The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) (13 page)

They were interrupted late morning when a shudder passed through the Vine, shaking them nearly off their feet. Familiar voices suddenly filled their heads. Both shared a look, went Dark, and fled the compartment, using the exit leading directly outside. In the empty space high above the courtyard, Jav reached out his hand for Hilene, who took it, then used AI to bring them almost instantly to just above the ground, where he left Hilene to her own power. Everything that had been turned to gold was gold no longer. Jav moved himself towards Raus and Gran Pham, while looking over his shoulder to ensure that all of the affected Root Palace had returned to normal.

When he reached Gran Pham, Jav could see that Raus was almost completely rebuilt. His head was intact and his right arm, weakened long ago by Garlin Braams, would always be last to heal.

“What a varied nightmare,” Raus said.

“It’s good to have you back,” Jav said.

“What about me?” Vays asked from the ground below.

“I suppose that’s good, too.”

Vays snorted.

“Is everyone all right?” Jav said through his Artifact. “Nils? Scanlan? Icsain?“ He looked to Gran Mal’s back and could see that Brin Karvasti was there and alive. The others responded in the affirmative. “Vays, I want you, Hilene, and Raus with me. The rest of you I want guarding the Palace. It’s unlikely that the gold dragon will return, but watch for him, and kill him before he can put that beam of his to use if he does.”

“And where are you going?” Icsain said.

“To clear a nest. Disassemble your Gran and set a perimeter about the Palace. Scanlan, complete your repairs on Gran Mal. Gran Mid will stand guard at the courtyard gates. Nils, report to Minister Affairs Witchlan. Brin, get yourself looked after.”

“You want
me
to go?” Raus said, raising his still-regenerating right arm.

“You’re our transportation. When we get there, try not to explode.”

“Excellent advice, First General, sir,” Raus said.

“Everyone with me, on Gran Pham now. Sorry, Raus.”

“What?”

“Gran Pham interface override, first protocol, authorization: Holson.”

“Hey!”

Jav ignored him as he thought into the tiny organic computer that served as Gran Pham’s brain the image and location of the castle to which he saw the dragons retreat. With the transmission complete, he checked to see that all were present. “Everyone, hold on.

“Gran Pham! Charge!”

Gran Pham responded to Jav as it did to Raus, though all were quite surprised by Jav’s use of the Gran’s primary weapon without a target in sight. Gran Pham came to an instant stop, hitting nothing and defying the laws of inertia—with none of its passengers suffering in the least—only to adjust its position and alter its trajectory before resuming its charge. It did this twice more before crashing through the gates of a great, spidery castle, taking a total of seventeen seconds from Palace to target.

“End override,” Jav said. “Take us through, Raus. Open the way.”

“Right.”

Gran Pham used its tusks and sinewy trunk to great effect, widening the corridors when necessary—which wasn’t often, since the castle was designed to house dragons. They pushed through a set of double doors and crumbled the surrounding wall, entering into a large hall. What they saw within nauseated each and every one.

The floor was slick from wall to wall with blood. The scattered and overturned couches, too, were soaked with it. The sole, living occupant of the room, a sickly pale dragon of enormous size, sat upon its haunches with dried rivulets of blood and grime veining down from its still-working jaws to decorate its taut, distended belly. It clutched in one claw the half-devoured corpse of a human female and looked up almost comically from its meal at the Shades’ intrusion.

The dragon regarded the face of the corpse in its claw and seemed to sigh before hurriedly popping the rest of the body between the palisade rows of its teeth.

Before it disappeared into the dragon’s mouth, Raus saw the face and knew it without ever having seen it before. He had seen
versions
of it, many times now, and very recently.

“Perhaps you’ve done me a favor,” Raus shouted. “But Milla Marz has been and always will be mine to kill.”

Standing to its full height and knocking more of the already ruined ceiling down the floor, the dragon spoke in a harsh, booming voice. “I know of no Milla Marz, only of Sera Fontessa, the mist that danced, the beautiful betrayer.

“You must be the invaders Gim Peshil spoke of. I am Chan Fa, the Everliving. Welcome to Thrax Palonis. I fear, however, that your stay will be brief.”

“It may very well be,” Jav shouted back, “but by no influence of yours.”

Chan Fa threw his head back in laughter. “I have just feasted on three Shields. You may not understand the import of such an act, but I assure you,” Chan Fa said, his tone growing deadly, “my influence shall be great.”

Jav turned and whispered to those behind him. “Vays, Hilene, be ready to follow my lead. Raus, ready Gram Pham for another charge once everyone is clear.”

“Right. There might be something else, I can help with,” Raus whispered back, eyeing the ceiling.

“See what you can do,” Jav said. “We’re taking no chances.”

Jav raised his hands—which he’d kept together at his side while quietly preparing the Kaiser Claw—to just before his face, left over right, palms thirty centimeters apart. He crouched and sprang forward, bullet fast, for Chan Fa’s forehead where his hands sank into the sickly white flesh and through the boney skull plate just between the dragon’s eyes. Blood sprayed in fine, jetting mist from the singular wound Jav’s hands and the destruction between them had wrought. He pushed further in, attempting to damage as much as possible before torqueing his hands so that their positions reversed and yanked. He kicked off, pushing clear of the bellowing beast as Vays delivered a Union Blade to Chan Fa’s right flank, and Hilene employed the Ten Deaths all up his left side.

Blood oozed from the hole between Chan Fa’s eyes, but the slice carved by Vays was closing, and the ten violet bruises were already starting to fade as Gran Pham responded to Raus’s command to charge. Chan Fa shocked them all, though, when he caught Gran Pham’s tusks, one in each claw, stopping the Gran prematurely and knocking Raus from his perch. With a mighty heave, Chan Fa flung Gran Pham from him. The Gran turned over in the air and crashed back-first through the wall to Chan Fa’s right, landing inert, with its body tipped at a steep angle and its legs in the air.

Chan Fa laughed again. “I do believe you—all of you—hit harder than any Shield I have ever known, which is saying something, but as I told you: I am Chan Fa, the Everliving.” He reached down then with the same speed he’d exhibited against Gran Pham to snatch up Raus as he attempted to scramble away. He brought the Shade to his mouth and bit down upon him, the rows of his teeth, shearing through his body and almost splitting him along the line of his spine.

Raus pushed with his prodigious strength to prevent the complete closure of Chan Fa’s jaws. He’d managed to grip and push at the right time and kept his head from going inside the dragon’s mouth. He chuckled as his grayish blood pumped in jets up against Chan Fa’s teeth and rained back down to the floor. From his position he had a clear view of the sky through the hole in the ceiling. It was enough.

Lightning fell severally to first obliterate the remnants of the ceiling and then to strike Chan Fa squarely on his crown. The shock forced Chan Fa to open his jaws reflexively, loosing Raus and allowing him to fall.

Jav streaked from his place, catching Raus and easing him to the floor.

Through what looked like the fevered perspiration of impending death, Raus chuckled again.

“Raus?” Jav said, concerned for the other’s mental state.

“He’s like a corpse,” Raus said. “At least in some ways. It’s tenuous, but I’ve got him.”

Chan Fa’s eyes fell to Raus. “You’ve got me, little big man?”

“But I’m afraid,” Raus said to Jav, ignoring Chan Fa’s question, “that I’ve simply changed him into Chan Fa, the Never Moving.”

Jav looked from Raus, who shook and sweated with effort, to Chan Fa, who did not move but was completely healed of all wounds. “What’s going on Raus? Do you have him or not?”

“I’ve got him, I just can’t
do
anything with him.”

“By the look of him, he won’t stay dead, and he
is
the Everliving as he’s pointed out more than once. You may have a new full-time occupation, Raus,” Jav said.

Raus was silent. He hadn’t heard Jav, and worse, his eyes were starting to glaze over, his lids fluttering towards unconsciousness.

“Vays!” Jav called. “His head.”

Vays had been staring appraisingly with folded arms and shook his head immediately. “Neck’s too thick and skin’s too tough for a single stroke, which is what it would take. Even so, how do we know he wouldn’t be able to just put his head back on like a hat?”

Jav shrugged.

“Impudence! Are you truly discussing ways to destroy Chan Fa, the
Everliving
? As if he were not
present
?”

“When we first met Peshil,” Hilene said hurriedly, “he talked about
possessing
Shields. . .”

Jav stared at her for a moment, realizing and appreciating her genius, then looked up to the pale dragon. “Tell me, Chan Fa, the Everliving: How is it that you go from man to dragon?”

Chan Fa’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Then you, too, wish to steal the Shields from my Shrine Hall! They’ll do you no good anywhere but here on Thrax Palonis, but you shall not have them. Chan Fa will sink his teeth into the lot of you and dine on new delicacies never before known on Thrax Palonis. This I swear.”

Jav nodded, ignoring everything after hearing about the Shrine Hall. “Hilene, save some for the gold dragon—”

“Bah!” Chan Fa interjected. “The gold dragon is in my belly! None can stand against Chan Fa. No Shield in my presence may use his or her powers unless I allow it. I am the king of all Shields, none may tame me, command me, or mark me. . . Even now, I feel the hold the gray one has upon me loosening.”

“Do it,” Jav cried.

She nodded and pushed herself beyond the physical, beyond the intangible, until tiny stars seemed to erupt into being all around her, winking in and out with dazzling effect.

Seeing this, Vays dropped his arms to his sides and looked on in fascination.

Raus was as wet with sweat now as he was with blood, his eyes half-closed. Jav shook him and entreated him to stay awake, to stay focused. Chan Fa continued ranting, but it took only seconds for Hilene to report.

“I count seventy-three ovoid shapes—like eggs—hidden within his being. One is substantially larger than the rest.”

“Seventy-three?” Chan Fa paused in his shouting. “Is it really so many? I am so very close.” He was able to move his arms now.

“Hurry,” Jav said.

She nodded and her head mounted display lit up, identifying groups of targets to attack simultaneously.

“What is this that you plot?” Chan Fa said. “I have told you that I am the Everliving, have I not? There is nothing you can do to Chan Fa. . . Nothing!” And he took a step forward.

Vays placed himself between Chan Fa and his two fellows on the floor.

Hilene floated gracefully towards the slowly moving dragon and then exploded into ten sparkling copies, which shot into the giant living corpse like spears. Inside, her Darkness Piercing Spear Hand found every target, lancing the eggs and popping them out of existence like balloons. With her well-planned trajectories, nothing escaped the assault. The last and biggest of her targets she cradled in her arms and pulled free as her copies retreated back to the origin point to reform her.

As she exited with the Shield, Chan Fa shrunk, deflating suddenly until nothing but a little husk of an old man remained, this shriveled thing wheezing out its last breath as the final transformation brought death.

The price of Toth Talpas’s gold, though not an ounce remained, was one hundred and thirty-seven dead due to circulatory shock. Shields yet remained on Thrax Palonis, now Planet 1488, but none offered significant resistance. Many were already infected by the exotic toxins brought by the Vine and would soon die.

Raus healed, and for the duration of their stay, he kept the corpse of Chan Fa, reanimating it as Kaupler, but found this iteration of his lieutenant to be no more able than any of its predecessors.

Jav and Hilene continued to train together, and though what was developing between them was obvious to all, no one spoke of their relationship. No one dared.

Jav stared at the waste spread out beyond the Root Palace. Planet 1532 had offered nothing in the way of defense. Their various militaries operated on combustion engines and low-yield explosives, with shells that couldn’t penetrate the Palace walls or even leave a mark. They were—more than most—ill-prepared for the biological agents the Vine brought with it. With germs alone, the Empire had reduced the population to half in a mere ten days. Jav surveyed the empty streets, the concrete towers, like a cyclopean forest of upright coffins, and wrestled with a number of competing emotions. He felt guilty. He felt depressed. He felt restless. He felt angry. He felt many or all of these for multiple reasons and was fairly certain that the majority were connected, but when he tried to sort it all out, there seemed to be one key component missing so that all he could do was drown in a mental morass. The pathos of Planet 1532 was enough to evoke all those different feelings, and it did contribute, but there was more to it.

Hilene Tanser was waiting for him inside the Palace. She’d planned an evening for them. She’d been excited and her excitement had been infectious. So far, there’d been no break in her enthusiasm, and good or bad, her enthusiasm was like a drug, one in which he greedily indulged. But he knew that this could not continue indefinitely. She would see through him soon enough. He hated himself for not being able to do more for her. He hated himself for not being able to simply cut things off.