NovaForge (13 page)

She found him in a clay structure near the gates of the city. Crowds stood in line and packed the street, speaking loudly and jostling each other for a look into the structure’s open doorway.

“I have heard that he heals the ill,” a weatherworn man spoke beside her to a woman with dark circles under her eyes. “Look around us. He has brought us fruit. Surely he is a god.”

“Excuse me. I need him to heal my leg. Let me pass.” An elderly man with a long beard and cane hobbled past her. He was ignored by most and was being pushed back by the crowd.

If I assist this man, then I can make my way in as well,
Julieth thought as she came to him and locked her arm around his. “I will help you,” she told him as she began pushing forward.

“Thank you.” The old man bowed his head with sincerity.

“Make way!” Julieth shouted over the crowd, forcing her elbow into a tight group of men. “I have a cripple with me who needs to see the albino! Let me through!”

The crowd slowly conceded and made room for them to pass.

As she entered the building, Julieth saw the albino in the corner of the room sitting on the rusted frame of an old chair.

He held his hand to a girl’s forehead, her head glowing with light, and as he looked up he looked directly into Julieth’s eyes.

“Ineal,” she spoke, time almost seeming to halt in that moment as he recognized she knew more of him somehow.

He stood and kissed the girl’s head before pushing through the crowd toward Julieth.

Just as he was about to reach her he veered course, kneeling and clasping his hands around the crippled man’s leg. Ineal’s eyes glowed vibrant blue as the cripple stood, grinning widely and dropping his cane to the floor. “I am healed! I am healed! You have given me life!” he shouted.

Men and women clambered to see the man from outside. As Julieth attempted to escape the commotion, she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Ineal,” she spoke the name again and turned around to look him in his pure eyes. “We need to speak privately, or at least I need to speak. I dreamt of the earth mother last night. She spoke to me in my dreams.”

*

They sat in the garden he had created, on stools of rock, as Julieth looked into his eyes.

Ineal watched her knowingly. It sent a chill through her body, and yet somehow calmed her.

“Has she told you that she spoke with me?” Julieth closed her eyes for a moment, calming herself in the darkness there. “She says you hear her, that she will use you to heal our world. Is that true?” She looked at him again.

Ineal stared at her blankly, a stoic look on his face. Then he nodded.

“Is that a yes? Why do you not speak?”

Silence. His lips moved up for a second. Was that a smile?

“The voice that spoke to me says that I should follow you. She says that I should help you in her work… that the essences in our world are bad. I want to trust you, Ineal. I do not know or understand you, and yet something tells me I should remain by your side.” She looked up to the two suns above, feeling their searing heat on her back and doubting the course she had chosen since speaking to the voice claiming to be the Mother of the Earth.
How could I desert Bayne or the others to follow a being I know so little about?

Blooming warmth moved on the back of her hand as Ineal reached out to her, clasping it with his own. He smiled as she looked into his eyes.

This is my path now. There is no other way.
Julieth breathed a deep breath, tasting the crispness of the air that the vegetation created around her.
Death and war has served Solaris long enough. Now that we have this being, peace must take its place. The wounds must heal for my people to be saved.

“You must control it, focus your ability and use it at will, if we are to defeat Samuel.” Riad stood with Bayne in an open span of desert a good distance beyond Gest’s walls. “You have learned to control and prevent your fear since your ability first manifested. That is both a blessing and a curse, because we have no guarantee you will be able to call upon it when the time comes.”

A hard, rust-flecked wind blew around them as Bayne kneeled on the earth, clutching it with his hands as he mentally willed his ability. They had been attempting to manifest the ability without fear since arriving in Gest. So far, nothing had come of it.

Heat burned in Bayne’s chest as his mind pulsed with exhaustion. The marking of the essence on his back burned as he strained himself. “There is no use, I can’t do it,” he said, giving in to the strain as he stood. “Sometimes I feel so weak. I want to be strong like you.”

Riad placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You are strong. To stand by my side after what we have already seen together shows your strength. And within you is an ability unmatched by any.”

“Then why is it that I…”

“Sit. Rest. Control will come to you in time. Sometimes it is not about willing something to be, but instead allowing it to happen.” Riad sat on the earth, amidst the roiling sand, and motioned Bayne to do the same.

Bayne’s mind contracted as he sat, his eyes closed and his mind open to the darkness. He envisioned Kaskal and its broken wall. He saw the man he had discovered in Kaskal’s streets, in his mind. And then he saw Riad and the way the man decimated all in his path, ultimately saving Kaskal.

Riad says my ability is beyond all others’. I can be greater than him.
He flexed his hands, gripping them tightly and digging his nails into his palms.

But how do I harness it? We have been trying so long, and nothing has come.

Allow it to happen. I need to allow the essence and the ability through.

Power coursed through him. It was raw, giving strength to his entire body, rippling through his veins. He liked it, this raw energy that overtook his form.

I am more powerful than anyone.

He stood slowly, watching Riad kneel to the soil in meditation. Boils pocked and burst about the boy’s flesh as he allowed the power in his veins to flow through him.

Bayne blinked.

Power exploded from his form, searing his thoughts with destiny and heat.

Riad lay crumpled and motionless on Solaris’s soil.

As soon as Bayne mastered his abilities, Riad insisted they leave. “More die at Samuel’s hands while we linger here,” he spoke when Julieth proposed they remain in Gest for a while longer so that a less risky plan could be thought of. She did not speak of the earth Mother or what she knew of Ineal, but she argued vehemently to convince them departing now would hinder them later.

It was no use. Riad’s path was the only path he would consider, and Bayne was unusually insistent that the cyborg was right. Julieth’s relationship with Bayne had completely changed the night they spent beneath the trees beyond Gest’s walls. Not only was he more mature, he was increasingly defiant towards her. The boy she nurtured and raised since his parents’ deaths was seemingly gone.

“Please, come with us,” Ivanus spoke to her, though Julieth knew with his ability he could see she would not be swayed. They stood at the gates of Gest as Riad, Bayne and Andral waited for him in the desert beyond the city’s walls. Tears welled in his eyes.

His hands were strong as they held hers. She looked into his eyes, wondering if she would ever see him again. “I do not believe attacking Samuel is the answer. We can use what Ineal brings to us to heal our world. Before, the only path was violence, but now that we can create vegetation, we can heal Solaris and its people through peace.”

Ivanus rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs. “I do not know which path is right, only the path that I will go for now. I
see
it and I know what I will do. But I will miss you, Julieth. I hope that you are right. No matter which path is correct, I fear we will all die.”

Riad glared at them. “She will not be swayed! She is but a woman! Come, Ivanus!” he shouted.

“Take this.” Ivanus unsheathed the wooden box from beneath his robe.

She took it, her hands shaking. “Why?”

“I do not trust Riad if he discovers they are near.”

Julieth ran her fingers over the box’s clasp and stuffed it in her satchel. “Watch over Bayne. He needs direction. Perhaps he will listen to you. Please protect Andral as well.”

Ivanus lifted a hand to her cheek, sending a flush through her body as he touched her. “I will. Watch over yourself. At least with Ineal, I sense you are in good hands.”

He moved to her, his lips embracing hers as warmth soothed her… and then the warmth left and she opened her eyes to watch him walking away.

Ivanus turned. His smile made her feel distant somehow. “I had to take the chance!” he called back to her. “Until we meet again!” He waved and then joined the others, disappearing in the swarming desert sands as she watched them from a perch on Gest’s walls.

When she could no longer see them, Julieth felt alone. For a second she contemplated flying to join their side.

Then a hand braced her shoulder and she turned to look into Ineal’s eyes.
No, this is the right path. If I am meant to join them again, then fate will bring that into being.
The essences burned within her chest as she walked with Ineal into the city. Somehow, beside the mute man, the pain was not as great.

Samuel sat beneath a vast tent beside the sea of lava, which flanked one side of his citadel. He looked out over the boiling sea, basking in the heat resonating from its surface. “Come to me, Jan. I desire a drink,” he spoke to a servant girl standing erect with others nearby, kept there to await his orders. He did not need to speak to order her, and yet he found it entertaining at times.

The young girl came quickly to him, her torn dress of rags sweeping in the wind as she moved. “Here, my lord.” The skin around her face and arms clung to her bones. He could replicate as much food as needed for these mindless creatures, but why feed servants more than was necessary.

He took the goblet of dirt-stained water from her tray; swishing it and watching soil swirl in it before drinking it fully. It quenched his thirst and he lay back, looking at the light-silhouettes of the suns above through the tent’s fabric.

You are enjoying yourself, Samuel. Good,
the voice of the essence within him came.
But do you not sense the being that will challenge you becoming stronger?

“And when he arrives I will possess him, as I have all those before.”

And if it is not that simple?

“Have you not seen my army? My strength is all powerful.”

Will you not confront this being before he reaches your gates?

“Is that what you wish, you insolent thing, to disturb my peace and force me into skirmishes I need not wage? When our symbiosis was young I was easily pulled, but I am not that man now. When they are ready to be controlled, they will come to me.”

They challenge us!
the voice roared, coursing red through his retinas.

As pain pulsed through his body, Samuel screamed, falling from his chair and writhing on the soil. Through the heat he saw Jan hobbling toward him, her hands clasping his neck as he gasped for air.

You cannot control them without me,
the essence laughed as Samuel reached up, pulling her fingers from his neck and snapping their bones as she fell to the ground beside him.

“You killed my family, you devil!” she screeched as she hit him with her crumbled hands.

Samuel thrust a foot into her emaciated stomach, thrusting her a distance away. “Then I will face this being, if it will satiate you.” The pain instantly fled his body and he immediately regained control of Jan. She looked at him with admiration as her bleeding body lay nearby.

Samuel stood, brushing sand from his robe and forcing the battered girl to stand. “You dare to attack me, after all I have given you?” He walked to Jan, kissing her broken hand and then letting it fall. Samuel looked up to the others under his control. “Because of this all of you must show me you love me and that I am the one you follow.”

“What can we do, sire?” Jan asked.

“You know.” He grinned.

They moved fluidly as they walked to the shoreline, one by one wading into the lava as flesh melted from bones and they collapsed into the sea. They did not scream or flinch; only obeyed.

Samuel poured himself another glass of water and drank it, tossing the goblet into the sea with the charred bones before turning from its expanse.

They were camped in the crags of a mountain face when Ivanus sensed the fighters nearing. They carried weapons like Riad’s and walked in a uniform line. It was early morning and Solaris’s first sun had just risen. “Riad! We are being approached!”

“How close?” Riad stood quickly from where he had been heating food they packed from Gest.

“A distance. They are not visible on the horizon, but I sense they will be soon.”

“Are they Samuel’s men?”

“That would not surprise me. They carry guns like yours. Where are you from? Could they know you?”

“My people are all dead,” Riad responded quickly. “If they carry my weapons, then they have raided my ship, or created something like them on their own. We need to face them. We will treat them as a threat, and if they prove to be friendly, then perhaps they can be utilized against Samuel.” He glanced back at Bayne. “Stay here. We cannot risk losing you.” Andral sat by his brother, holding his arms.

Heat curled up the mountain face as Ivanus followed Riad down its slope. Sweat poured down his back and several times rocks crumbled beneath his feet, almost sending him down the steep grade.

“What will we do when they reach us?” he spoke lowly to Riad as the two reached the foot of the rock, kneeling near each other behind boulders. “Do you honestly wish to speak with them?” Static charged through Ivanus as Delta brought a burst of electricity into his weapon, readying it to fire.

“No, we will trust your
sight
. If they appear to be hostile, hold up your hand and signal me. Then we will engage.”

“There are ten of them. How will the two of us fend off that large a force?”

“We will, or we will die,” Riad spoke calmly. “We bested the beasts below the earth, surely we can handle ten men.”

Ivanus’s mouth was dry and he gulped down the anticipation rising within him. “And if they appear peaceful?”

“Then show me by aiming your weapon to the ground. Then I will approach and you will remain here, watching my back but unseen.”

An hour passed in the scorching heat as the men knelt in wait.

Ivanus watched the men. They moved with certainty, never turning or speaking, but gazing toward their position the entire time. “They will be upon us soon,” he whispered as Riad looked coldly ahead. “They do not appear hostile, but their faces are so cold. I believe Samuel may be controlling them. Their eyes lock to our position.”

“Then we attack,” the borg spoke lowly, his arms steady as he held his massive weapon firm.

Ivanus counted his breaths as the men reached them. They stood in a line a short distance away.

“We come for the boy,” an almost mechanical and yet human voice came from beyond the boulders.

A shiver crept through Ivanus as he
saw
what would happen before it did.

“Guile?” Riad asked, stepping out from the boulder with weapon braced. “How are you alive? I witnessed your deaths.”

“Dive!” Ivanus shouted,
seeing
the blasts before they occurred.

Multiple charges of electricity battered the mountain base as Riad dove low, firing his weapon on the group of ten. “Run!” he called.

Ivanus held his arm out, firing on their enemy and then pulling it back to safety as charges of electricity burst around the boulder’s edges. The hairs on his arms stood on end as he felt the stone being charged by the blasts. He dove low as the boulder exploded, raining shards through the air. As he looked up, Riad moved before him.

“Up the mountain! Retreat!” Riad called.

“No, watch your left shoulder,” Ivanus said.

Riad adjusted just in time to avoid a blast. A detonation of blue lightning rocked from Riad’s gun in return, charring the attacker’s head from his shoulders. “Stay with me then! My shield is up now!” Just as he spoke an almost transparent blue shield materialized before his body, holding off the battery of blasts that thrust against it from the remaining enemy.

Ivanus stood, his gun braced before him. He was careful to remain behind the shield. Through the electrified light of explosions rocking the shield he could make out the faces of the men attacking. Their forehead structure and eyes reminded him of Riad. “They are your people, aren’t they?”

“Our only hope is to take them now.” Heat radiated off Riad’s mechanics. “They are not themselves. They react like drones, but even drones would realize our shielding and adjust strategy.”

Ivanus followed Riad as they approached, firing blasts around the shield and contacting with the armor of the men.

Spheres burst up from Riad’s cybernetic arm, thrusting about the enemy and shocking the earth with explosions. His shield crackled and he lit up the enemy with charge.

Ivanus ran from Riad, firing his weapon at an enemy away from the others and dropping to the ground to escape a blast electrifying past. Another bolt charred the sand beneath him, sending molten globules upward as he rolled away just in time. He stood quickly, firing into the man’s weapon, causing it to backfire and maim the enemy’s arm.

The weaponless soldier came for him, good arm outstretched, and Ivanus hit his body armor with blast after blast until the man fell, writhing on the earth.

In his
sight
he witnessed a man standing over Riad with a gun pressed to his skull.

Ivanus turned, running and leaping over the fallen body of an enemy Riad had felled, while witnessing one of two remaining enemy soldiers charging Riad’s body with electricity and knocking him to the ground.

In a moment the man stood over Riad, gun pressed to his head.

“Over here!” Ivanus shouted, firing at the attacker’s armor. The man hesitated, only briefly, but did not look at Ivanus. Then Ivanus caught the glint of light reflecting off Vrax climbing the man’s back.

A scream of pain pierced his ears as the warrior fell, convulsing in pain.

“Riad!” the remaining enemy called as Riad stood. The man raised his gun in apparent surrender.

“Sar, how do you live? I took your life.”

“He has an essence within him,” Ivanus warned.

“Yes, an essence.” Sar grinned a haunting grin. “That is why, and that is how though you left us for dead we have not died.”

A blood-red glow hovered over them as the dead and wounded warriors convulsed around them. Heads and limbs grew fresh from their bodies, goop covering their forms. The attackers stood, eyes hollow and black as they raised their weapons to attack once more.

“I can resurrect the dead.” Sar laughed, electrifying Riad’s shield. “And Samuel is the one and only lord!”

Ivanus
saw
Bayne at the mountain’s base with Andral, kneeling in concentration, and then walking amongst the fallen bodies of himself, Riad and the enemy. He clutched his gun tight, dropping to the ground and positioning the weapon in Sar’s direction. The world instantly went dark.

*

A telepathic wave pulsed over everything from the mountain’s base to a great distance beyond the fighting, emanating from Bayne’s chest. Andral, already curled at the base of the mountain beside him, went limp.

Bayne looked out over where the fighting had been.
They have all fallen,
he thought, looking at the bodies of men littering the barren plain.

What strength I have. I can do anything. I could kill them all.

Or only the enemy. Riad and Ivanus are my friends.
He walked to where Riad lay motionless on the earth, reaching down and touching the man’s gun that was still clutched in his cybernetic hand.
Could I take this from you?
he wondered.

A red light blinked in the corner of his vision, startling him. It came from the bot on Riad’s leg. “I will not take the weapon,” he assured the thing.

The bot hefted itself from Riad’s cybernetics, clacking toward him. With a thrust it punctured Bayne’s leg, sending burning pain through his veins.
No, take it. You must,
it spoke in his thoughts, then removed its leg from the puncture and sealed itself once more within Riad’s form.

Bayne eyed Vrax for a moment.
Then it will not stop me.
He pulled at Riad’s metallic hand, prying the massive gun from his grasp, and held it before him.
I kill them now, while they are unconscious.

Sar first.

Bayne turned, finding a large man he somehow knew was Sar close by. He pressed the weapon to Sar’s skull and pulled the trigger, incinerating the man’s head. Blood splattered around them, and then oozed from his neck as singed flesh bubbled along its edges.

The power of the moment filled him. He knew it was wrong, but somehow this control and power felt so good. It filled him with energy and excitement.

Is this what pure freedom feels like?

Bayne moved quickly, knowing he had only a short time before the others would regain consciousness. As he came to each enemy fighter he pressed the weapon to their chests, scorching their innards and assuring they would not rise.

Ivanus had a look of fear in his eyes, even though Bayne knew the man was unconscious. “You see all, and yet now, in my time, you see nothing.” Bayne grinned, wiping dirt from his face and then aiming the weapon at him. “I could kill you if I wanted.”

But he will still be of use. Now is not the time.

With a smirk Bayne walked to their final attacker. “Now is your time. You should never have come. No-one will ever take my fate from me again.” A shiver crept down Bayne’s arms as he spoke the words.

Doubt.
No, I will let you live. I will leave you for the others.

He stood silently, his clothes rippling in the wind, waiting for his companions to awake.

*

Heat coiled over him as Ivanus opened his eyes. His consciousness returned slowly at first, like a dense fog, only gradually giving way to reasonable thought. His chest burned as he looked up, coughing and wheezing as he saw the bodies of men littering the expanse before him. He reached out, clasping his gun, watching a figure standing still; a black silhouette in the heat of the suns.

His
sight
was returning to him, but he could not yet comprehend what things meant.

Then his memories returned in a rush, his head pounding with pain. “Bayne, what have you done?” he asked, not loud enough for the boy to hear, but out of disbelief.

Ivanus stood slowly, bracing his free hand in the sand and pushing upward. He walked through the bodies of their enemy. Blood oozed from them out of gory, blasted holes that had decimated their chests. The one Riad called Sar lay decapitated a distance away.

Bayne stared at him with hollow eyes.

Ivanus swallowed and watched as Riad slowly stood. “What have you done?” he asked Bayne while nearing him.

The boy held Riad’s massive gun in his small hands, aiming it at the final remaining enemy’s skull. “They are dead now, all but this man. I used my ability on them.”

“How could you just slaughter them? They were under Samuel’s control.”

“I saved your lives, all of our lives.” The boy’s voice was firm, without fear or regret.

Something about that worried Ivanus.
Shouldn’t there be some remorse? How can a boy your age kill and yet feel so little?
“Riad experienced that same effect. Your ability felled him as well, and yet when he awoke his own mind returned to him and now he fights to rid Solaris of Samuel. Couldn’t these men have also assisted us if their minds had been restored to their bodies?”

The man Bayne aimed the weapon at moaned, his body convulsing to life.

“Do not harm him.” Riad joined them, taking his weapon back from Bayne’s grasp. “You did what you knew you must, Bayne. It is in the heat of battle that the hardest decisions come. These men would have gladly killed us. Their lives were your right to take.” Riad thrust his mechanical foot against the remaining man, rolling him over so that he squinted while staring at the suns. An insignia was burned into his forehead and his skin was coarse and raw. “Carcos,” Riad ignited electricity in his gun, “is that you?”

“R… Riad?” the beast of a prisoner asked as if he were a child.

“You have been possessed by a dark priest of this world. He has sent you in a company of our companions to kill me.”

“The last I remember our spaceship was crashing… how is this possible?”

“Watch him, Ivanus, alert me should there be need.” Riad looked to his companion before once more regarding Carcos. “How am I to trust anything you say, any evidence you could give? I need to know if you are still possessed and I am not sure of any certain way to do so.”

The two men watched each other hesitantly for a moment, stillness in the air.

“If I took your life, then I could be certain you would not be my enemy.” Riad pressed the large barrel of his gun to Carcos’s chest, energy surging through it and charging the man with electricity. Carcos convulsed, vomiting and screaming in pain.

Ivanus reached out a hand to stop Riad, to at least insist the man be relieved of his misery, and then saw what
would be
and stopped.