Chapter 2 #2
His hand clamped down with sufficient force to dent both armor plating and the ribs beneath it.
One soldier got ripped free from his stealth gear and slammed into the cliff, where he collapsed motionless.
Eight lay motionless, twelve remained.
The next wave switched tactics.
They shot darts aimed at paralyzing, which zipped through the air.
They threw knives targeted at the wild-haired man’s tendons.
Idan brushed most aside with contemptuous ease, and the few that landed bounced harmlessly from his spectral body shield.
Two more fell. Then another.
The tight formation disintegrated into sheer panic.
One of them stumbled as he shouted frantic, desperate pleas into his comm systems.
‘Requesting emergency rescue. Ex-fil us right fokkin’ now!’
The ship above responded with an attack rather than liberation.
A barrage of laser missiles streaked downward, glowing projectiles igniting the air and carving molten channels into the earth.
Idan stretched out a palm and redirected each of the roaring trajectories, turning them on the hapless soldiers.
The more intrepid assailants, perhaps goaded by their unseen boss in the skies, surged again at Idan.
He took an inhale, then pursed his lips to let out a subsonic whistle, one that echoed through the ley lines of the extensive massif range.
The assailants kept coming, but in between their maddening rushes and weapons fire, he caught the sound of thundering across the cliffs, heading toward him.
Moments later, a massive bellow sounded, reverberating with such power the mountainside shook.
Idan twisted for a moment and grinned at the sight of the massive basilisk bull heaving and snorting on a ridge above.
Shuaqagec, you bastard, took your time. I need your help, old friend. Take on the ground invaders, I’ll eviscerate their vessel.
The massive creature pawed the ground, shaking its massive head and tusks.
It then charged.
Crags exploded. Soil tore open, as it lay waste to the rest of the combatants, who were scrambling and screaming to get away from the beast.
As Shuaqagec trampled and gored, Idan leaped away from the fray and landed on a rock formation where he placed both hands on a boulder half-buried in the ground.
The rock groaned as he lifted it with shocking ease.
He hurled the massive stone high into the churning atmosphere.
It spun through the air, blowing through the corvette’s weakened stealth barrier.
Metal shrieked as the boulder pierced the field and lodged into an exposed engine intake.
Seconds later, an almighty explosion tore through the sky in a violent blossom of fire and shrapnel.
Metal buckled, panels ripped free, and flames engulfed the craft as super-heated wreckage rained down in burning fragments that scorched through the cloud and atmosphere.
The last remaining soldiers fled in wild panic, stumbling across the open ground.
The broken shell of the corvette spun downward, consumed by the fueled inferno.
Debris rained down even as Idan raised a hand.
His spectral shield extended above and around him, Shuaqagec and his animals, causing the pieces of scorching iron to disintegrate.
The screeching carcass of the vessel struck the ocean with a thunderous crash.
Water exploded upward in a column of white steam, pouring over the surface as the stricken ship boiled and sank beneath the waves.
When the sea eventually settled, the wreck had completely disappeared into the depths.
Silence returned to the cliffs.
Idan rolled his shoulders with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had finally resolved a tedious inconvenience.
He strode to the harrumphing beast and reached a hand out to stroke its snout.
Sante, I appreciate your help.
The bull nuzzled its nose into his hand.
Pity you go into basilisk musth in a few weeks, and your aggression will be savage. Fact, you won’t even recognize me until you calm down. Still, I won’t miss you because you always smell like a thousand male goats in a pen during mating season.
Shuaqagec gave a snort of faux indignation, whisked its tail, tossed its huge tusks and antlers, and sauntered off with a self-satisfied trot.
Idan’s lips quirked. See you soon, my friend.
He glanced toward his flock and whistled, the sound carrying over the veld.
The sheep lifted their heads and ambled after the prowling man as he led them away.
The world resumed its rhythm.
Idan adjusted his cloak and continued along the cliff path.
His staff tapped against the earth, guiding his herd farther into the wilderness as though the chaos had been nothing more than a passing gust of insignificance.
Later that day, Idan set a hunk of meat on a spit, turning it with slow hands as the fire threw up blue and orange-tongued flames.
When it was done, scorched on the outside, rare on the inside, the way he liked, he ate.
He accompanied the chunk of the salted, spiced venison with bread he baked himself and bitter kale harvested from his small holding.
As he savored his meal, he sat on his haunches, eyes sweeping the sunset-drenched vista, ever vigilant.
A tremble went through the air, and he paused, sensing a new presence materializing from within the whipping cold zephyr.
Who the fokk would be becoming this way in this windswept wilderness?
Sure enough, seconds later, a silhouette glimmered into view in the gully below.
He did not walk so much as un-spool from the horizon, a bent figure in a threadbare cloak, long wild hair like ash, eyes bright as stars.
There was a gait to him that gave Idan pause.
He rose as the man limped the last few meters to the fence by the hut and leaned on it, appearing exhausted and out of breath.
Idan crossed his hands over his chest and studied the stranger, his senses, including his Ssignakht, going off.
With a twist of his mouth, he turned his back on the visitor and shifted to his fire where he plated bread and meat, plus a horn of milk.
He moved back to the man still panting by the enclosure and extended the bounty.
The older man nodded his thanks and sank to the ground, wolfing the food.
Idan returned to his spot by the open hearth, and the pair ate in silence, with the shepherd’s eyes still scanning the view.
The older man would speak when he was ready.
However, it came as a surprise when the newcomer muttered, not aloud, but into Idan’s neural cortex.
You fed me, so I’ll leave you a blessing.
Idan’s eyes narrowed on his uninvited guest. He huffed, eyes hard as flint. There are no blessings in this place, only wind, storms, and well-earned labor. Who are you?
I’m the echo of the ages and the spark of the eternity to come, and I’ll bestow you with a token regardless, the older man insisted.
In milliseconds, he shifted with uncharacteristic speed, streaking like lightning to where Idan sat, reaching across the spit, and placing two fingers on his brow.
The touch burned, yet it froze Idan’s limbs where he crouched.
He scarcely had time to register his shock when the octogenarian moved his hand to Idan’s chest.
Where a distinct glyph sat raised and dark, in the shape of an intricate Third Eye.
It pulsed, glowing and shifting with contained potency.
The older adult’s finger found the apex above the central curve of the marking, where light fractured through a gem-shaped etching like a sliver of dawn through glass.
The visitor’s eyes narrowed.
‘A Sacran symbol. Few bear it now, fewer still with the vertex jewel,’ he muttered. ‘That rare design marks a bloodline that is now extinguished. A fallen House, cast from the Seventh Heaven.’
Idan’s jaw tightened, and his hands curled into fists.
What house?
The stranger stepped closer, and the air around him held still, lips pursed with no answer.
Instead, he pushed his finger harder on the sigil, and a host of images flooded the shepherd’s mind.
A crown of ash, tapestries torn, seraphic storms that roared with thunder.
A parade of celestial monarchs descending on staircases of solidified light, their robes woven from the silk of dying stars.
He perceived citadels of bone floating in a sea of mercury where ivory towers pierced the bellies of clouds and thrones carved from the bleached carcasses of primordial titans.
Then the radiance fractured.
He witnessed the sky split like parchment, bleeding gold as warrior-deities clashed with blades of concentrated celestial flare.
Great wings of shadow eclipsed entire solar systems, and chariots of living fire collided in the vacuum, shedding sparks that birthed new nebulae.
The vibration of a myriad silver trumpets announced the fall of a throne, the resonance crushing mountains into granules and turning oceans into steam.
He navigated the transition from divinity to dust.
His eyes parsed a king stripped of his mantle, cast down into the dirt of a thousand mortal worlds, carrying nothing but the gravity of an eternal, lonely crown.
The shepherd tried to wrench himself free, to shove back against the vision.
With the same stubborn potency that let him kill beasts and break men.
However, the older man’s magi strength was an unbreakable lever, his will a momentous anchor.
When the stranger eventually pulled back, Idan was left gasping in harsh, ragged rushes of air.
The stranger smirked as the veil over his soul was stripped away.
Idan’s mouth twisted as recognition hit.
You! he rasped into the older man’s mind. I thought that you vanished into the scorched dimensions of The Cinder-Reliquary, for eternity.
Never, the elder growled, his voice a landslide of gravel and ancient spite. Not with my throne in the hands of traitors.
I’ve no interest in your royal seat, so leave me be.
Not now, when I have a specific use for you.
Idan’s jaw tightened. Why would you need anything from me?
I need your potency to reclaim my crown.
The dark, long-haired man recoiled, a visceral surge of disbelief and horror slamming into his gut, for that was the last thing any living soul fokkin’ needed.
If I refuse?
The older man’s smile never reached his eyes. I will decimate this world and the people you now protect, Simi’Ren Idan Caliostheles.
For a heartbeat, the name roiled in the wild-haired shepherd’s soul.
He had long shed it along with the titles, the honors, and the false esteem of his former life.
I go by Idan these days, he growled.
The older man cocked his head. Sawa, Idan.
He moved a step closer and sent a vision to the core of Idan’s mind and soul.
It was of a woman he didn’t recognize.
Yet she appeared wrapped in light, her beauty so stunning his heart lurched.
Who is she?
‘A gift. Your destiny or perhaps even your doom,’ the old man murmured. ‘She’s entwined in your future and mine. When you see her, know that I will be on her heels. To either demand your obedience or to snatch back that god-power I gave you, if you refuse to serve me.’
With his business done, the stranger raised a hand and glimmered away, becoming a suggestion in the wind, his form unraveling into a shower of gold motes.
Fokk you, Idan snarled under his breath, surging to his feet and stretching the limbs that the older man froze.
A hard knot of stormy anger gathered in him.
He paced before his hut, a long-haired savage beneath a wild setting sky, as the fur on the frame by the barn flapped like a soft, accusing flag.
He fought memories of distant wars, courts, claimants, betrayal, and entrapment even as his third eye thrummed over his chest.
At some point, he cursed long and hard, narrowing his gaze at the horizon, where mountains cut the heavens, and the sea churned and heaved.
His days and nights of relative peace were fokkin’ over.