CHAPTER 30 ADRIA
CHAPTER
ADRIA
Thaane’s army darkens the horizon in a whirl of warriors’ wings.
Aspect crouches far behind me, their makeshift body crumpled behind the control panel for the settlement’s only entrance. I’ve ordered them to stay there, as far away from the impending conflict as possible.
Between them and me, a line of brave dayfolk soldiers rapidly assembles, summoned by Aspect’s ongoing broadcast—which also warned them that a hulking nightfolk girl would be leading their charge.
Many of them tense or tremble at the sight of me, but nevertheless, they form a phalanx of heatshot pistols and rifles at my back, even a few crude metal knives.
This being practically the full force of the dayfolk military, we vastly outnumber Thaane’s rogue faction.
But I am the only settlement fighter with the planet’s power on my side. I may have instructed Isek via comms to send a contingent of the Shadowlands’ army after me as reinforcements, but there’s still no sign of them, and it’s impossible to confirm if they’re coming at all.
Perhaps even my loyal soldiers see my willingness to fight for the dayfolk as a step too far.
Perhaps Azarii, despite supposedly seeking peace, remains so focused on me that he was willing to ignore Thaane’s offensive altogether, and my forces were delayed by Azarii’s rebellion.
There’s no way to know, and no opportunity to wait.
Thaane’s army is on the horizon now, black splotches interrupting the relentless sun. And if we don’t stop them, they could wipe out the dayfolk altogether … if Chloe doesn’t do it first.
Keen awareness of our disadvantage slithers beneath my skin. Thaane doesn’t even have to kill his opposing forces. One little slash through the dayfolk soldiers’ armor, and the planet claims them for itself.
Before long, though they were a distant inkblot practically moments ago, the nightfolk are almost within attack range—preparing their weapons, spreading out their forces.
Several carry multi-limbed fighters on their backs; those without a mount are levitated by telekinetics, who strain to keep multiple bodies aloft.
The ground rumbles like a quake beneath the crash of muscled mutants, some with as many as six fists upraised, others wielding freezeshot guns and freezeblades alike.
Additional weapons levitate like halos all around the telekinetics, makeshift projectiles that move almost faster than the eye can follow.
Every breath feels like needles on its way out. I can’t see a single face of my newfound armored soldiers, but I turn to the closest one anyway: a woman likely Kori’s age, with a yellow bandana tied around one wrist.
“What is your name?” I ask.
She hesitates, fingers tensing on her heatshot rifle’s trigger. After a sharp breath, she answers, “Folina.”
“I know I’m a stranger to you, Folina.” I will my gaze to penetrate her helmet, to communicate beyond my words that I’m truly on her side. “I know based on what you’ve been taught, I’m a monster. But you know Kori?”
The soldier gives her head a little shake. “Nobody really knows Kori,” she says. “Chloe’s kept her locked away her whole life.”
There goes my only point of connection with these people. After
a long moment, heart racing, I manage to say, “I promise you … she’s worth fighting for.” My hands curl instinctively into fists at my sides. “She showed me that you’re all worth fighting for.”
There’s no time to say anything else.
The nightfolk soldiers eclipse us. Everything is smoke, the stinging burn of heatshot, the shuddering cold shock of freezeshot, knives and freezeblades clashing, wings and arms locked in struggle, nightfolk howling. Bleeding.
I’m only one nightfolk. But for Kori, for the dayfolk, for her last chance at real freedom, I’ll be the fiercest monster of them all.
Combat sweeps everyone into frenetic mayhem as surely as a desert windstorm.
Time is already a slippery thing on Pagomènos, sliding through the fingers like so much sand, but now I am truly lost to it, reduced to blows and blood, bones and bruises.
I rip telekinetics from the sky. I beat a soldier senseless with his own freezeshot rifle.
I know there’s blood splattered all over me, but not whose—some of it surely mine, but from where, I haven’t the slightest inkling.
Nevertheless, despite my fiercest efforts, the dayfolk are no match for a nightfolk assault.
All it takes is one crack in the armor. Soldiers drop like so much ash around me.
Those who aren’t immediately obliterated—windpipes crushed by a nightfolk foot, limbs torn free of their sockets, freezeblades buried in rib cages, skulls caved in by a well-placed supernatural punch—are brought down by fissures in their armor, writhing and shrieking as the planet slowly draws them into oneness with itself.
At some point, I find myself sprawled above a collapsed dayfolk youth, barely restraining a six-limbed, clawing, howling creature of a soldier with both arms—when a blast of azure energy, which could only come from one of our own, spears into the monster’s skull, and he sags into my hands.
I toss the corpse aside in a heap of empty flesh. I look up, and sure enough, it’s one of my own nightfolk soldiers who looks back. “My lord,” she says, inclining her head, her horns glinting in the violent sunlight.
Behind her, a line of warriors falls upon the battlefield like a scythe, cleaving a barrier between the struggling dayfolk and Thaane’s minions.
Isek’s reinforcements.
But will they be enough?
Beneath me, the dayfolk youth swallows hard against a sob.
His armor is unbroken, but he rapidly tests its seams and edges with gloved hands anyway, hardly believing he’s still alive.
The dayfolk haven’t seen war against the nightfolk in generations, not since the Great Exile in the Cataclysm’s immediate aftermath.
This boy is a soldier here by necessity alone, and he’s lived his entire life underground, sheltered from weather and his opposing nation alike.
There was no possible way for him to be prepared for this.
For any of them to be prepared for this.
But thanks to Isek’s reinforcements, they won’t face the rest of this fight alone.
“Dayfolk! Stay behind me!” I shout, struggling to be heard over freezeshot and heatshot, the rapid beating of wings, the unceasing exchange of mighty blows. “Let us lead the fight against our own!”
Hearing my orders, the remaining armored fighters regather themselves, disengaging from their individual skirmishes, forming a tight pack of secondary defense.
A spark of stubborn hope lights in my chest. With a nightfolk army to take point …
Thaane’s can still be stopped. Kori’s people can still be saved.
Belowground, Chloe represents another equally imminent threat, but if I think too hard about that—if I let myself imagine Kori down there, without me, forced to fight her own mother to save her entire society from obliteration—I’ll collapse in on myself, as surely as the sobbing dayfolk boy I just protected.
So I set my focus securely aboveground. I fight with everything in me, with every ounce of strength the Diakópsei bestowed.
Energy blasts from my hands, my feet, the sharp edges of my wings.
It’s blue fire in my throat, my wild scream manifesting as power that blasts enemy fighters out of the sky.
I’m lost to time. I’m lost to Pagomènos. Were I presented
with a mirror, I would hardly recognize myself. In the name of the most human love I’ve ever felt, I surrender to my most animal instincts. I become a weapon of war, and nothing more.
Sand sticks to blood in patches along my arms, embeds itself underneath my claws. I ache like an exposed nerve, in body and in soul. I’m panting, every muscle screaming, my half-healed left wing aching more fiercely than ever, when I feel an unexpectedly gentle hand on my forearm.
I whirl to lock eyes with a face equally familiar and unexpected.
“My queen,” says Eridian, no longer cowering before torturous Thaane, nor bearing blood from my teeth along her throat.
I haven’t seen her since I ordered her released from our custody, berating Thaane for tormenting her with fear of herself.
Not so long ago, Thaane messaged my comms tablet that this very woman was rallying Azarii’s forces against me.
But that doesn’t square at all with what my eyes are seeing.
I balk, words nearly failing me altogether. “When did you …? Why are you here?”
“You showed me mercy once, where your brother-in-arms held only hatred.” The spikes along her spine, no longer deliberately hidden, shimmer in the sunlight. “I want no part of a planet he rules. None of us do.”
“Us?”
With an extended claw, Eridian points to the skyline, and hope floods my body like a wave of pure day.
Wings and claws and bared teeth. Freezeblades and rifles and blazing spheres of energy. More nightfolk soldiers. Reinforcements. And no longer cowering behind makeshift armor, nor trying to tear their gifted augments from their flesh.
My own reinforcements were not the last wave. I sputter, overcome. “Did you splinter off from Azarii’s forces?”
“We are Azarii’s forces,” Eridian counters, even as my mind spins. “When General Isek warned of the betrayal—many of Azarii’s own rebels having been in Thaane’s ranks—myself and others approached Azarii with a plea.”
“Others?” I echo, even as I feel a telekinetic tug on my shoulder.
“My lord,” says Neo, somehow free of the cell where I left him to rot. Presumably, he escaped confinement when Kori did, during the serpent attack.
In rapid succession, someone says, “My queen.” Disbelieving, I behold his sister, Lail, whose single gray eye steadily holds my own.
“Azarii said his rebellion was in the name of peace,” Neo says, gaze alight with barely controlled fury, overgrown ginger hair blowing wildly into his face from the desert winds.