Dragon Aster Trilogy (49 page)

He stopped walking a meter from her and didn’t say anything in turn.

“You’re not wearing your armor,” she said, noting that the golden chest, gauntlets, pants and helmet he always wore was not on him. Plain clothing combined with his light brown hair that fell over his green eyes made him look ordinary and not like the enemy he had become.

“After what happened between us, I didn’t feel like fighting anymore,” Damek said, and then he looked at the shadows that hid nearby.

Sybl reminded herself that this was just a memory and that starting a fight with him here would give her nothing for answers. “I had no right to get angry at you like that. The phelan are beautiful and powerful creatures for battle. If anything, they are even more magnificent than the Nightmare Eaters of the first Aster.”

“They are yours,” he said, pulling his festra from his back and handing it to her.

“They’re your army,” Sybl said, but took the weapon anyways. Three thousand names enslaved for the purpose of warfare was not something she wanted him to keep, even if this was just a memory.

Damek shook his head. “All this has shown me that the choices I would have made on the first Aster are not suitable choices for this one. This is your world. I gave this to Asteria once, so the names bound to this weapon are now your army. You can make new wishes, but you cannot alter the ones made in your past. My most significant wish will always be for the happiness of my most beautiful Fay, for you will always belong to me.”

Sybl stood her ground as he touched the side of her face and kissed her forehead, sending a freezing chill down her spine. Then she woke up in a bed with her bladed, staff-like festra lying next to her.

“Morning, Beautiful,” Gwa said from the chair he sat reading a book in. “You alright?”

Sybl sat up and looked around her room, before looking back at him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Did you see any of your memories?”

Sybl shook her head.

“Well it was worth a try. Maybe Sial didn’t have them. But you might want to get a move on, as your Bond already left for Toria.”

“He what?”

“I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“This is bad. I don’t suppose you can fly me over?”

“I’m sorry Beautiful, but I can’t fly that far and that fast. If we got caught in the Aur storm, we would be roasted over an open ice field.”

“What about to the Harbor?”

“The ships can’t sail on ice—”

“I know,” Sybl said and picked up her festra. Then she ran past him and out of the room.

Gwa followed her downstairs and somned when they got outside, only this time the phelan soldiers were ready for them.

“Where are you going, griffin?” one of the phelan somnus asked.

“Get out of the way,” Sybl said threateningly.

“We have orders to keep you here, Caelestis,” he stated.

Sybl lifted her festra and caught the Threads she wanted from the soldier around its end. Then she pulled the weapon back harshly, and the somnus buckled in pain when his spirit did. Sybl quickly grabbed onto Gwa’s feathers and pulled herself onto his back, where he then sprung into the air for the Harbor.

“I’m glad I’m not bound to that weapon,” Gwa said. “But what are you planning to do, Beautiful?”

“Catch my Bond and skin him for leaving me behind.”

Gwa laughed and set them down on the docks. Most of the Harbor was hiding in their homes from the cold.

Sybl jumped down from his back and walked towards the edge of the frozen waters. She began to sing, and after a few minutes, several True appeared on the ice in the distance. “I’m heading over with them.”

“You sure about this?” Gwa asked as he looked up at the massive phelan spirits that could likely swallow him whole if they wanted to. One lay down, and Sybl climbed onto its back.

“I’ll be right back.”

Gwa didn’t feel like he was in a position to argue as the True stood up again and started across the Eternal Waters. “Be safe.”

Don’t worry.

He sat down and watched her go, knowing that was all he would be able to do in the meantime.

Loki silently watched Yri’s psi as she woke to the smell of smoke, and looked across the white marble floor. The slow-drifting blackness was swirled about by the aeri wind, and it took a moment for the daoran to realize that her surroundings were no longer under attack. The main gate was still down and the breeze that entered soothed over some the violence that had hit them. She looked for her Ancient, but it was hiding somewhere else.

Yri got to her feet and fixed her gold and green dress the best she could, but it was irreparably ruined. As she looked around the main hall of Toria, much of it was ruined as well, with the walls blasted black by gunfire and explosives. Several drapes and tapestries were still on fire.

“My Queen, are you alright?” a dragoon asked, and came running from the stairs at the far side of the main hall.

“Where are the griffins?” she asked, no longer concerned with herself as much as she was for the state of her kind.

“They’re all dead. That swarm of plumas hit them so hard, they didn’t so much as have the chance to call a retreat. We killed the few trying to escape.”

Yri didn’t look to remember what had hit her. She lifted up her dress from the floor and went up the main stairs, as the few dragoons who were still alive from the surprise attack started to get back on their feet. She reached the throne room and pushed open the doors. Yri looked around it, only to find a dragoon cloaked in black standing near the window. “Loki?” she asked in disbelief.

The dragoon turned around, but he didn’t take off the silver mask that he wore. “All of you deserve to die for your transgressions against Aragmoth and the Caelestis.”

“It was you controlling all those plumas? How?” she demanded.

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what happens now.” He walked over to Yri and caught the Threads to her lungs, suffocating her. Loki then ungently pulled the High Priestess to her knees before him. “Renounce yourself as Queen and allow me to take my place as King of Toria, or I will call every one of my plumas back to strip the skin from your bones.”

Yri’s eyes came back into focus as some air returned to her. “You will never be King.”

“Then allow me to sharpen your reasoning,” Loki said, then pulled Yri behind him as he left the throne room and headed downstairs. He dragged the struggling High Priestess behind him and only stopped on reaching the main gate. Then he grabbed her by the throat and held her over the side. “Renounce your title, or I will see to it that you fall without your wings.”

“You’ve gone mad!” Yri hissed at him. “No one will listen to you. You are nothing but the wretched, weak son of my pathetic sister!”

Loki’s grip tightened as he wanted nothing more than to strangle her with Thread to prove just how weak he wasn’t anymore. “I am tired of being the weaker one.” He took his mask off his face with his free hand. “The only question now is will I let you near my Princess?” Loki looked to one of the Regals who had landed on the gate. He threw Yri to a sliding stop at the winged cat’s feet.

The other dragoons who had followed the commotion froze, as there was no saying what the Regal would do next. Yri slowly got to her feet and backed away while facing it. But the Regal didn’t attack her, it simply stepped back and dropped back into the air.

Loki looked for what had frightened it off, and saw the High Guard flying towards Toria. If they were back so soon, then there was no war on the Suzerain Continent. He would have to get rid of Yri in a quieter manner and at a different time.

Yri looked into the distance still trembling, where the massive black shadow of a Cael cut through the cold air for Toria.

The phelan had calmed down by the time they reached the Efereal Mountains. Kas wasn’t sure what to expect from the Chimera Mother. Even in his past life he had never seen Nephena up close. When he did accompany his sister to the battlefields on the Torian Continent, he usually kept order at the back lines. Asil and Damek were always enough to deal with anything that dared to take them on together at the front.

Together. The very word with their names in the same sentence made him shudder. He had never been grateful for his soultwin’s lack of memories until now. Sybl had forgotten much of how she had once favored Damek. If she sided with him now, their circumstances would be propelling in the direction of disaster. They had all changed so much, and he prayed that they had changed for the better.

He split off from the Pack to try and find out why it was so quiet. Kas was getting increasingly concerned, as he couldn’t find Xirel’s psi anywhere in the tunnels and caverns of the frozen Efereal Mountains.

“So we come together in meeting, dark Fay. It has been a long time since I smelled you.”

Kas shuddered and looked into the dark, snow-carved hallway where the voice came from. He never felt so alone in his life, against this abnormality of Aragmoth’s will that Nephena was. His manners might be the only thing that could save him now, and anything he had learned from Sybl about dealing with her. “Chimera Mother,” Kas said, giving a small bow of respect.

Nephena moved again, and the face of her lion’s head was the first to come into the light of the cavern he waited in. She wore a mane like a male lion but had the voice of a female. She was a female, as far as logic and reasoning could explain, despite the goat’s and snake’s head both being male.

The goat’s head appeared next, bearded like an old man with the wisdom to match. It eyed Kas curiously, before it looked at the serpent tail who had brought its eyes into the light to get a closer look at him. “He is undead. Can the Caelestis still not cure this?”

“Why is Aragmoth putting the Fate of the world on one Fay, when he has simply to fix the second?” the snake added in a hiss.

The lion’s head remained silent, as it watched him curiously under her other heads’ bickering.

A cold chill went down Kas back as he remembered a moment back at the Sanctus, and the time he had spent with his sister in the gardens. He remembered her playful mockery of his appearance. She was only teasing him. He prayed that she had only been teasing him. Kas pulled his courage together before it could scatter off entirely. “Am I not beautiful, Chimera Mother?”

“You are the walking dead,” the lion’s head finally spoke, and flatly at that.

“Death can be beautiful as well,” Kas said in his defense.

“Death is beautiful when it is silent and still,” Nephena replied, taking another step forward on her lion paws. “Does Asil think you are beautiful?”

Kas replied a hasty, “Yes.”

‘Then I too think you are beautiful.”

Kas gave a small bow of a thank you, and began pondering how best to discover what had happened to Xirel. “Will Xirel not be joining us?”

“Xirel is being disciplined for his actions against me. He has not only imprisoned me for quite some time, but has questioned the Caelestis. That is punishable by death, softened only by these softer times and conditions that I have awakened to.”

“I know my sister very well, and I know she puts Xirel in high favor. If he were harmed she would not be pleased. May he be released?”

Nephena’s goat and snake head whispered amongst themselves until one of them sent out the order by psi for the chimera Awl to be brought to them.

Kas looked to another corridor and quickly ran to Xirel’s aid as he was dragged to him by his white hair by a bear, and dropped into his arms. Kas quickly began to mend the injuries around his head, fearing his frailer friend had endured an extreme punishment not meant for his delicate nature.

“Why is Asil not with you?” Nephena asked.

Kas gave Xirel to two of his Callers who continued mending his open wounds and bruises. Fay or not, Kas knew that he was still a shadow of his sister. A shadow who could be snuffed out if Nephena deemed him an insignificant loss to the light of his soultwin that made him relevant. “She is with Moon, looking for a means to stop Damek.”

“Ah yes, Damek,” Nephena replied. “My memory is getting slow with the rest of me. You should take the rest of your forces with you and aid her.”

That is what I am hoping to do.
Kas looked at Jru, and his mentor quickly sent out the orders by psi to get everyone together to leave immediately. The old phelan somnus feared just as Kas did, that their welcome relied on how much sanity remained in Nephena. Kas let out a breath of relief when the massive Chimera Mother turned in the hallway to leave. But his relief was short lived when she came to a sudden stop.
What now?
Kas asked himself, as he didn’t like not being able to predict what the Chimera Mother was thinking.