Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1) (24 page)

Chapter 57

Rodrom

Lorelei grasped her staff with shaking fingers. As she whispered to herself, Rodrom tried to think of something to say. How had he handled such situations before?

He could not think of anything useful.

Her amber fingers grasped the pendant with the glowing white stone, and then twisted. Rodrom heard a crack, and the five-foot staff fell away, leaving Lorelei holding a dagger in her hand.

"What are you doing?" Rodrom asked slowly.

"I was entrusted with its care," she told him. "I was supposed to protect it."

"Protect what? Lorelei?" Rodrom moved slowly too, lest she startle. She was in shock, needed help.

"You would not understand, DerekRodrom, you never will."

"Lorelei, just put the knife away," he said in his best soothing voice. It sounded harsh to his ears.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and raised the knife.

"No!" Rodrom shouted, lunging forward.

It was too late.

Lorelei plunged the silver blade into her chest. Light erupted from the gem on the pommel, and she screamed.

Rodrom caught her as she fell, her head falling in his lap as she pulled in ragged breaths. The light on the blade started blinking erratically, blinding him. Rodrom tried to pull her fingers away to assess the damage. Her grip was steel.

Despite Lorelei being in obvious pain, her eyes remained locked in a distant gaze, and as her voice cracked from screaming she stopped, drew breath, and said a single word. A word Rodrom's weaveroot didn't translate.

Then the light died, and he held his breath in the dark. Waiting for whatever spell she had cast to activate or whatever the hell it was called.

Nothing happened.

His heart throbbed in his temples; he could feel the lingering time in each beat. For the span of perhaps a minute, complete silence settled in the root chamber. With effort, he looked away from her, expecting to see a guard, another healer, anything. Some result of the obvious magic she had just performed, or the reason she had just condemned herself.

Forcing himself to breathe, Rodrom looked closer at the wound.

A tiny light blossomed from the hole in Lorelei's chest. It was barely visible at first, but soon grew so bright that Rodrom was forced to look away, and even as he lifted his hand to shield his eyes, he was blinded by its radiance. It changed in hue, from red, to green, to violet, and every color in between, twisting as it moved across Lorelei's skin.

Light rippled out from the wound to bathe her, and she changed. The foliage and vines that made up her clothing withered away, and Lorelei lay naked in his arms.

Her hair turned stark white, like freshly fallen snow, so bright that it seemed to glow. Her amber flesh paled to a shade darker than the hair, and shimmered as she struggled to breathe. Her eyes changed last. Where before they were deep green, they were now a kaleidoscope of striated colors.

Her body shone with such luminosity that the other colors around the tent seemed to dim; shadows clawed into the corners and stretched across the dirt-packed floor, twisting from the light she cast.

It didn't take long for Rodrom to realize the shadows were not moving because of the lights—they were stretching towards it. He shook his head, trying to sort out what was happening.

Like snakes through grass, the shadows slithered across the ground and connected with Lorelei. She screamed again, but with raw animal horror rather than anguish. The shadows twisted up her skin, leaving midnight tracings across the glowing surface. Wherever they touched, the light was burned away, leaving impossibly deep black behind.

Rodrom reached up to grab the pendant she had created for him. A dissonance so chaotic, and yet so beautiful that he could not fathom its existence, pounded through his mind. He could not let go, and through the agony that afflicted him, he watched helplessly as the shadows continued to climb across Lorelei's skin in swirling tattoos.

Darkness raced its way up her arms, across the exposed portion of her chest, up her neck, and along the side of her jaw, arcing across her cheek and ending over one closed eye. The shadows seemed to stop there, and Lorelei heaved a heavy breath, snapping her eyes open to meet Rodrom's. One eye still shone with the hue of every imaginable color, while the other was the deep black of an endless well.

Lorelei reached up with her unshadowed arm and clutched Rodrom's wrist, pulling his hand from the pendant and ending the song’s trance. Lorelei's voice came then, strained and weak. "Something is wrong," she choked out. "Please, move me to him."

Unable to think far enough to argue, Rodrom took hold of Lorelei's hands, and as gently as he was able, moved them to the side of the shifting warrior’s head, leaning her body over his lap. She closed her eyes, almost gasping for breath, but she held her hands steady.

That same blinding light shone once more, but this time it came from the palms of her hands and enveloped the warrior beneath her. Immediately, the warrior's shifting slowed dramatically to become an almost rhythmic dance. The churning change became a slow and purposeful shift that rolled over his body from head to toe. While he never remained completely in one form or the other, it seemed whatever Lorelei was doing was working.

The light changed in intensity to a deep green, the color of healthy leaves, and Rodrom could see that within the cavity he had created, the shrapnel was being pushed out of the heart, which continued to beat all the while. With analytical detachment, he waited until the shrapnel was almost completely removed, then reached out tentatively to pull it from the cavity, taking care not to touch the beating heart. Lorelei moved her head closer to Rodrom's chest in silent thanks, and for a moment, Rodrom's detachment cracked, and his chest tightened and ached. Lorelei continued her magic, and Rodrom watched silently as the warrior’s chest knitted itself closed, pushing out the branch Rodrom had used as a spreader.

The light changed again, taking on the blue-green tint of ocean water, and the shifting ceased entirely. A Verdantun male now lay on his back, with no evidence of injury. Lorelei breathed a last sigh, extinguishing the light and allowing her arms to fall, and collapsed completely into Rodrom's arms.

"The grand general is safe," she murmured.

Then the entrance to the tree exploded as something slammed into it from above.

Chapter 58

The Exile

A brilliant light appeared ahead of the Exile, a spotlight between the trees. She could feel the hunger and excitement of the Shadow as she turned towards the light. This was the energy it had wanted her to seek out. This would be her undoing. She ran towards it, pulsing her Shell into her thighs and abandoning all pretense of stealth.

The dagger at her hip started vibrating, and tendrils of Shadow twisted around her. The light ahead grew more vibrant, and the black fingers streaked past her, drawing in the light as they shot like bolts through the forest. As she drew closer, she heard screaming, a long, ragged note.

Even with her Shell pulsing to keep up her speed, and the energy snapping through her body, she still felt drained and beaten as the Shadow reached towards the scream.

She couldn't beat it, couldn't run fast enough to keep up with that power. Any power she held over their bond would be nothing once it reached the light.

The dagger was close to vibrating right out of its worn leather sheath, the hunger rolling off it with an intensity that churned Exile's stomach. She regretted ever using the blade.

Above the Shadow, a fighter drew closer, and the sound of the engine drowned out the scream.

She squinted into the storm clouds to spot the silver ship plowing down through the storm, rocketing towards the light, where the tendrils had gone.

The dagger tugged her forcefully, knocking her from her feet and sending her sprawling in the mud. The crisp energy of her Shell waned with her concentration, and she was forced to rip the weapon out of its sheath before it shook apart her bones.

What have I done
? she thought.

Ahead, the fighter smashed into the ground in a cacophony of shrapnel and fire.

The black stone connecting her to the Shadow ceased vibrating. A crack in it leaked white light. Exile threw up her good arm to shield herself, and then the dagger shattered into countless obsidian shards.

The connection was severed.

She was freed.

Exile screamed.

Chapter 59

Vincent

It was Ele. It had to be. She was always right there when fires broke out. The surface of Bastogne, when she had screamed that it was chasing her. The fire on the ship—she had been at the center of that as well. The torn and burnt uniform she had worn when he rescued her was another puzzle piece. Block stencil lettering, jumpsuit. She had to be some kind of scientist. Or worse, an experiment.

Vincent had flown up against flame elementals in the past. Phoenixes, salamanders, even sprites. Nothing had looked like, or burned as hot, as the creature Ele had become.

How the hell was he supposed to vape something that could absorb his missiles, that he couldn’t even approach? Even if he could, did he want to? Ele had never seemed like anything more than a confused and frightened woman trapped in a war. If it was her in there, why was she attacking?

Vincent thought to reach out to her, to stop her before she destroyed another world, but could not think of how. The best he could hope to do was broadcast on a wide brand of frequencies and hope that she could hear him.

"Rover, could we jury-rig something to give off heat in a specific pattern? Find a way to communicate with her?" Vincent asked.  Something made of fire would be drawn towards heat, wouldn’t it?

Details of a plan scrolled across one of his screens. He didn't concern himself with the specifics, he just needed to know it could be done. Something about shunting heat into ablative armor.

Rover moved onto the top of the craft, and began cracking open panels and pulling out wires. Vincent concentrated on following Ele along her blazing path.

The map on his leftmost screen showed the estimated positon of the elf camp. Ele was getting close to reaching them. He needed to get the colonists out of there before she torched the place.

He put on speed, soaring around and past Ele. She didn't seem to notice his ship. The camp was just ahead, close enough for his sensors to start picking up the AMIs of the trapped colonists.

Immediately, he identified a cluster of them in what appeared to be large pits.  There were more transmissions from the treeline; the Condemned would be fast approaching. As his computer crunched the incoming data, another tone alerted him to his worst fear: Rodrom was not among the refugees.

Vincent made two more passes, ordering the computer to continue its assessment, and in that time, the Condemned had reached the pits and begun drawing the prisoners out. The guards had been killed at some point between runs.

"Condemned Actual, this is Reaper One. Have you found any additional survivors? Over," Vincent commed.

There was a pause. "Reaper One, Condemned Actual. One of the doctors was taken into the camp. Our lieutenant's in there, causing a distraction. Over."

Vincent barely listened. Without a thought, he turned his ship and roared back towards the camp.

He was distantly aware of an inner voice telling him he was breaking every rule in the book. A tight strafe on an enemy encampment in broad daylight without air superiority and unknown defenses? Tantamount to suicide. But Ele wasn't slowing down, and neither was the wildfire of her wake.

Vincent strafed low over the jungle as he lined up his run. He had no plan, only that he would fly as fast and as well as he could over the camp, avoiding whatever came at him until his computer picked up Rodrom and Vincent got him the hell out of dodge.

Zombie called out.

Vincent turned his attention back to his wingmates. His pilot’s vital sign readouts showed an anomaly in the Duchess's biorhythm, and she wasn't responding to any of the communications sent to her. Vincent twisted in his seat, trying to spot her in the cloud cover.

A violently bright light filled the area, lancing out from the ground below. In the flare of light, he caught sight of the Duchess. Her fighter was pointed straight towards the ground.

Vincent pulled up, trying to get closer, to see what had happened to cause her tailspin.

"Duchess! Duchess!" Vincent called, but she didn't respond.

She was picking up speed, shooting down towards the trees below like an artillery round. There was no way Vincent could get to her in time.

It was all too much. Ele, Duchess, Rodrom.

Something inside Vincent snapped, and he did the unthinkable.

Reaching up with both hands, he grabbed the two handles beside the transformation controls and twisted to break the seal. Jets of white fog pulsed from the air vents, and Vincent called out, "Machine meld activate, authorization tango three mike four."

He pulled down hard on the handles, then released them and went limp. Needles shot out from his seat to pierce the ports on either side of his spine, and he felt a stab of sharp pain followed by numbing warmth throughout his head and back.

Details flooded into his mind at an unbelievable pace as a blue liquid filled his cabin. His seat unfolded so he was lying on his back. Everywhere the liquid touched, his skin went numb, and as it reached his neck he could no longer tell where he ended and the ship began. He opened his mouth and tried to relax as it filled over his head, and he nearly blacked out from panic when it filled his lungs.

Then his whole body was numb, and he was no longer a pilot. He was the Chimera.

The fighter also changed as the cabin filled with fluid. The wings bent back away from the canopy and angled toward the tail, while panels opened and inset turbines were revealed. They spun up, providing lift as the engines dimmed. The tail split in two and reconfigured into legs, the engines glowing on the back of each ankle. The craft’s belly also split, and the two halves twisted out to become arms, the Gatling cannon mounted on one, the laser cannon on the other. The nose collapsed and moved to complete occlude the cockpit, and the missile launchers rotated forward to form shoulders.

The panels locked into place, the wings rotated again, and the engines roared. Vincent shot towards the ground.

With all the information flooding his mind, time slowed. Vincent saw everything fall apart through his new eyes.

Black tentacles erupted from Duchess's craft to coat her ship. The darkness seemed to suck in all light, and it twisted and writhed like a hundred serpents.

Rodrom's AMI had been located; he was inside a tree directly below. The place from which the light had originated, and the place where the Shadow was heading.

Ele came charging through the storm cover overhead, her wings held tight to her body, the clouds boiling away in her wake.

The Shadow smashed into Rodrom's tree.

A psychic scream tore through Vincent's mind.

He hit the ground on armored feet, sweeping his weapons ahead of him, mud and debris churning beneath him as he slid to a stop just beyond the wreckage of Duchess's ship.

He had fourteen minutes.

Then he would die
.