Girl of Myth and Legend (6 page)

The Core has three functions: to locate rebels of the Imperium; to locate newly awoken Chosen; and finally, to dispatch kytaen to their Chosen keeper.

It is there, in the place that every kytaen curses, that my loathed fate lays waiting.

Within The Core the colours of life have been drained into nothingness. The green of the grass, the orange of the sunset, the soft white of the moons—they are dismissed by the silver steel walls, forgotten by the artificial lights that almost blind you, repelled by the grey gleam of the hundreds of holograms displaying different faces or maps on them, Replica standing before them with unblinking eyes.

The puppets of the Chosen, the Replica, take on a female appearance, their bodies resembling that of a human, fashioning a strict and severe hairstyle, and they are moderately tall and broad of back. They are covered in golden microchips, taking the shapes of swirling patterns like runes carved on their skin. Their technical name would be android, but the Divinity who created them thousands of years ago didn’t like the term.

Della, the Replica I’ve been assigned to, gives me brief orders on behalf of the Council. I stare at her as if I’m listening, but her words are like wind to me, fleeting and ungraspable. My only thoughts are:
This can’t be happening. Not again.

Della touches a device strapped to her wrist, bringing up a holographic image of myself. She pinches the hologram, pulling it into the centre of the desk. My hair in this male humanoid form is the same as ever: a tangled mess and a light bronze colour. My eyes are a shade of bronze, too, normal for a kytaen. This recording of me was documented centuries ago, and considering my confinement in Aris’s shadow cells for the last two hundred years, I’m told, I probably look very different now.

‘Command: 8009,’ says Della, her voice detached. ‘File: KYVN76.’

The hologram changes to paragraphs of information. The file she’s brought up is the reason I’m standing here now. I can hardly believe I’ve been plucked out of Aris, the home of all unassigned kytaen, forced into a strange arena to kill and survive against my brethren, and then taken to The Core’s dispatch unit, all in but a day. Had I not been comfortable in my confinement only a day ago, content with the darkness, with knowing my fate would remain in those welcoming shadows? How could my path change course so suddenly without giving me a chance to defy it? Can I even defy it? To defy would mean punishment, and perhaps even death. Even so, I have to try to fight this fate.

‘This is wrong,’ I say. ‘I only survived the arena because my back leg failed me. If it hadn’t, Abon’s claws would have decapitated me and he would be the one here—’

‘KYNS02, or Abon, as you crudely put it, has expired,’ says Della. ‘You have not.’

‘My victory was a sham! A mistake!’

‘The purpose of the arena was to settle the matter of which kytaen is strongest from the selected few. Regardless of this “sham” you are adamant on claiming, you were the last standing, making you the most compatible for the designated Chosen.’

I grimace. I could have allowed myself to die in the arena; I thought death was what I wanted. There had been something tugging at me from inside, though, forcing me to endure. I thought it was instinct, the incomprehensible need to survive. Now I believe it was the entwining string of Fate, pulling me, encouraging me to live.

Della taps on the desk that is displaying an integrated keyboard. ‘Reviewing your data, I can apprehend the Council’s decision to place you in the arena. Before your confinement, you served over three hundred Chosen over the course of two thousand years, the majority of them Pulsar. You even served Vynguard.’

I stiffen at the mention of his name.

‘A few days ago, an enormous force emanated from the human realm,’ Della shows me the hologram of the planet, ‘in North Yorkshire. On our system we found Orin Woodville, a Chosen who was granted removal from the Imperium more than seventeen years ago.’

To be granted removal from the Imperium, you’d have to be a key pawn in the Council’s game, so much so that you could even demand freedom from them as long as you remained their player. What exactly did this Orin Woodville do to gain such favour?

‘We found that the emission of energy did not originate from him, however. He was merely the nearest Chosen to the incident, and we discovered he is her relative.’

‘Whose relative?’ I ask.

‘The one the energy came from—your keeper-to-be. She is a young girl of seventeen. However, we do not have much information about her as of yet. Once we receive it, I shall brief you.’

Della taps on the desk. ‘Currently, she is travelling to Agerath Island and will take the portal to the Temples of Elswyr, where you will be going. I am sure you are familiar with it.’

Yes, and I’ve never liked it.

‘For now, I am taking you to the holding bay where you will await her arrival at the Temples before we dispatch you.’

So that’s it then? There’s nothing I can do to prevent this path from unravelling before me?

Unless.

I glance at Della, who mirrors every Replica here, and I realise in that moment that she’s just a machine, a toy belonging to the Imperium. I could kill her, though I suppose the correct term would be dismantle. Then I could use the portal to send myself elsewhere, anywhere and—

I could almost laugh. What a pathetic dreamer I am. These chains can never be broken. Hasn’t time taught me that lesson?

‘Follow me,’ says Della.

I follow her through to a small room that leads to a circuit of corridors, Replica walking down them. I know the way to the holding bay, but always they escort us, as if they’re afraid we’ll run, which would be more of a hassle for them than a real threat. Doors slide open as we approach them and open up to a large room with a steel bridge leading to a platform. On the platform is a large metal circle and within it a faint orange light that hums.

That is where everything ends for me. In the next few days, I will be forced to go through the portal and leave behind my safe, dark world.

We go into another room that is shockingly white. I’ve done this so many times that I don’t need to be directed, so without instruction I stand where one of the ‘X’ symbols is painted.

‘Revert to your true form,’ Della says.

A hellish magic pulsates through me, and my bronze irises alter into slightly rounded slits. A shadow glares in my hand and blazes into ropes of black fire, chaining itself around my body. Wings made by wisps of darkness spawn from my back, their tips pointed and sharp; limbs stretch into two hind legs, short but bulky, and longer forelegs so I’m able to prop myself into a hunched position; from my head grow dark horns that curve in, and my snout grows wide as sharp teeth bare themselves; the shadows which I bore cling to my body in a fiery haze. I am a beast of hellish magic.

Three pieces of glass extend from the floor and create a cage around me. Though they don’t look much, not even I would be able to break the glass.

‘Remember that when you leave, we will be watching. Prove yourself to the Imperium.’ These are standard words said to all kytaen, but the way Della is looking at me makes me think she’s putting more meaning into those words than any she ever has before.

As she leaves, the door closing behind her, a resolution forms in my mind, a promise to myself, and it keeps me from trying to escape this fate; it keeps me from getting myself killed.

No matter how long it takes, be it years or centuries, I will make the Chosen suffer for what they have done. I will watch them as they cry and beg and
burn
.

For all the ones I killed in the arena, I swear this.

LEONIE

THE LAST

The small yacht sways as rolling waves crash against the cluster of rocks nearby. Dark clouds hang in the sky, intermittently hiding the pale moon. I take in the cool, misty smell of the sea as the breeze entangles itself in my hair. Above me I hear the welcoming cries of seagulls, whose open wings glide on the air. This is my first time at sea, and despite the lack of good weather, I’ve enjoyed it so far. Pegasus is using the rails to stand himself up on two legs, and I pat his head, thankful for familiar company.

I take my backpack off and pull out a Polaroid camera. I’ve never been much of a fan of digital cameras; I like to hold the picture as soon as I’ve taken it. I hold up the camera and take a shot of the dark-blue sea. The picture comes out and is completely black. Stupid Polaroid camera.

It’s only been a day since routine waved bye-bye. In its place it left a new, inexplicable reality. Just as I can’t deny I was afraid of this new world, I also can’t deny that I was fascinated by it. Routine has been the only ordinary, human way of coping with my
lostness
; now routine has been replaced by something far more profound, something that has completely enveloped my life, and forever will—magic.

Getting
to
that new life isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers and arriving in a new world, though. We’re heading to Agerath Island where, O’Sah says, there’s a portal that will take us to Duwyn. Apparently there are portals all over the human realm, and Chosen set up bases there so that no one unwanted stumbles across them.

We’ve been on the boat for a few hours now, and though I’m enjoying it, it’s not exactly thrilling when you can hear your dad throwing up most of his food.

‘We’ll reach the harbour soon,’ I hear Dad say, and turn around to face him.

‘Good thing, too,’ I say. ‘Sounds like you’ve been vomiting out the whole of China for the past hour.’

He clears his throat. ‘Our family has always lacked sea legs.’

‘Guess I’m extremely adaptable.’ I tilt my head to the side. ‘You OK? Feel better?’

‘I’ll survive… I think.’

‘I’m counting on it. God knows I don’t want to be stuck alone with O’Sah.’

Dad smiles. ‘He is intense; having a newly awakened magical teenager under your keeping does tend to do that to you.’

‘Oh, come on. I’m not causing him
much
trouble.’

‘I don’t know why Harriad left him in charge of you.’

‘He’s not “in charge of me”,’ I say.

‘You know what I mean. Anyway, he’ll relax when we get to the Imperium. Probably. Well, at least a little.’

‘When we get to the Imperium, huh?’

‘Come on. We’ll get there eventually.’

‘Eventually.’

‘You’ll like the Temples of Elswyr.’

‘It’s not like I’m not looking forward to it. I just don’t get why I can’t go straight to the Imperium. I want to see
that
.’

‘It’s all about tradition; every Chosen that awakens, even ones born in Duwyn, travel to the Temples of Elswyr, like a sort of coming-of-age pilgrimage. You’ll only be there for a few days.’

I turn back to the impenetrable black, our destination. ‘Couldn’t we at least have done the
poof
thing to get here?’ I complain.

‘What?’ Dad says.

‘Y’know, teleportation. Actually, why can’t we just go straight to Duwyn?’

‘You can’t teleport to different realms; that’s what the portals are for, and as for teleporting here, transporting devices won’t work if the distance is great, and even if it could, I don’t think you’re ready for that.’

He stands beside me, his fingers curling over the rails and his knuckles turning white. We stand silent for a few minutes, listening to the water splashing against the boat.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you never tell me what I am, that I’m Chosen?’

He doesn’t look at me, his expression dark. ‘It’s very… complicated.’

I sigh. ‘Why do you have to be like this? I just don’t see why you can’t, y’know, like, let me in. I wouldn’t judge you or anything. I thought we were a team.’

‘You really think of us that way?’

‘Duh! You’re my dad, and through this whole thing we… we… oh!
Oh
. Is that the island? We’re here?’

‘What? Ah. Yes, it looks like it.’

The island is half shrouded by darkness, but from what I can tell there’s no defining features about it.

‘Hmm.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Dad asks.

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on. I know that look.’

‘What look?’

‘Your Christmas present look. Your “this isn’t what I was expecting” look.’

‘I don’t have a look like that.’

‘You thought the island would be different?’

‘I mean, I guess. I thought there’d be, I don’t know, like, flying creatures, tall buildings, all that kind of stuff. Look at it, though—it’s deserted. It could at least be shrouded in mist or something.’

He laughs. ‘It’s not supposed to be anything special. If normal humans saw skyscrapers and mythical creatures swooping from the sky, then our kind would be on the front of every newspaper in the world.’

‘I thought you said the island was protected by Chosen.’

‘It is, but only insofar as they guard it, steer people away if they happen to approach it.’

O’Sah comes onto the deck and bows his head at me. I wish he hadn’t. ‘My Lady,’ he says.

I smile, to be polite, but I hate it when he calls me that.

‘Orin, I received a message from the Imperium,’ he says. ‘After debating on the information they received from Harriad, the Head of the Council has absolved you for your, as he calls it,
oversight
.’ The way he says it makes me think that if it were up to him, he wouldn’t have pardoned Dad at all.