in pace. She broke into a sweat, unable to shake her growing concern. Her instincts were all but screaming at her, shrilly whistling in her ear, demanding to be heeded.
Something wasn’t right.
“Umm, guys?”
A dark blur shot out of the surrounding trees, disturbing the overhanging moss as it sprang from the shadows, heading straight for Kieran. A warning leapt to Ione’s lips, but her uncle had already noticed his attacker, sword raised and ready. Ione hadn’t even realized he was carrying one. A quick flash of metal and the black shape went down, landing on shadowy limbs and cocking up toward Kieran, a sound much like a hiss emerging from its form.
It was a Merihem, or at least, Ione assumed it was one. Having never seen or faced one, she had to assume that the strange conglomeration of darkness was one of the tainted beasts. It was hard to say whether or not it had form. There was evidence of a body, of limbs and something that could pass as a head. Two eyes peered from the bulbous head-shaped part of it, sharp and gem-colored, bright like rubies.
It moved fluidly, as though lacking skeleton and anything solid, its shape shifting from one to the next, though leaving impressions in the soft earth beneath it. It hissed again, revealing a mouth marred by sharp, stained teeth that were quickly wetted by a pink, fleshy tongue.
It might have once been a familiar beast. A dog perhaps, or a large cat. But now, it was only Merihem, hungry and broken.
“Don’t physically touch them!” Kieran shouted, his blade whipping through the air.
Them? Ione blinked. She only saw one.
Behind her, Helene shouted, and Ione whirled. Three more Merihem had approached from behind, different sizes and different flowing shapes. Eyes of green and gold and ocher.
Helene drew a weapon from a hook at her side, a rod that extended with a flick of her wrist, weighted down on one end with heavy metal. She swung it like a pro, cracking one Merihem over what must have been the head as though the weapon weighed next to nothing.
Ione gaped, and then blinked as though coming out of a long dream. She couldn’t afford to stand here staring, not with the Merihem’s hunger practically palpable. When the only sound of the battle was her companion’s reactions.
Ione reached inside herself, and stepped forward, intending to help Helene. Siobhan swore, unladylike, behind Ione, no doubt facing an enemy of her own. And Gale was already at Ione’s side, blade drawn, serious and focused.
Ione whipped her hand through the air, summoning the very wind, forming a blade of pure aether. She twisted her arms, directing it toward the advancing Merihem, her aim focused on the shade with ocher eyes that seemed pinned on Ione. She couldn’t fight the chill that crept down her spine, the eerie sensation of being considered its next meal.
Her wind scythes flew through the air, cutting a violent swathe as it slammed into the Merihem’s body with an audible thump, like a fist hitting a pillow. But the Merihem barely stirred, absorbing the blow as though it had been as harmless as a paper cut, advancing forward again.
Breath caught in her throat, Ione unconsciously backpedaled and slammed her foot against the ground, twisting her wrist and summoning a flurry of stones. She yanked them out of the barren earth, pelting them at the Merihem, summoning more wind to her side in their wake. She couldn’t touch the beast; her martial arts were useless.
The bits of jagged rock slammed into the Merihim, only to bounce back and fall to the ground, completely ineffective. Ione felt it then, a sensation as though some hand had reached inside of her, pulling on something inside her. Something necessary to her existence. It was pain and it burned and as Ione stared at the Merihem, those calm, ocher eyes met hers. Their eyes locked, the tugging increased, and dizzy, Ione stumbled.
There was a boy, laughing, smiling. He ran through a field of flowers, daisies, she thought. It smelled of springtime, a sea of dandelion fluff floating dizzily through the air. The boy danced, spinning and spinning with arms outstretched.
Gale stepped in front of her, until all she could see was his narrow back and the dark grey of his well-fitting robes. The connection broken, Ione gasped, sucking in a desperate breath. It had felt like cold claws had gripped her lungs. Like something had taken her heart in hand, watching fascinated as it foolishly continued to beat.
His robe fluttered as he lifted his hand, sword rising and falling rhythmically. The blade made no sound as it cut through the Merihem, but the beast itself made a strange, breathy noise, as though a waterskin had been abruptly deflated after being filled with air.
“Don’t look them in the eye,” Gale said, his voice strangely soft and deep in the following silence.
Ione gulped in heavy breaths. “That was…?”
“Not a dream. An afterimage of the past, perhaps. Of what the Merihem had once been.”
Her heart felt as if it had been gripped again, this time by emotion rather than an enemy hand. That laughing, smiling boy had become a Merihem? When? How? Ione felt sick, her stomach churning unpleasantly, threatening to expel her breakfast of fruit-covered pancakes.
“It’s better, in the long run, if you don’t know what you are destroying,” Gale added, much more softly, as though sympathetic to her raging emotions. “Because if you hesitate, they will devour you. That image no longer exists and right now, the best we can do for them, is to destroy them.”
It sounded terribly final, and Ione hated that they could do nothing more. She hated that the boy dancing in the back of her mind had turned into this ocher-eyed creature, whose body was slowly dissolving into a black sludge that stained the ground, and put off a putrid stench. At least, the strange blotches of utter black on the ground she had spied earlier were now explained.
There was so much Ione didn’t know. So much that Grayshire had hidden. In the end, she really didn’t know her own former allies either. She hadn’t known the truth of her own home. Deceit and misleading and secrets, everything had been wrapped in subterfuge. Ione hated it.
Her body was shaking and Ione struggled to get a grip on herself, watching dully as Gale moved, so fast, always so fast, and took out another Merihem. His movements efficient, quick, blade falling with accuracy so as not to cause any suffering. He honestly considered it a mercy killing, but Ione was of the mind that if she were to ever be infected, that someone kill her before she turned into such a thing. She believed wholeheartedly in Kieran’s ability to eventually cure the taint, but Ione would rather die than suffer in such a skin.
Ione half-turned, watching as Kieran and Siobhan destroyed their own opponents without blinking, her uncle wielding a strange short blade with surprising skill. But more than that was Siobhan’s own choice of weapon. A pair of circular blades with six sharp protrusions that had a grip in the center of each with a cross-guard for defense. She wielded them fluidly, every motion in line with the grace of her body. Ione was impressed.
Her skin prickled and Ione turned, a shout catching in her throat as a Merihem burst out of the vegetation toward her. Ione jerked, training taking over as she dropped under the attack, lashing out with a sharp burst of wind. It smacked harmlessly into the Merihem’s loose-limbed body with a soft sucking sound, as though it had been absorbed and Ione rolled to her feet, heart pounding in her chest.
The Merihem whipped around, sapphire eyes staring at her and Ione hastily dropped her gaze, focusing instead on its shadowy body. Ione tensed, her hand sweeping up a handful of dirt and tossing it at the Merihem, magic focusing the clod into a dangerous projectile. It crumbled on contact with the Merihem, dropping harmlessly to the ground.
It hit Ione that her magic was completely useless against these creatures. It was like they sucked all the power out of anything, all of the energy that Ione had expelled. Her hand fell to her sword, pulling the blade just as the Merihem sprang at her again.
Ione twisted, her sword whipping through the air, cutting through the Merihem as though sliding through shadow. It felt like it had no form to her and she threw herself off balance from the unnecessarily heavy blow. Ione tumbled to the side as the Merihem hit the ground to her left, hissing as it flopped around weakly. A smell, not unlike that of burning flesh and rot, rose up in its wake.
She watched, stared, as it half-melted and half-disintegrated into the pile of black ash that would stain the ground.
“This is why I insisted you bring your sword,” Gale said as he approached her, offering a hand.
She reached up, letting him pull her to her feet. “You could have said so sooner,” Ione muttered, sheathing the blade and telling herself that her hands weren’t shaking.
“Would you have believed me without experiencing it?”
She wasn’t sulking either. “Yes,” she said, but there was a niggling doubt in the back of her mind. She couldn’t imagine explaining such a sensation to someone else. It was as if her very magic had been sucked out of her, and if she hadn’t stopped, it would have kept on being depleted until there was nothing left of her. Nothing but skin and bones.
Frowning, Ione looked at her uncle, who had wiped off his own weapon and sheathed it as well. “Why doesn’t magic work?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” Kieran answered, dragging a hand through his hair. “We suspect it has something to do with how they were tainted in the first place. As though it wasn’t a poison to the body, but to the inherent magic of a person.”
“Which is why a normal human appears to have been sucked dry while a magic-user becomes another Merihem,” Siobhan said, stooping to take a few samples of the substance left behind by the destroyed Merihem. She scooped a small sample of the ashy leavings into little vials that were then tucked into her pouch. “We think they attack not just because of hunger, but also because of a desire to return to a normal life.”
Ione felt her mouth go dry. “They have a conscious?”
“Not like you or me, no,” Siobhan said, her pale eyes squinting as she held up a vial to the sky, examining the substance within. “But we do suspect that vestiges of their former conscious occasionally rise to the surface. Which is how they project, for lack of a better word, those afterimages that you experienced earlier.”
Siobhan rose to her feet, dusting off her knees and carefully tucking the last of the vials into her satchel. “In reality, we still know very little. We can’t exactly ask the Merihem what happened or why. And the moment they die, they become this ash so an autopsy is impossible.”
Which made Ione wonder how they had learned so much already. A part of her didn’t even want to know, would rather she remained ignorant.
“We’d better keep moving,” Helene said from behind, expertly flicking her wrist and making her weapon shrink again, to be returned to the loop at her side. “We’re almost there.”
“How can you tell?” Ione asked, pointedly skirting around a dark splotch on the ground. It felt… disrespectful somehow. As though she were trampling on someone’s grave.
Helene didn’t answer. In fact, the silence that rose abruptly was unsettling. Ione looked behind her, finding Gale standing there, still as stone, body tense. Helene was much the same. She had whirled toward the thorny bush, her hand falling back to her weapon. And in front of Ione, her uncle was frowning and the color had drained from Siobhan’s face.
That prickling between Ione’s shoulder blades became a mad itching, strong enough that she twitched.
She tried to catch Gale’s eyes, wanting an explanation, but trained enough to know not to speak. Her companions were obviously waiting for something, having received some sign that warned them to be cautious. But of what? More Merihem?
Her mana trembled. No, this foe was no Merihem. Not with the aether that Ione could sense. Their enemies were skilled, but they couldn’t hide themselves from a magic-user paired with not just one familiar, but two. Ione could feel them and she knew that the others could as well. There was no doubt that these newcomers were Grayshire sent.
Ione let her aether curl around her, cloaking her body in a defensive layer, as her companions tensed around her. Ready for battle.
“Show yourselves,” Gale demanded, his voice strong as he straightened, that distant look in his eyes. Focused and determined.
Bodies melted out of the forest, a dozen men and women, cloaked in dark shades that blended well with the desiccated vegetation. Faces wrapped and concealed, weapons small and easily hidden but no less deadly. Aether carefully cloaked, but not vanished, cool and collected.
Ione knew those uniforms. They were the Special Ops, the Brigade’s specialty force that performed all manner of subterfuge and delicate missions chasing after the most dangerous of criminals. And apparently, they were now assassins as well.
“Traitors to Grayshire,” a voice announced from ahead of them, flanked at either side by two taller forms, eyes glaring from cloth-wrapped faces. “You know why we are here.”
Ione stiffened, a cold feeling washing over her. She knew that voice. Knew it as surely as she had known Faye’s magic. The sharp grey eyes that stared at them accusingly were distinct. Even if Ione hadn’t seen her since they went their separate ways after graduating Conservatory and entering the Brigade together, Ione would know that voice.
Ione pushed her way between Kieran and Siobhan, until she faced the obvious leader of the Special Ops Douzaine.
“You’ve never been so much of a coward that you’d kill someone without showing your face,” Ione accused, her body vibrating with tension, her aether a frazzled buzz around her.
A low chuckle echoed through the forest before a slim hand with equally slim fingers cloaked in black lifted, peeling away the cloth wrapped around the leader’s face. Stormy grey eyes framed by long lashes, freckles dotting pale cheeks, and spiked red hair came into view, all framing a pixiesh face that seemed better suited for an entertainer rather than a top notch member of the Special Ops.
Anisa grinned at Ione as though she hadn’t come to kill them. “Long time, no see, Ione. Fancy running into you here.”
a/n: Next time will bring an update to The Break of Day. I mean it this time. Sorry for the cliffhanger!
Feedback is always welcome and appreciated.
