Incarnation: Wandering Stars Volume One (41 page)

And then, he was gone.

In the following silence, Batarel smiled.  The plans were moving along quickly.  Soon, Semjaza’s fortress would be infiltrated.  And the wicked Pri
-
Rada would be overthrown.

A faint scraping noise
rapidly
brought
him
out of his thoughts.  At once, his heart
sunk
in his chest, for he knew the sound to be abnormal.  Perhaps it was a residual benefit of
spending time in an animal form. 
E
ven in his angelic form, he could almost feel the
rhythm
of life in his surroundings—their sounds and smells.

Shifting
his consciousness toward
the sliver of
E
ternal existence which clung to the
T
emporal, he looked outward with different eyes, seeing beyond the orderly structure of this realm.  To the west, he counted fourteen spirits, spread out into a loose
crescent
-shaped formation
.  The fiery nuclei, visual representations of the spirit within each temporal being, hovered just above the ground, moving cautiously toward
him
.  As they passed over the earth, the
y
came
closer to each other
,
converg
ing
upon Batarel’s location.  Judging by their size and movement, they were Semjaza’s
Anduar
ym
.

Batarel stepped quietly to the north and began making his way out of the clearing, hoping to lead the
attackers
away from the stash of weapons and armor.  Instead of
s
haping
himself,
he stayed
in his angelic form
. 
It was
slower than his animal form,
but
he wasn’t planning on trying to escape.  Instead, he felt a mixture of fear and hatred building in his heart, and he allowed it to grow and consume his thoughts and actions.  As his feet moved more quickly with each step, now running over and around the thick vegetation, a discordant melody wove itself into his mind.  It produced a sense of pride
and pleasure that i
ntertwined itself
among the other emotions, taking control of them.  From his lips, which were now curled into a grin of delight, a
Song of Un
shaping
began to
emanate.

*   *   *   *

“…and what are those?” Enoch asked, pointing ahead to the bundle of weaponry hoisted on the back of a nearby Myndar.

“
Vandrekt
,”
Ananel
replied.  “…for the
Anduar
ym
. 
They are the closest approximation of the weapons they use in the
E
ternal
R
ealm.  They hold the wooden shaft and thrust the shar
pened
,
metal
point toward the enemy
.”

Enoch couldn’t keep his
face
from
wrinkl
ing at the thought of such violence.

“
I know. 
Your
kind
is
not familiar with war,”
Ananel
stated.  “
…or the art of working with metals.”

“How long
ha
s
your kind been at war
?” Enoch asked, looking up.

Ananel
stepped high over a rock and kept moving ahead.  “Since before
humans were
created.”

Enoch looked ahead to keep from tripping over a bush. 
“
Why can’t the
Amatru
bring their own weapons?”

“That’s a good question,”
Ananel
replied
.
 
“
When the Myndarym
s
hift
from one part of creation to another, it comes naturally
, f
or that is how we were created.  It
is
much like when
humans
learn to walk.  Once the skill is mastered, it is rarely given much thought afterward. 
But
clothing, armor, and weaponry
—these
objects are not part of
us
. 
So,
it takes a great deal of practice to
s
hift
these things with us. 
And w
hen creation was sundered into our two realms, this task became infinitely more complex. 
But the weapons and armor used by the Amatru are a different matter altogether.  They are not like other objects.  They are purer, crafted
solely
from the light of the
Spirit
.  And only the most skilled Shapers even know how they are made.  Such objects have no Temporal equivalent.  They cannot exist in this realm
.
 
So
,
when the
Amatru
arrive, they will be without weapons and at a great disadvantage against Semjaza.”

Enoch
kept his eyes forward, but
nodded
, trying to take in the wealth of information that Ananel seemed pleased to offer.  When he looked up again at the angel, who was now smiling, he realized suddenly that he had made a friend.  It was something that Zacol had been trying to get him to do for years among the Shayeth, but somehow it never worked.

How strange to befriend an angel, but feel so distant from my own kind!

After a long silence, Enoch spoke again. 
“If it is so difficult to
s
hift
objects other than yourselves, then how did
you
bring Semjaza and his soldiers here?
 
Surely another living being is more complex than
clothing
. 
How did the
Speaker
and his angels come here? 
How will the
Amatru
be brought here?
”

“
The
Speaker
and his angels were Myndar. 
But to
s
hift
others, we
ll,
it is quite complicated,” Ananel admitted.  “
Few
among the
Amatru
can do it.  In fact, when we
s
hifted
Semjaza, there was only one among us who
was capable
. 
Ezekiyel
.  He is a master Shifter and Shaper.
It is he who taught the rest of us
.
”

“Hmm,” Enoch mumbled
, trying to concentrate on Ananel’s words.  But his thoughts were drifting to Zacol and Methu.

Ananel continued.  “
Each of us h
ad to sing a Song of Naming to comprehend all the individual pieces
which comprised
the angel
we were
shifting
. 
Then, in order to move
the pieces
, I had to find suitable form
s
for each
one
to take as I brought them across.  You see, this realm operates differently.  So, if I were to just move the pieces here, they would perish.  They had to be constructed properly to exist within the laws which govern this realm.  Then I had to reassemble the pieces into yet another structure that could exist and function here as intended.  And all of this had to be done at once, in transit.  For the very moment one piece is changed, it is also no longer able to survive in the other realm.  And so, the ever changing location and complexity—”

Enoch looked up at
Ananel
who had
trailed off
.

The angel was looking out across the fields.  His eyes were narrow with suspicion.

Enoch followed his gaze and could barely make out
something lying in the field, just before the shoreline of the water they were approaching. 
He
couldn’t see what it was,
but i
mmediately
felt
that something
was
wrong.

*   *   *   *

Sariel dropped the bundle of armor he’d been carrying.  In one swift movement, he unfurled his wings and leaped into the air.  Seconds later, he glided to a running landing, then slowed as he reached the
dead
body.

Batare
l’s angelic form lay on its side, with arms stretched out in front of him.  Two spears had been run through his chest, and another protruded from the side of his ribcage, sticking into the air like a standard carried before an army.  His pale skin was covered in blood from head to toe.  And though his fatal wounds had obviously been gruesome, Sariel’s trained eyes could see that not all the blood was his own.

“Check the weapons
!
” Sariel yelled
,
pointing into the nearby forest as the other Myndarym came running.

A few dropped their bundles and ran away from the crowd, while the remainder of the angelic population of Senvidar approached Sariel with caution.

Before they arrived, Sariel
followed the trampled grass
westward along the
shoreline.
  A short distance away, he found a blackened
Anduar
lying on his back.  The skin on the front of his body had been burned so that it seemed to peel backward away from its bones. 
On either side of t
he dead soldier,
two
swath
s
of bare soil extended to the west for thirty feet. 
At their edges,
the charred roots of dead vegetation jutted upward to the sky, while the surrounding grass
es
bore the unmistakable wilting and discoloration of proximity to fire.

Sariel continued walking west, finding two more dead
Anduar
ym
a hundred yards away.  One was completely missing his upper body, while the other looked as if something had exploded inside his chest cavity.  The gore was scattered for several yards in a half-moon shape in front of the bod
y
.  Bare ribs were exposed to the air,
like fingers of an open hand.

“They’re gone.  All the weapons are gone!” someone yelled from behind.

Sariel turned and walked back to the group which had gathered around Batarel’s body.

Most of the Myndarym
stood motionless while several knelt close to their fallen friend.

Ananel, who
always
seemed to be
accompanied by
Enoch
,
pushed his way through the crowd.  His face looked grim, but there were no tears in his eyes
, unlike the others
.  “Were they watching us the whole time?” he asked in a low voice.

“I don’t think so,” Sariel answered him.  “It was probably just a scouting party.  But i
f they get back to the fortress with the weapons
, we’ll have lost the element of surprise.  Semjaza will
have time to prepare for
the attack.”

“
And they’ll know we’re working with the
Amatru
,” Ananel added.

“What can we do
?” one of the females asked.  “The
Amatru
will
not arrive
until tomorrow.
”

“By the look of things,” Sariel said, glancing back to where the dead
Anduar
ym
lay.  “..Semjaza’s soldiers have a half-day
head start
.  Maybe more.”

“We can
’t
afford to wait
,
”
Ananel concluded.

Sariel noticed that the expressions on the faces of the other Myndarym began to change.  No one said another word.  But he could see their sadness over Batarel’s death being replaced by fear, and he spoke quickly to put an end to it.

“Like it
or
not, we
are
already at war with Semjaza.  Hiding from him is no longer feasible.  So we have two options.  We can wait for the
Amatru
, forfeit the majority of our weaponry to the enemy, and
give up
our element of surprise.  Or, we can go after
the
weapons and risk our lives to keep the plan intact.”