Kastori Devastations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 2) (7 page)

“Muscles. I could beat you?”

Crystil smirked as she took a few steps back, facing away from the forest.

“Don’t get cocky kid. You are powerful, but you are not yet an effective sword fighter.”

Cyrus could accept that, even if when he saw Celeste he would say he lasted a long time with Crystil.

“One last round?” Crystil offered, which Cyrus immediately accepted. This time, there would be no creativity or stupidness—just raw, boring, simple fundamentals, combined with instincts and immediate gut reaction.

Cyrus again took the initiative, but this time, he stood his ground, refusing to be backed down. The fight looked like two combatants in an arena only a few square feet large, confined and focused on each other.

Then, finally, he got his first moment.

Crystil swiped and missed, and Cyrus had an opening. He sliced his sword toward her, but Crystil had already ducked. Still, he continued his slice, but he felt air as he brought his sword back to the ready stance.

But Crystil did something strange.

She took another step back.

“Interesting,” she said as she held her arm out. “You drew blood. Technically the first blood of our match.”

It took Cyrus a moment to understand what he’d done. He dropped his sword and ran circles around Crystil, chanting, “First blood, first blood, first blood!”

“Careful, buddy, I can trip you at any moment.”

But Cyrus was laughing too hard. He looked back at her wound, and it was a very small cut—one that would heal quickly. He hadn’t even felt his sword slice her triceps. But if he could draw blood on her…

“You know, Crystil, I may—”

But he stopped when he saw his sister sprinting from the remains of the ship to the outpost. She looked hurried.

“She OK?” Crystil said.

“She’s just mad that people started dinner without her,” Cyrus said, but it was not punctuated by a smile or laugh, nor by a response from Crystil.

He knew whatever his sister had felt in the ship, it was dangerous for all of them.

10

Last time I felt this way was right after Calypsius died. It hurt so bad.

But this is worse. So much worse. Whatever is causing this feeling… I like my head will splatter from the crunching grip.

Celeste escaped as quickly as she could after she’d communicated with her brother. Cyrus told her to call him if she needed anything, and the normally courteous Celeste didn’t even bother to respond—she sprinted toward
Omega One
for the solitude necessary to examine the source of the sharp pain.

As she entered the commander’s room, a profoundly disturbing ominous feeling crept into her body, as if taking over her weakened defenses. Celeste sensed a disturbing, unbridled level of anger coming her way, like a giant storm cloud blown by hurricane winds. She took a seat, sat up straight with her back arched high, and squeezed her eyes shut as she used her magic to focus on the cause of the sensations in her body.

For the first few seconds, she only saw the blackness of her mind. Two memories popped up, one watching Crystil and Cyrus banter, the other talking with Erda earlier in the day, but she dispelled both thoughts within half a second. She saw nothing, heard nothing, felt—

A piercing, dying scream from within her mind startled her.

Suddenly, she was inside a tent, prostrated in front of a bed, a man with closed eyes and no breath lying on top of it. The eyes she saw this vision through poured tears out as the scream of a teenage boy rattled within her head.

The scene slowly morphed as the tent disappeared and the dark sky of Anatolus enveloped their space. Ahead, she saw… Pagus? A man who looked like Pagus in black robes being yanked toward her with brute force. A knife appeared in the right hand of the body she saw the world through, and the knife pierced Pagus’ chest. Both Pagus and the person Celeste saw this vision through fell to their knees, one gasping in pain, the other in tearful sadness.

The location shifted once more, but while things changed from the night sky of Anatolus to the blue skies of Monda, she felt a venomous amount of hatred from within the mind of whoever she was observing—
the kind of loathing someone could only have for someone they once loved.
A bony hand pointed forward in the vision, and several dozen Kastori stormed the plains.

Time shifted, but the scene remained the same, as dozens of ships flew out of the sky, escaping the atmosphere of Monda. Two hands went up—one in a black glove, the other with scarred skin.

Oh no. Oh…

The sight of dozens of ships crumpling up into nothingness or burning into ash confirmed her suspicion—she was witnessing the last moments of the Orthranian Empire, first in the destruction of the evacuees and then…

A massive fire broke out from the sky over Capitol City, raining embers down below, burning many of the buildings and landmarks. An evil, muffled laugh sounded in her head.

Then she saw him.

Her father.

“I will never join you,” he said, his voice firm, but his body ragged, bloodied and bruised. The same bony fist punched him in the right jaw, sending her father crumpling to the ground as two Kastori grabbed him. Celeste tried to scream, but she couldn’t produce a sound.

Her father had changed from the majestic emperor’s clothes to mere rags as he walked down the stairs outside of the temple and down the path, outside the wall. Magic seemingly bound his hands together behind his back, for he never bothered to move them. Kastori—
no, magicologists, these ones—
jeered and threw rocks at him, calling him a coward and a typical weak human being.

Her father appeared before her vision, dropping to his knees, with a sword lifted up over his head. Celeste tried to close her eyes, but she couldn’t.
Stop! Stop it!

The sword came down.

In that same courtyard, hundreds of magicologists lined up in rows, all prostrating.

“Praise be to Typhos, the divine god of Monda! Death to all on Anatolus!” they chanted numerous times.

Typhos. He’s coming for us.

Suddenly, with seemingly more abruptness than usual, Celeste saw Erda standing before her, with a sword at her throat. But whoever held the sword—
Typhos, still?
—did not swing it. She could, however, hear the heavy breathing of the man, as if the weight of his triumphant moment had gotten to him.

“Enough!” his voice came, startling Celeste as the world froze. The sword remained in place, as did Erda, but not so much as a twitch or breath came from Erda. “Who dares read my mind??”

Her viewpoint shifted to the man holding the sword—a tall, broad-shouldered man in black robes, with blood stains from the edges of his robes to the cloth over his chest, a massive sword with a familiar triangular symbol on the hilt, and a disturbing gray mask.

Typhos.

“Yes, take a good look at me, because it’s the face that will kill you for the act you have committed!”

Celeste tried to escape the connection and physically open her eyes back on Anatolus, but it only resulted in her blinking before Typhos.

“I hope you enjoyed the look into my past. You know more than most do. But now you must also know the forces that are coming your way. The forces that will kill all of your friends and family and leave you struggling for air as I approach and torture you. And now, it’s only fair that I peer into your mind.”

Celeste felt a terrible prying feeling on her skull, like the claws of Calypsius had dug into her head and were scraping the bone apart. But with great effort, she managed to repel Typhos. Exhaustion set in as she collapsed to her knees in the vision.

“Impressive,” Typhos sneered. “But it matters little when I arrive.”

In a flash, Celeste opened her eyes back on
Omega One
, breathing so rapidly and heavily it felt like hyperventilating. She rolled off of her chair and onto her knees, taking several seconds of gasping and crying to recover.
Typhos. He’s coming. We have to prepare.

And with that army. We all have to go back to war. Even the ones who didn’t fight Calypsius… we have to.

Why can’t we ever have peace? Can’t Typhos just let us be?

He’ll never let us be. He wants to kill us, and he won’t stop until he does… or dies.

Unquenchable fear ran over Celeste, who now felt such physical pain that she lied on the ground of the ship, struggling not to vomit.
Gotta get to Erda. C’mon, Celeste, get up. Please, fight through it.

Celeste compartmentalized the physical pain and nausea and sprinted out of the ship, barely avoiding tripping in the remains of the hallway. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cyrus and Crystil taking a break from sword training, but she could not slow down to wave to them. Once at the outpost, she darted from tent to tent until she found Erda, approaching her golden tent. Celeste grabbed her shoulder with such force that Erda angry.

“Celeste! Celeste, calm down. You OK?”

Celeste gasped for air and went down to one knee.

“Celeste!” Erda said. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Celeste felt her nausea vanish. Erda’s magic, however, did not dissipate the fear Celeste felt. If anything, with the pain gone, she could focus even more on the terror.

“Erda, it’s bad. It’s real bad. Typhos is coming, and he’s got an army of hundreds of Kastori.”

Erda’s eyes went from protective to steeled, and Celeste gulped.
She has to know.

“And the last thing I saw was him about to kill you.”

11

“Who?!?”

Typhos screamed.
Who on Anatolus has that kind of power? Wasn’t Erda.

Who has the guts to even try and do that?

“How?!? No! No!”

Furiously, he increased the intensity of the storm, and for good measure, he cast a deadly fire spell on one of the human outposts. The destruction he caused brought a real, but fleeting, sense of relief. Typhos slowed his breathing down and analyzed exactly what had happened.

Whoever killed Calypsius. Should’ve kept them longer in my vision. Their power, though… not as good as mine. Nothing is. But impressive.

Typhos used his powers to sense each living being on Anatolus. None of the Kastori who refused to join him had grown in power. Not Pagus. Not Erda.

But he identified two Kastori and one human whom he did not recognize.
Siblings. And… her.

I know her. The commander of the humans, the most difficult of them all. Too bad she isn’t one of us. She’d have made a valuable asset.

Who are those two, though?

Once again, he tried focusing in on the girl and the boy. The girl—
the one. She’s the one.
Typhos immediately forgot about the boy and looked down at the girl.

He could not penetrate her mind. But he could see she was talking to Erda, a sight that raised his heartbeat and increased his breathing. She trembled with fear, an emotion that Typhos practically feasted off.

One last time, he tried entering her mind. The girl staggered a little, but kept him out.
She’s definitely the one who killed Calypsius. We need to capture her. Bring her to me. Make her my special project.

He smiled as he thought about the power that he had shown her. But not all of it was real. The army of Kastori could barely qualify as an army—by his estimate, he probably had a hundred supporters left.
But when they have the power that they do, and more importantly, I have the power that I do, what does it matter? The enemy burns all the same.

But nothing quite like making your opponents die from fear before they die from fire.

He stewed over the last image, though. It was both a flashback and a hope for the future. Typhos desperately craved a second chance at Erda, a chance to finish the job in a way that his younger, weaker self could not. He no longer felt the emotions that he had on their first visit—he just wanted to kill her and everything she stood for.

No one’s gonna stop me from that.

And neither will time.

No more delays. We must go to Anatolus now! We must annihilate and devastate all survivors on that planet. Save Erda for myself, and the girl for my rule. And we kill the rest.

Instead of focusing on the girl and the terrible, pathetic woman, he took a broader view, wanting to see what he would encounter on his visit.

To his pleasant surprise, Calypsius had done a marvelous job over the years of reducing the population of Anatolus. A dozen tents remained, all in one central location, a far cry from the hundreds that littered the land during his childhood and very early adult years. Maybe two dozen Kastori littered the area, some cooking ursus, some laughing, one—
Pagus—
flirting with a younger Kastori.

For a flash, he felt guilty over killing some of the Kastori and a sad sense of nostalgia and yearning.

But he quickly tossed that to the side.
Those memories are nothing more than stupid days. Before you realized how corrupt and inept the council was and before you went through that betrayal.