Relias: Uprising (14 page)

A hand came out of nowhere and caught Ranjak’s hand, forcing it to the side while the opposing hand came across in a fist and nailed Ranjak across the face. There was a short sizzle and Ranjak yelled and fell to the ground. Thompson jumped into action with his sword in hand but was thrown to the ground by Morlo Greyhorn. Luke turned around and saw that the entire Ditrinity was there: Sable, Morlo, Hendrick, Pontious, Trey, and Vyvyr, all formed up around him and squaring off against Dark soldiers. Ranjak clambered back to his feet in a blind rage and swung his club at his assailant. He missed by several yards and was pointed in the opposite direction. He was punched again in the back of the head and got a foot in his back which knocked him to his stomach. Ranjak rolled to his back to swing again but a heavy boot came down on his wrist. Dazed, Ranjak looked up into the smiling face of Hendrick.

“Weak.” Hendrick said as the mob became angry once more. Hendrick rubbed his own cheek as a gesture towards Ranjak. “And that’s a nasty burn you got there. That gonna scar?”

“What’d you hit me with you piece of-“

Hendrick raised his right hand and Ranjak saw that there were Blazers mounted on both wrists.

“Tagged ya.” He said, his grin persisting. “Never leave home without ‘em.”

Enraged citizens began to yell again, this time yelling insults and profanities at the Ditrinity. Vyvyr and Trey aimed rifles at the Darks aiming down at them from the battlements of the wall. Sable stood off against four Dark soldiers while Pontious had already morphed into a wolf and growled at another group of Darks.

“So are you two gay together or something?” Hendrick asked with a bemused expression while looking down on Ranjak. Ranjak tried to sit up in anger but Hendrick put his foot into his chest and forced Ranjak back to his back. “Not until you say you’re gay with Thompson.”

Ranjak’s face was purple. “I promise, if there wasn’t a stabilizer here then-“

Hendrick kicked Ranjak across the face. A group of Dark citizens rushed forward and pushed him off of Ranjak who shot to his feet, shoved through the people and grabbed Hendrick by the scruff of his shirt and railed Hendrick across the head with his club. Hendrick took the brutal strike, turned his head back towards Ranjak with a large gash across the side of his head and laughed. “There you go!”

Hendrick broke Ranjak’s grip on his shirt, grabbed Ranjak by the back of his head and started slugging him. The crowd began to riot. They pushed and shoved to try and get a piece of Luke and the Ditrinity. The soldiers were jumping into action and the Ditrinity fought back, holding the outside circle while Trey turned to Luke, aimed his rifle at his chains and shattered them with one round. Luke burst free and went to a huddled mass of people who tore and kicked brutally at something on the ground. Luke went over and a column of flame shot up from the middle of the group. The people screamed and fled back, revealing a bruised and bleeding Hendrick who had his Blazer raised and aimed it around in a circle.

“WHICH OF YOU BASTARDS WANTS TO TRY THAT AGAIN!”

The Ditrinity still scuffled with the soldiers. Morlo was dealing with over twenty screaming people, Vyvyr and Trey kept pressure on the soldiers near the gate and Sable was on the ground getting beat bloody by a group of Darks who found every open space on her body to kick her. There was a scream of agony as two of the soldiers around her collapsed to the ground with legs that were completely broken backwards. Both Ranjak and Thompson had returned to each other’s sides and were about to go after Luke. Luke saw them coming, grabbed his heavy metal shackles and began to swing them and took several starting strides towards them.

There was a gunshot and the crowd went quiet. An armored assault vehicle had pulled into the outer perimeter of the crowd. Half his body visible out of the top of the front hatch was Alighieri with an assault rifle aimed into the air.

“Let them go now!” He yelled.

The Darks stood to attention wherever they were. Pontious transformed back from a wolf, people fell off of Morlo and Hendrick took his hands off of a dazed soldier and let him collapse to the ground. Towards the back of the group, on her hands and knees, Sable coughed up blood put her hand over the four broken ribs she had and climbed shakily to her feet. Luke looked back and saw several cuts on her face with both eyes blackened and a fat lip. Luke’s anger worsened.

“Ditrinity, you will stand down right now!” Alighieri said, getting another wind to yell once more. “As for you Luke, get out of here!  You have your sentence now go!”

“Real smart, Sam!” Hendrick replied with harsh intonation. “Real smart. At least we treated
you
like a friend.”

Alighieri ignored him and continued. “Do what I’m telling you now, Nate, or every single one of you is going to get put in prison or killed. And Luke, if you care about the well-being of your friends at all then you’re going to tell them to stand down.”

“Shaddup!” Morlo yelled. “Try and take us!”

“Stand down…” Said Luke. The Ditrinity complied immediately. Ranjak laughed at Hendrick.

“Just like a dog.” He said.

“No worries, Ranjak.” Hendrick came back. “I’ll make you my bitch.” He looked to Luke. “We got your stuff. Grab it and lets go.”

After shoving through dozens of soldiers and citizens Morlo took a bag off of his shoulders and handed it to Luke. Taking it gratefully, Luke thought about leaving. All around him the Ditrinity stood ready, ready to endure every kind of pain that was thrust on them all for the sake of preserving loyalty.  But there was no winning this battle. Not without killing. Hendrick was heavily bruised, possibly concussed, Morlo had several cannons aimed at him, Sable was just barely healing from the massive injuries she took, Pontious was severely outsized and outnumbered and Dark soldiers had formed up on the top of the wall and aimed rifles down at them. All it took was a command before they’d all be turned to bloody mush on the pavement. As if reading the minds of all the Ditrinity Alighieri spoke once more.

“And if any one of you tries to go with Luke I’ll see to it that you’re shot at the first chance we get, I promise you.”

Hendrick gave a defiant laugh. “Bite me!”

“Stay here, Nate.” Luke said. It surprised Hendrick.

“Wha- When you said that I thought you were just trying to be unselfish.”

“I need you to stay here and protect Tess.” Luke said, thinking more about Ranjak than he was the First Legionnaire. “She’s not going anywhere and I’m not about to let those two be the best protection she has.” Luke took a quick moment to look around at the crowd. “If the First Legionnaire finds out about us getting rid of the majority of this city’s defenses then they’ll need all the help they can get in protecting this place.”

“They aren’t going to attack, man, they’re going to Styne.”

“On whatever intelligence those assumptions are based, I want you to stay here as a precautionary measure. I want Tess safe and you’re the person I trust most with that. After I’m gone I don’t know what’s going to happen. But it’s just like it’s always been. I’m gone and you have control over the Ditrinity. You know how it goes. And if Tess does go on that mission that Pontious told me about then I need you to go after them and make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”

Disappointed, Hendrick nodded. “It’s no problem.” He said. He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder and grinned. “Might be a long time before we see ya again. Going at the pace we have been you’ll be due for a visit in a couple years.”

Seeing Luke and Hendrick discuss, the rest of the Ditrinity realized that they wouldn’t be going with him. Slowly they grouped up around him and hung on his every word, waiting for direction.

“We’ve fought together for two decades now.” Luke said. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You know what to do.”

There was a quiet across the group. Nobody connected eyes, at least for long.

“So…” Sable said close to a whisper. “Where are you going to go?”

“Don’t know.” Luke said. “I’ll go wherever the closest Legionnaire encampment is and work outward from there.”

Morlo gave a sharp laugh. “Doing a bit of hunting?”

“Right now the Darks are just a minor prick in the Legionnaire’s side. I’m going to change that.”

“What you going to do?” Sable asked.

There was a pause, and with this new availability of unbridled freedom, it was clear that Luke had a number of possibilities on his mind. But as he felt the weight of the Razorback pendant in the pocket of his long coat, Luke pulled it out and looked it over. Upon seeing the shape, feeling the cool metal, and associating those things with the countless treasured memories they were tied to, a tide of rage grew within his gut and his objective became perfectly clear. After placing the pendant back into his coat, Luke turned to her and looked her square in the eyes.

“Slaughter them.” He muttered. “Every one of them. The First Legionnaire is feared by every enemy it has and the Darks are petrified of
them
. You’ll never see a single Dark fighting a single Legionnaire. The Darks are afraid of the First Legionnaire and the Legionnaire knows it. I’m going to go out there and make the feeling mutual.” Luke looked back through the gate and took a long breath through his nose as though taking a breath of fresh air. “I’ll make them fear the Darks. They’ll be terrified of the Darks, and every night when they lay down to sleep and the dark sets in on them they won’t be able to think straight because they know that we’re the monsters and demons that hide in their corners and under their beds and in their closets. They’ll hear stories of other Legionnaires, mutilated, gutted, skinned, and know exactly who did it. They deserve no mercy. They slaughtered millions of Durants, women, children, and now it’s time they pay for it. They put me in prison and sliced me open and tortured me and stole my family away from me and they’re going to hang from the trees by their own intestines and hang there til the birds pick them dry or their guts rot through for what they did to me. There is no black and white anymore. I was ethical before and the Legionnaire was fearless. I’m going to see how they react when they see what I’ll do now.”

The Ditrinity said nothing. Luke slung his bag over his shoulder and walked past them and through the gate. He strode across the green meadow beyond the gate, pulling gear from his bag and throwing it on. They spread out until they were standing side by side, looking on as he approached the tall, thick tree line. Bloodied, bruised, and beaten, they watched until Luke was fully armed and clad in his white long coat and battle armor and was no more than a white dot against the trees. They were quiet until Trey looked to Hendrick as the gates began to close.

“He gonna be okay?” He asked. Hendrick said nothing.

“It’s Luke Semprys.” Pontious replied, feeling no need to say more.

Silent, the Ditrinity lingered there until the gate closed. The massive bolts on the gates locked them into place and the Dark soldiers surrounded the Ditrinity immediately. Still angry, the mobs began to yell once again. Every soldier in the vicinity surrounded them and pushed them towards another set of armored cars that arrived and parked next to the car that Luke had come in. As they were cuffed they all exchanged glances not of discouragement, but resolve. There were much bigger things that were about to happen and with Luke gone it was up to them to make sure things were okay. Hendrick took deep breath, cracked his neck and walked towards the armored cars followed closely by the rest of the Ditrinity.

“Here we go.”

Chapter 9

 Luke was merely a white blur that wisped through the trees. Without any stabilizers he could channel Furo through his legs and cover several hundred miles on foot in a single afternoon. As soon as he disappeared beyond the tree line outside of Praemon he took off. He blazed through the trees, leaping over ravines and using Grav-fields to propel himself through the air when he came to an area of terrain that was particularly rugged or high.

 There wasn’t much place for Luke to go. He only had a general idea of where he wanted to go and travelled in that general direction, keeping his vision active and being able to use his sixth senses to see for miles. It was an outpost for the First Legionnaire; whether it was temporary or permanent was unknown to Luke. He had simply caught that fact in a conversation with Alighieri and hoped that is had at least a sliver of accuracy. The thing that made things even more difficult was that, if it wasn’t permanent and the Legionnaire had moved from that area then Luke would miss them entirely and be completely lost. Even having his vision reaching as far as it did Luke wasn’t sure if he’d be able to find them. Praemon was such a spectacularly strategic city for a reason: the surrounding terrain was so rugged that the only way somebody could pass through on foot was to travel the roads and paths that all intersected under the city’s watch. The surrounding range, the Byfayne mountains, were considered by many to be the harshest on the planet, that harshness exceeded only by the Diamide or Sestik mountains which had similar terrain and brimmed with man-eating beasts bigger than a Forge tank.

 It had been a week before Luke had picked up any sign of life, much less the Legionnaire. He had travelled several hundred miles and was to the point where the roads would not be passing by Praemon. It was after that period of time that Luke remembered something his father had told him as a boy:
If you’re lost, stay where you are and somebody will find you.
Of course, Luke wasn’t lost and he wasn’t looking to be found, but the words made him realize that if he set up a kind of base on a cliff overlooking the road then something was bound to pass by. He wasn’t looking to be found. He was the one doing the finding.

 There was a perfect place. There was a section of the road that passed through a canyon, the trees on its cliffs being so thick that they appeared to be spilling over its edges. It was at the mouth of the canyon that Luke made his camp. Using small, controlled Decimators Luke made a subterranean cave in only a few hours, blowing through the solid rock and digging the cave deep enough as to make it seven feet from roof to floor and reinforcing the roof of the cave with sections of tree. It was actually quite cozy when he got done with it which, granted, Luke had never really cared for. But he had the time and the resources so making the cave at least relatively comfortable. He constructed a crude bedframe out of bits of hacked oak, made a mattress from bundles of wildflowers and covered it all in a number of animal skins he had collected from the things he’d been killing for food.