Retribution, p.18
Retribution, page 18
I felt the color drain from my face as my heart fluttered against my ribs.
“The mana input system for the device is a trap,” Scythe Seris said, a dark light flashing in her eyes. “It will draw his mana out of him, weakening him enough that I can deal with him. Be wary of your thoughts, however. Orlaeth is powerfully empathic, and he will sense it if you do not control your emotions.”
My stomach sank. “You expect me to shroud my emotions from a Sovereign?” I asked, the high pitch of my voice giving away my fear.
Scythe Seris released me and took a step back. “I have not brought you here without reason, Caera. You and Cylrit, your emotions will provide much-needed noise to keep Orlaeth from focusing entirely on me.”
I glanced back at the door. “Your retainer doesn’t know this part of the plan, does he?”
“Clever,” she said with an approving nod. “He is purposefully being kept blind to my true intentions so that his emotions will contradict your own.”
“And…” I hesitated, not wanting to question her judgment, but unable to move past my fear.
“If you fail?” Scythe Seris asked, picking up the thread of my thought. “There is a second layer to the plan. Orlaeth is a genius. My trap is well hidden, but if he senses your anxiety and fear or sees through the ruse, he may not take my bait.” I thought I sensed a hint of trepidation in the way Scythe Seris’s voice constricted, which only heightened my own. “But all I need him to do is use his mana, even if not on the machine directly. That will be enough.”
“Scythe Seris, I—”
“Please, Caera. My name is Seris. After today, no one will call me Scythe.”
She held my gaze, the weight of her presence both a balm and a burden.
I jumped as heavy pounding came from the metal door, and she rose one brow questioningly.
“It is time. Come.”
Just like that, she whisked past me and led us from the chamber, only briefly stopping to open and then reseal the door. Cylrit was waiting at the base of the stairs, and together we began the long climb back up to her estate.
Under different circumstances, I would have been thrilled to explore Seris’s estate. I had only been once before and remembered it as a sprawling mansion that dwarfed even Highblood Denoir’s home. Now, I had no mind for the details, following her mechanically as I struggled to order both my thoughts and emotions, a task made only more difficult by a quickly approaching aura that seemed to shadow the entire city of Aedelgard.
Our quick march took us from the stairs through a series of hallways and arched openings, past a sprawling atrium, and into a large, almost empty space that opened onto twin balconies overlooking the cliffs that ringed the Vritra’s Maw Sea.
Dozens upon dozens of rugs in every shape, size, and color imaginable had been strategically laid out over top of the sandstone flooring, and a plush chair, almost a throne, sat central against the back wall, directly opposite the narrow gap between the two balconies.
Next to the throne was another series of devices and artifacts similar to those in the mana storage facility below, though instead of gauges there were a series of mana crystals of different shapes and sizes and several tightly wound coils of a silvery blue metal I didn’t recognize.
I turned my attention away from the panel, trying to neither think about nor feel anything regarding its existence. It had nothing to do with me, and I knew nothing about it.
And I certainly don’t know that my lifelong mentor is attempting to use this device to overpower a Sovereign, I thought, unable to entirely squash the racing of my pulse.
There was blessedly little time for my worries to build, however, as the growing pressure soon reached its crescendo.
Only once before had I felt such a complete and overpowering presence, and that was Agrona himself in the moments after Grey’s disappearance from the Victoriad.
Cylrit took me firmly by one arm, and I realized I had been standing frozen in the middle of the room. He maneuvered me to the side of the throne, away from the strange artifacts, and I could think of nothing other than to let him.
Seris moved with unconcerned elegance out onto the balcony and waited for the source of that killing intent to arrive.
When the man landed on the balcony opposite her, however, he did not crash down like a meteor, but barely touched the balcony before striding into the room, his irritation so palpable I felt it like a whip across my back.
I had never seen Sovereign Orlaeth in the flesh. I had only ever seen portraits of him during my studies of the Sovereigns that every Alacryan child was tasked to do.
It didn’t prepare me for the sight of him.
The man—if such a simple term was appropriate for one of the asura—was tall, but not inhumanly so, and incredibly reedy. But it was hard to register anything at all past his heads, for he had two of them.
Despite my fear, which seemed to be bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me in a constantly upheaving well of uncertainty and self-doubt, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the sight of him.
The two heads were each covered in a mop of dark hair, and each had two horns on the outside of the head. The lower horns pointed outward to the sides, while the upper pair pointed straight up before curving slightly. On the inside of his left head, mostly hidden beneath his unkempt hair, were the stubs of two more horns, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d somehow used them to create his other head.
The two faces looked nearly identical, though the heads themselves were offset, further suggesting that the rightmost head had been attached after the fact. Their expressions, however, could not have been more different. The right head took in the three of us with cool, calculating efficiency. Its red eyes—which were slightly darker than the other’s—lingered on me, and all the feelings that had been roiling in me since the Victoriad surged to the surface with such force that I nearly vomited in my mouth.
And suddenly, something made sense. The power and sense of my doubt and anxiety…it wasn’t entirely me. The feeling I’d felt since heading down the stairs into Seris’s laboratory was an effect of the Sovereign. He was, quite literally, drawing my emotions out of me.
So he can more easily read them. I swallowed heavily and tried to set my head and heart straight. Seris was relying on me. I wouldn’t fail her.
The left head didn’t so much as glance at any of us, its furious scowl turned to the panel of artifacts on the other side of the throne.
“Sovereign Orlaeth,” Scythe Seris said respectfully, “thank you for—”
“You said the systems were ready for my examination, Seris,” the leftmost head snapped. Then, as if speaking to the right head, it added, “The situation in Vechor is tenuous. First the Victoriad, now this assault. Kiros looks weak. He will lash out, could attack Sehz-Clar again if the High Sovereign abandons the other continent. And with the treaty with Epheotus broken, it is only a matter of time before they launch a counteroffensive. If this lesser reincarnate can strike in the middle of our dominions, then Indrath certainly can. They may even decide to target us instead of the High Sovereign, to weaken him before all-out war.”
“The High Sovereign has outmaneuvered Indrath at every turn,” the right head answered. “With our gift, we will prove our loyalty and usefulness. He will side with us against Vechor, if necessary, and ensure we are protected from the other clans.”
“Assuming the lessuran has succeeded in her task,” the left snapped again. Both heads turned toward Seris, one pinched and glaring, the other lifting its brows curiously.
Scythe Seris bowed deeply. “Forgive the delay, Sovereign. It turned out the component we needed was hidden beneath the desert in Dicathen—a peculiar mineral that gathers and condenses fire-attribute mana. With it—”
“Begin the demonstration,” Orlaeth’s left head barked, and I couldn’t help the low moan that escaped my lips at his spike of intent.
Seris’s jaw tightened for a heartbeat. She recovered almost instantly and took several steps toward me. “Caera, perhaps you would be more comfortable in the atrium…”
She doubts me, I realized, and it felt as though a fist were crushing my heart. We’ve barely begun, her plan isn’t even in motion yet, and already I am failing her.
“No,” Orlaeth’s right head said firmly. “She should stay.”
Although he spoke to Seris, his gaze had settled on me again, and I could feel his power forcing my emotions to the surface. I turned my thoughts away from the Sovereign, from Seris, from the machine, the trap, the plan, all of it.
Feigning indifference at his gaze, I looked inward for something else to focus on. So, I let my mind settle where it had so often turned since the Victoriad.
I thought of Grey. I was almost surprised by the overwhelming strength of emotions that responded to this thought, foremost among them the cutting edge of betrayal. He had lied, again and again. About everything.
In the background, I remained dimly aware of Seris and the Sovereign’s movement.
“Of course, Sovereign,” Seris had said before marching purposefully to the series of devices and artifacts I had noticed upon first entering the room. “This will mark the first full-scale test of the system, although all prior small-scale tests have been successful—”
“Seris,” Orlaeth’s left head snapped, “I understand the protocol, which I developed, and the shielding array in question, which I ordered you to create.”
“Her unnecessary verbosity is for the benefit of the lessers,” the right head noted. “Her retainer is confused and concerned with the lack of information she has given him, and the unmanifested Vritra-blood is struggling to constrain her emotions by focusing on”—his nose wrinkled in distaste—“a man.”
I turned away from his inhumanly piercing gaze. Next to me, Cylrit was stoic and unmoving as a statue. As if he were glared at by a Sovereign every day. Despite how my heart hammered at the inside of my chest, I attempted to emulate the retainer.
Grey, I thought, refocusing on my best attempt at a distraction. Logically, it wasn’t fair to be angry with him over his lies. Of course he’d lied, he couldn’t tell me the truth of his identity. He hadn’t even been the one to seek out a partnership with me; I’d pursued him, even magically tracked him down after our chance meeting in the Relictombs. And hadn’t I also lied about my identity? If anyone were to understand lying for the sake of protection, it would be me. How long might I have kept up my Haedrig persona if the Relictombs itself hadn’t intervened?
I hadn’t fully understood what I was getting myself into by partnering with him, but I knew he tried to keep me at a distance, tried to keep me from getting too close. I’d accepted him despite not knowing the details of his life. The fact that he was born on another continent didn’t change anything.
Seris’s magic flared as she sent pulses of mana into several different crystals. Lights played through the crystals and glass tubes like the glimmer of many-colored stars, reflecting off the white walls and filling the room with color. A deep hum began to resonate upward as the mechanism driving the shield generator came to life far below us, and the edge of a transparent ripple began to rise from the cliff’s edge.
I held my breath, momentarily forgetting everything else.
“Mana fluctuation seems in line with expectations,” Orlaeth’s left head muttered. “Output is flagging, though. Shield density is at less than half of what I’d calculated.”
It was beautiful in its raw power. Like a soap bubble, the expanding edge of the shield refracted the sun’s light and swirled with all the colors of the visible spectrum, giving the impression that it was harnessing the energy of the sun itself.
And then…the low hum became a harsh grinding, and the shield’s surface melted away in a sudden liquid vibration, large uneven patches dissipating before the entire structure finally collapsed with a defeated pop.
My held breath hissed out.
Sovereign Orlaeth’s left head burst out with a judgmental huff, and he crossed his arms. “There is a problem with the output. The battery array is supplying significantly less mana than it should be. A failure of the activation matrix to properly align all mana batteries.”
The right head was quiet, its expression thoughtful. The dark red eyes were unfocused, and it didn’t respond to the other’s musings.
“Forgive me, Sovereign,” Seris was saying, her voice carrying a pleading edge I’d never heard from her before. “You must be right, of course. Perhaps some miscalculation in the alignment of the—”
“Quiet,” the right head ordered, not the waspish barbs of the left head, but a thrumming command that forced Seris’s jaws to snap audibly shut.
Stars burst behind my eyes as the Sovereign’s intent pressed at my temples.
Inundated in a wash of my own emotions, I decided in that moment to forgive Grey. My reasons for fighting at his side had never been patriotic, and I’d never seen sense in the Dicathian war. I was no fawning tool for the Vritra. Grey was the source of the power I was looking for. He’d conquered aether in a way even the dragons couldn’t. Heightened or not, I couldn’t allow my emotions—that simplistic sense of hurt feelings—to distract me from what really mattered.
If it took a Dicathian to protect Alacrya from the Vritra, then so be it. There was even a kind of sense to it, really. Alacryans had been bred like pets for the Vritra clan, simultaneously wogarts and weapons. Who among us would truly ever be capable of fighting back? Of breaking Agrona’s hold over the continent?
Seris, I realized. She was risking everything to do exactly that. And she supported Grey.
I stifled a gasp at the train of my thoughts, and I risked a glance over at the two great powers of this dominion. Orlaeth was running his index finger along various parts of the device, his leftmost face pinched into a thoughtful frown. His lips were moving rapidly as he muttered silently to himself. One hand tugged absently at the lowest of his mismatched antlers.
But his right was staring at me.
Suddenly all thought of Grey fell away, and all I could think of was the Sovereign’s fingertips tracing along the activation matrix. When would Seris spring the trap? Was it truly capable of disabling even an asura? What if it failed? I felt an intense insistence that, in that moment, I wasn’t ready to die…
“Stop,” the right head said, and for a moment, I thought Orlaeth was speaking to me.
The left stopped, his fingers pulling back from the activation matrix.
“This is a trap,” the right said.
No, I thought desperately, panic stealing the breath from my lungs. I’ve given it away; I’ve failed; I’ve—
My eyes widened in horror as tears blurred my vision before streaming down my cheeks. Frozen stiff, I could do nothing except mutter in dismay, “I’m…s-so sorry, S-Seris. So s-sorry…”
Frustration intermingled with the unbridled terror overtaking me, the understanding that the Sovereign was forcing this outpouring of emotion on me clear in the logical part of my mind, and yet I was entirely unable to protect myself against it.
Bitterness welled up as I considered how Seris had at least prepared for my failure by having a fallback plan in place.
Orlaeth stood and took a step back from the activation matrix. “Yes, of course. In my haste I nearly missed it. See this? The mana acquisition coils have been tampered with, and these crystals here. Once they begin drawing off my mana, it would create a high-pressure loop in conjunction with empty mana batteries to forcefully draw out all my mana and store it.”
“Leaving us helpless to defend ourselves,” the right head confirmed, its tone growing dark.
Turning unhurriedly, Orlaeth raised a hand, and I felt myself relax at the fact that at least the second part of the plan would still happen, whatever it was.
“Relief? Wait…” the right head said, and the hand froze. Slowly, the left head turned around to look askance at the right. “There is something else.”
Both sets of eyes swept the space, tracing across every surface, every curve and line. Then Orlaeth kicked aside a rug, revealing a network of silver-blue metal running between the tiles beneath. “As I thought. Look. The mana acquisition system has been spread throughout the entire room. If we use mana here, it will start the process.”
The left head’s expression softened, growing curious, but the right head was glowering fiercely, his face so dangerous and menacing that I couldn’t bear to look at it. “You always have aimed far too high for your station, Seris. It is a shame that your cleverness couldn’t keep up with your ambition.”
Suddenly the Sovereign turned, ripped the heavy chair from its place against the wall, and dashed it against the activation matrix. Glass shattered, metal bent and sheared, and mana crystals burst and sent sparks flashing through the room.
I flinched away belatedly, instinctively releasing mana to clad my skin as I prepared to defend myself, but Orlaeth took no notice at all, and I knew why.
I’m an insect to him, no more dangerous than a mana fly…
“It’s a façade,” the left head told the right as Orlaeth’s fingers wriggled through the air like he was following the trails of mana moving through the room. “All the mechanisms required for the trap to spring are still in place below us.”
The right head sneered. “You’ve been practicing your ability to shroud your emotions, Seris. Clearly, you’ve put great effort into this trap. As much as I’d enjoy breaking your bones with my bare hands, it seems likely you’ve accounted for that, too.” The sneer became a cruel smile. “It would be more appropriate that your servants do it for me, considering.”
While everything had been happening, Seris had slowly backed away and was now standing near the middle of the rug-covered floor. Despite Orlaeth’s cold fury crushing the oxygen from the room, she was outwardly calm. “It appears you’ve seen through each of my machinations, Sovereign. I should have known I couldn’t surpass your intellect. I won’t apologize for trying, though. You asura are a pox upon this world, and you deserve everything that is coming for you.”
“Spoken with the true bravado of a lesser.” Orlaeth’s right head looked over his shoulder to Cylrit and me. When he spoke, it was again with a tone of such command that it felt like a physical force. “Lessers. Bring me her horns.”
