Chapter 2
Chapter two
Get the Girl.
Dylan Viridis
The smoke from the explosives and the rubble of the maze wall caught in my throat, and I coughed uncomfortably.
She was here, a heap in the dust and smog.
After months, I was finally able to rescue her.
Finally able to rip her away from that monster’s grasp.
It took the beginning of a rebellion, the first blow in the coming war, to separate her from her monster and give me a chance to get her to safety.
Not exactly ideal. But necessary, in more ways than one.
The dust blurred my vision, but it was her, undoubtedly.
As it settled and I neared her cautiously, even though I knew she was alone in here, and Fredrick was guarding our rear for any opportunistic True North scum not currently being engaged, the caution wasn’t for them; it was for the maze.
This enchanted thing moved. It killed. It took out one of our recon-team last week.
We couldn’t get the body back. The family won’t ever get to say goodbye, perform their rites.
War was deadly, I knew that, but I guess I didn’t expect the first death to be the result of an enchanted lump of stone.
I hated enchantment magic; it was twisted, made everything all wrong, like a maze brought to life to trap and kill, or an innocent young girl bound to a deadly psychopath and thinking she’s in love.
“Percy, baby?” I asked softly.
I couldn’t help being soft with her. I had known she was the one the moment we met.
There was something special about her. Something unique.
More than just her eyes. Her shifter heritage was obvious, but then the reveal that she was the great-granddaughter of Nikolas Auster - that was magic.
It was like the fates had hit me across the head with the obvious.
Our strings were entwined from the start: Auster and Viridis, heirs to our clans, allies for centuries. We were meant to be.
Percy was meant for me.
She was smaller than I remembered. More delicate. She looked fragile, her lips slightly parted, her unique eyes closed, and one of her legs was pinned beneath a large stone. I reached out, almost scared to touch her, as if she might disappear with the slowly fading smoke.
It had been too long. How many months now? Three, four? It felt like a lifetime.
“Percy, girl?” I said, shaking her shoulder.
No response.
Quickly, I wrapped my arm under her back, gripping at the base of her neck and lifted her chest to my ear. Her heart was beating strongly.
“That’s my girl,” I praised.
I felt dampness on my fingertips at the back of her neck, and I pushed my fingers through her tangled blonde hair and felt the stickiness of blood.
The injury wasn’t bleeding heavily, but she had taken a blow to the head at some point.
“Can we hurry the fuck along. Please. Fuck!” Micky snarled.
I turned to watch him scratching at his wrist. He was a nervous thing. Made me anxious, too, to be around someone as twitchy as Micky. His short hair stuck to his head with sweat. Sweat caused by his nerves, more than any physical exertion that was needed to get us here.
“What’s got you all liver?” Andreas laughed, spitting on the ground. “Man up. This is war.”
The two of them hated each other. Well, Andreas hated Micky.
Micky, the poor sod, was as northern as they come.
Not his fault; he was Ardens’ blood. You couldn’t help where you come from.
He looked northern too, he had that dark hair, a dishevelled feel to him, like he knew what hunger and frostbite felt like.
But Micky was loyal, I could count on him to have my back, follow commands, even if he was shitting himself the whole time, and even if I’d rather not have him on a battlefield.
Micky was the kind of guy who should have stayed behind a desk, answering a phone or something.
But he knew Ardens. Had even worked on the estate the previous winter.
I needed him on this mission as much as I needed Idonea.
Andreas was House Halvorsen. Maybe it was his House that made him so grating, so pompous.
But after Oskar’s betrayal and the way he was executed, Halvorsen was on the right side of history, now.
Arvid was essentially acting as the next in line, while Orion was kept busy with girls, horses, and whatever else it took to keep the idiot distracted.
“Give it a rest, Andreas,” Fredrick called, with his back to us, watching for any True North scum that might have followed us in.
Fredrick was gruff in the kind of way that a man his age, with his scars, tended to be.
He was quiet. Had seen probably too much.
The type that was raised in violence and then made a career out of it.
Probably because he didn’t have any other skills than being able to take and throw a punch, every war needed the likes of Fredrick.
“You don’t have to worry about it, Fred,” Micky said, “Ain’t no way anyone’s coming for us here.”
“Why’s that? Eh, Micky, you scared of some enchanted stone?” Andreas laughed, “Fucking northerner, superstitious nonsense—”
The ground began to churn beneath our feet, cutting off Andreas mid-insult.
“Hades, no,” Micky cried.
“Would you shut the fuck up. It’s just stone,” Andreas began, before a wall shot up through the earth, like some titan escaping Tartarus. Up and up, it went, taller than all the rest.
It cut Andreas off from us. Separating him.
“D, we’ve gotta get the girl and get gone,” Micky yelled, panic causing him to screech.
I agreed as the ground continued to rumble.
“Fredrick, our exit?” I called as I moved to Percy’s trapped leg, squatting to heave the stone from her. Before I scooped Percy as carefully as I could into my arms, resting her head against my shoulder.
She was lighter than I expected. She was always so full of sass, small but with the type of personality that made her seem bigger, braver, and stronger.
But really, she was just a small thing. She needed protection.
She might have been the start of all this, the symbol we needed to bring Borealis to its knees, but she wasn’t strong, wasn’t big.
Brave, yeah, she was fierce, it was part of the reason I loved her, but that only meant she needed more protection — protection from herself and her strong-headedness.
“Clear, still, not sure for how long,” he replied.
“ANDREAS!” I called, “CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
“Yeah,” I heard him faintly.
“Are you good?” I asked.
“He’s as good as dead, and so are we,” Micky answered.
“Enough, Micky,” I warned. Panic never helped anyone.
“I’m fine,” I heard him answer, but he wasn’t in his usual mood, or offering his usual commentary, and he didn't even utter one insult to Micky. He was scared.
“We’ll get you out. Just stay put, we need to get the target out. We’ll be back for you. Hold tight,” I told him. “Fredrick, you’re in the lead, Micky, you’re covering our tail,” I gave the orders.
“You’re leaving me!” I heard Andreas scream in anger.
“No choice, hold tight,” I commanded as we began to move.
Fuck Andreas. He was expendable. Percy was everything. We were here for her. She was everything to our cause, our mission, our future.
I hadn’t taken more than a half dozen steps before the rumbling of the ground grew violent again, and a new wall burst out from the earth, directly in front of Fredrick, knocking him onto his backside.
The sudden quiet that descended with the rising of the wall was eerie; the noise of the fighting between True North and Ardens' forces was reduced to a distant, dull murmur.
“I told you this was a bad idea! A stupid, deadly idea!” Micky cried behind me as Fredrick got back to his feet.
Before I could think of our next move, Andreas began screaming. The kind of agony-filled screaming that reminded me of when one of the dogs got kicked by a horse in my grandfather’s stables a few summers back. It didn’t end well for the dog.
The ground shook again, and the giant wall that separated Andreas from us cratered back into the ground, revealing Andreas.
His mouth was open in a silent scream. His left leg was gone from mid-thigh down, crushed between two walls. Severed.
I retched and turned away, covering Percy’s eyes, though she was unconscious. It was instinctive to hide her sight from something so gruesome.
Blood spurted from his thigh, painting the grey wall with streaks of red, a large pool around the stub of flesh and protruding, splintering bone. Even his tactical trousers had been torn through by the wall.
“Micky,” I said.
He wasn’t only our inside man; he was carrying our medical supplies.
“What do you expect me to do?” Micky asked, his voice almost a cry. “I don’t know how to deal with that. I’ve had as much training as you,” he protested, stepping back, shaking his head.
So much for being trusted to follow commands. I’d rather it was him missing a leg and bleeding to death, though I wasn’t sure Andreas would help him either.
“Micky, get yourself together. We need you. Andreas needs you,” I told him.
“Fuck him. He would shoot me himself if he thought he’d get away with it. I told you we shouldn’t have entered here. I told you.” He screamed.
“Fredrick,” I called.
He ran forward, pushing Micky to the ground and ripping the medical backpack from him.
“Scared shitless,” Fredrick said, shaking his head. “This isn’t the fight for you, boy,” he told him.
Fredrick was older than me, Micky, and Andreas. He disagreed with us ‘kids’ being on the battlefield. Said it wasn’t our fight. But he was wrong. It was our fight. It was our future we were fighting for.
Micky allowed him to take the pack. He was quick to get back to his feet, spinning on the spot.
“Where’s, where’s, where’s the exit, where’s it gone?” He yelled.
The caw of a crow distracted me as I looked up to see the bird circling above.
“Calm down, Micky. See that? Idonea can show us the way out,” I explained.
He stopped spinning but shook his head.