Ethon (The Other Worlds Series Book 2) (5 page)

“Good.” He nodded once. “Trenton mentioned that you lost some of your gifts. How?”

“That day you left Dagon in the Vrenyx, I caused the destruction of the castle and Delvich Forest,” she told him. “I sacrificed some of my gifts to save the Other Worlds.”

“Which gifts did you lose?”

“Globing, invisibility, and pausing time.”

“I’m sorry, princess.” He frowned.

She shrugged. “It was so long ago.”

“How did you discover the fortress’s weakness?” Sazx leaned back in his seat. “I was under the impression that only Dagon and his captain were ever aware of it at any given time.”

“What do mean?” Her brow furrowed.

Perhaps she wasn’t aware of it after all. “Dagon’s castle and Delvich Forest were infused with the gifts of himself and his people.”

“Yes,” she nodded, “that’s how they lost their gifts – by using them to fortify Dagon’s new capital and prison.”

“True, but you seem to be missing one important detail,” he returned. “Dagon’s castle and forest could not be destroyed because of this unless done so in the same manner that it had once been demolished.”

Olinia stared at him. “You mean, the only way to bring down the Vrenyx was the way that Balinorre fell?”

“Exactly.”

She let out a short laugh. “Good thing I thought of that then. Otherwise things might have turned out quite differently two years ago.”

Sazx watched her for a moment, deliberating. He had yet to inform her and her brother of just how long it had been since he’d last seen her. They’d assumed it had been the same amount for him, not yet asking for exact details of his arrival. It was time to end such false notions though. “Princess, I have a confession to make. Our last encounter in the Vrenyx was just over two weeks ago for me.”

“Two weeks?” Olinia sounded like she was choking.

“Yes.”

“Just two weeks.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You said you’ve been in Ethon for two weeks.”

“True.”

“Then, when was the last time you saw me before you came to Ethon?”

“It was a few hours, princess,” Sazx answered slowly.

Olinia looked dazed. She stood abruptly, her chair screeching over the wood floor. “I – I have to go.”

He stood as well. “Where are you going?”

“Outside.” She began to back away from the table. “I need to go for a walk. I need some fresh air.”

“Allow me to accompany you.”

“No.” She was shaking her head again. “No, I won’t go far. I’ll stay on the property.”

“If you insist.”

“I’ll be back.” With that, Olinia headed out the back door into the trees behind the house, leaving Sazx to wonder why
.

4

------------------

Will Patten was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. It had to have been more than forty-eight hours before. Why was he still awake? No, a better question was
how
was he still awake? Every muscle in his body was screaming out for rest. It was a miracle that he was still on his feet. High above him, the stars were shining brightly, competing with the light of the moon. It was long after midnight, but Will wasn’t going to bed anytime soon. Sleep wasn’t really an option right now.

“How are you doing?” A familiar voice asked in Eveon.

He turned as Dallyn Paran joined him. The Eve smiled grimly and Will rubbed at his eyes, forcing them to stay focused. He and Dallyn were standing in the front courtyard of Fuladrik the Healer’s home in the village of Willowvale. All around them were strewn the bodies of the wounded from the night before, all waiting for a turn with Fuladrik or one of the other Healers gathered in Willowvale that night.

“I’ll live,” Will replied in Eveon. It was all he used with his friend, even though both of them knew Will’s first language was Saerdian.

“You look awful.” Dallyn grunted.

“Thanks, but I doubt I’m as bad as they are,” Will noted, referring to the men littering the ground of the courtyard. “We need more Healers.”

“You weren’t doing so bad on your own, though.”

Will shrugged that off. During the past six or so hours, after he had bandaged up his own injuries, Will worked alongside the Healers in aiding the wounded. Fortunately, he had retained some of his pre-med schooling that could be used at a time like this. Still, he wasn’t a doctor and his medical aid was limited to disinfecting open flesh and binding bloodied limbs.

“Where is Zedge?” Dallyn asked after a moment.

“Good question.” Will glanced around. “I saw him down here a little while ago.”

“My cousin was looking for him.”

“Arynn?” Will couldn’t help but smile at that. Ever since Zedgry returned from the Vrenyx, Fuladrik’s daughter, Arynn, had rarely left his side.

Dallyn nodded. “She’s taken a fancy to High Royalty.”

At the mention of High Royalty, Olinia’s face came to Will’s mind. He winced inwardly. The twinge of regret he felt for leaving her behind in Ethon was largely overshadowed by his newfound inner necessity to be near her. Somehow kissing her that once had changed him. Even though it had been a necessary choice to part with her and her brother for a time, it didn’t mean that it hurt any less to have her away from him.

“It’s nice to know I can be invisible without even trying,” Zedgry murmured from behind Will and Dallyn.

“How long have you been there?” Will faced Olinia’s twin. The resemblance between Zedgry and his uncle was still astounding to him. Yes, Olinia and Zedgry appeared to be siblings, same as Legann. Out of the three though, it was Zedgry who looked like he could be Dagon’s son. They both shared the same oval face, deep-set eyes, and angled jaw. If Dagon’s hair hadn’t been the black hair of the Eves, Zedgry would’ve looked like a younger version of the emperor.

Zedgry grinned at Will. “Long enough. I guess we Wends are silent.”

“You Wends are arrogant,” Dallyn retorted.

“And you Eves are jealous.” Zedgry winked. He glanced at Will. “When was the last time you slept?”

“I can’t remember,” he admitted.

“Go get some rest.”

Will shook his head. “Not yet.”

“That was a command by High Royalty.”

“Really?” Will raised an eyebrow. “You realize High Royalty doesn’t have jurisdiction over an Ethon, right?”

“I do when you’re on Other World soil.” Zedgry smirked.

“What will you do when I refuse to follow your orders?”

“I’ll have Dallyn force you into submission.”

“How?” Will blinked.

“A duel?” Dallyn suggested.

Zedgry nodded. “Yes, a duel.”

“You’re just dying for a rematch, aren’t you, Dallyn?” Will chuckled. “I beat you before, I can beat you again.”

“But this time you’re so close to passing out on your feet that you couldn’t possibly win.” Dallyn grinned.

“So, you’re saying you can’t succeed when I’m fully awake and able?”

“You’re missing the point, Will,” Zedgry interjected. “You look like death. As your friends, we have to make you sleep.”

Will sighed. It was no use fighting with them. He knew he didn’t appear to be the greatest specimen of health at the moment. Besides, there was somewhere he had to be. “Alright. Where’s Fuladrik? He told me to get him before I leave to bed.”

“Thank you.” Zedgry smiled. “He’s inside with my grandfather.”

“Great. I’ll see you later,” Will tossed over his shoulder as he began for the house on the opposite side of the willow-encircled courtyard.

Once through the front doors, Will noticed candlelight streaming out into a hall to his left. It was the hall leading to Fuladrik’s personal study. That was most likely where Zedgry’s grandfather was. As Will made his way to the study’s door, he saw that it was partially closed. Hushed voices slipped through the door’s cracks. Will slowed his step, wondering if he should intrude. Then, he heard Fuladrik whisper in Eveon, “I cannot believe it. My friend Oldron is dead.”

That stopped Will in his tracks. Oldron the Wise and his daughter Aeorin were the sovereigns of the Relivaynt world. During the attack on the Vrenyx world, many of Dagon’s Nagreth were aiding the Velvitors in capturing Relivaynt. Will had heard nothing of their plight until now.

“Lady Aeorin is now a prisoner of the Velvitors,” King Yrond, Zedgry’s grandfather, replied sadly. “My sources tell me that she has been wed to King Talik.”

Will wasn’t sure who Talik was, but he assumed he was the Velvitor king. He frowned. The Velvitors were Craeles, half-human and half-animal, but not like the Craeles who lived among the Saerds and Eves. Velvitors were allies to Dagon, sworn to support him.

“Then, Relivaynt is lost,” Fuladrik said.

Slowly, Will backed away from the door, keeping his feet silent on the floor. His hand drifted to the shimmer stone, dangling from his neck. It was Legann’s. Will had taken it from him when he’d left him and Olinia with Trenton. It was time for Will to use it once more. The Other Worlds were in need of their princess. True, Dagon and his allies had taken some failure of late, but the fall of Relivaynt was evidence that they were still thriving. Lifting the stone with one hand, Will thought back to when he had last seen Olinia, and then opened a portal.

:  :  :  :  :

“Hi, Lillie.” Legann sat down across from her bent white head. Her short hair was, as always, flared out around her thin face. As for her eyes, she was focused on the textbook in front of her on the table.

They were in the cafeteria. It was perhaps Legann’s least favorite room in the high school. Even though the eating area was entirely enclosed, the school had filled it with outdoor metal picnic tables, the type he would find in a park. The benches were cold and uncomfortable.

“Hi.” She didn’t even lift her eyes from the book.

“Should we decide on a poem to study?”

“No.”

Legann rolled his eyes and dropped his books on the table. This was going to be a wonderful encounter. It wasn’t like he wanted to be talking to her either. “Did you forget we have a project to do?”

She shut her book and took off her glasses, revealing teal eyes with contact lenses on. “We don’t need to find a poem.”

“We were assigned to work together.” He was staring at her eyes. It was weird that she was wearing contacts. Why the need for glasses? Were her eyes really that bad? He frowned. “Are you wanting to fail?”

“Hardly.” She grunted, reaching into her bag.

“I’m not doing your work for you.” He noticed one of her contacts looked like it was clear, while the other was colored. Did she have mismatched eyes? Not that that meant anything in Ethon. In the Other Worlds, it was the mark of the Craeles, but in Ethon it was just the random alignment of her genes.

“I never asked you to,” Lillie retorted, tossing him a spiral-bound notebook.

Legann glanced down at it. “What’s this?”

“Our homework.”

He opened the notebook and began thumbing through the pages filled with her handwriting. “When did you do all of this?”

“Last night.”

“How long did it take you?” He blinked.

“A few hours.” She shrugged. “I wish it had lasted longer.”

“Longer? Why?”

“I don’t sleep much. I have insomnia.” She pointed to the notebook. “Doing this gives me something to do.”

“Insomnia?”

“Yeah, have you ever heard of it?”

“I know what it is,” Legann told her. “I’m just wondering why you don’t take a sleeping pill or something.”

“I have before,” she admitted, “but pills do things to me.”

“What sort of things?”

“Just things.” She shrugged. “I’m better off without them.”

Legann nodded, not feeling like he entirely believed her, as he returned his attention to the notebook, scanning through what Lillie had written. She had basically finished the assignment – an in-depth dissection of a nineteenth-century poem – on her own. There wasn’t really anything left for him to do. He pulled a face. As much as he wanted to just use what she had done, he felt guilty at not doing the work himself.

He sighed and extended the notebook back to her. “I shouldn’t take credit for your work.”

She shook her head. “It’s a little late. Look, I’ve already done it. Just paraphrase what I wrote if you really feel like you need to make it your own.”

Just then, Todd and Emilio passed by the table Legann and Lillie were at. Todd was carrying a tray of food while Emilio only held a can of soda. As they walked by, Todd smirked. “Hey, check it out, the loner finally found himself a girlfriend that’s not imaginary.”

Legann ignored the jibe, but Lillie reacted once the two were out of earshot. “DS rejects.”

“DS?” He blinked, remembering his previous conversation with Olinia. He had forgotten all about the academy.

“You’ve been here long enough to know about DS, right?”

“It’s some private school for the brilliant.”

She let out a short laugh. “It’s more like an after-school cult. Parents here are obsessed with it.”

“Why do parents like it so much?”

“Their kids can go to it while they work. Plus, nine out of ten kids who attend end up with full-ride scholarships to the university of their choice, anywhere within the nation. According to their website, they provide advanced tutoring in math, English, and science.” She grunted. “It’s every parent’s dream.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Legann glanced over his shoulder, watching as Todd and Emilio took a seat beside two brunette girls, a year younger than them. They were clearly flirting.

For a brief moment, Legann envied them – wondered what it would be like to be around girls that were his own age and breed. He’d never really had a chance to do so growing up, even in his village back in the Other Worlds. He’d always been too focused on learning some sort of warfare so as to destroy the Kendrens. His determination placed him outside of the small social scene. Now though, even in the midst of so many teens, he was still an outcast. Being a Wend from another planet wasn’t really an advantage here.

He turned back to Lillie and noticed that she was observing Todd and Emilio too. She had a distant look in her eyes. Legann frowned. It almost appeared as if she were thinking the same thing that he had been.

“My older brother taught there,” she answered the question that Legann had forgotten he’d asked. Apparently she hadn’t been thinking the same thing as him after all. “He’s dead now.”

“I’m sorry.” Legann paused, before nodding his head in Todd and Emilio’s direction. “So, how are they DS rejects?”

“They applied but failed the test to get in.”

“Test?”

“To be admitted you must take a test,” she replied. “Only fifty new students total are taken on each year, though. It makes the competition tough.”

“So, to attend you have to take some test?”

She shook her head. “Not if you’re invited to attend.”

Legann nodded. “Did you apply?”

“No.” She grunted. “I was offered admittance, but I refused.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I’m not one to pretend within a program I care very little about.” She offered him a tight smile.

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Why would you ever have to pretend to be smart?”

“I’m not talking about being smart.”

“Then, what do you mean?”

Lillie laughed lightly, amused by some personal joke. “You know, we’re a lot more alike than you may realize.”

Legann was about to refute her claim when the bell rang. Lunch was over. Lillie stood, reaching for her bag. “Keep the notebook tonight. We can meet up tomorrow to figure out how to split up the presentation.”