46. FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SIX
NIKLAUS
Location: Steila
Niklaus waited on the warehouse roof. Looking out over Steila from the edge of the sea was a sight to inspire song. But the battle at hand set such fear into his bones, he failed to enjoy it.
A snake of black smoke still rose into the tangerine sky from the site where the plate shields had detonated.
An act of the Fates had saved them: they should have died.
Gooseflesh prickled Niklaus’s skin as he helplessly watched the Nelfinden front line collide with the Tera’thians.
Each side seemed as scrambled as the next, and the confusion compounded as the lights rimming the edges of the city blinked out.
A full Aetech shutdown. Dex hadn’t been lying. Niklaus could scarcely believe it. Nothing would ever be the same after this. Everything that he’d built his life on was about to crumble… and he’d never felt more exhilarated. When he returned, his mother would be—
An ear-splitting crack shook the world around him.
Niklaus flattened himself against the roof with a yelp.
Move. Move. Move. He clambered on knees and elbows toward the building’s northern edge.
Just weeks ago, he’d never witnessed an explosion.
Now, it seemed every inch of his flesh held taut in preparation for the next.
Niklaus found his feet, even as he was sure the building would crumble beneath him.
He might not be a fighter, but he’d proven he was no coward.
The adobe held firm. Smoke ascended in dark sheets on the building’s east side.
The frantic murmurs, shouts, and footsteps of a jostling crowd rose from below.
Niklaus rushed to the rim and peered into the street.
Civilians poured through the gaping mouth that had opened in the wall, some carrying children or even elderly people toward uncertain safety.
On the rise beyond the city, the combat spilled over the dunes. Blades flashed red in the sunset. Bodies swarmed and thrashed. Screams echoed over the grasses and down towards the dock. Niklaus watched over it all, hoping and praying, and feeling—beyond anything—entirely useless.
A scraping and thunking sounded from the ladder on the building’s eastern side, opposite the one they’d ascended.
Footsteps. He counted, waiting for a second set, but none came.
One assailant, perhaps, he could handle without calling down into the stairwell to warn Calver.
He peered over the eastern ledge, only to come face to face with the mute.
Niklaus released a breath and held out a hand to help him up, but Calver flung himself over the wall, hands and dowaga blackened with blood. Niklaus let his hand fall lamely to the side.
“Success?”
Calver nodded, but there was something in his eyes that led Niklaus to believe the success would be short-lived.
“And you came back up here because?”
“Someday, we’re going to turn your cryptic messaging into coherent communication.” Niklaus thumped him on the back. This time, he didn’t slide away when Niklaus let his hand linger.
“That’s not a command I’d usually argue with, were you not blatantly trying to separate yourself from us.”
“Would you argue that the rest of this engagement has been circumspect?”
Emptiness clouded his brown eyes. His brow was furrowed with focus. His breaths were tight and measured.
“Well then. Good luck,” Niklaus whispered.
Calver turned away to face the smoke rising from the ridgeline.
Because the ladder on the building’s southern side had been destroyed, Niklaus descended the one along the east, where the warehouse butted against the rocks overlooking the Casowhatan.
The ocean gurgled and roared as it lapped the rocks below.
Niklaus held tight to the spray-slicked rungs as he progressed toward the thin walkway separating the building from the ocean at ground level.
He hesitated midway down. Calver was hiding something.
It was absolutely none of Niklaus’s business.
Especially considering the way Niklaus had acted the night after the last rally.
But Niklaus had never been good at keeping his nose where it belonged.
Calver had asked him to follow Dex towards safety…
and, technically, he already had. Calver had not specified how far.
Exhausted as Niklaus might be, he could stand to hang on to this ladder a little while longer.
CALVEROUS
As Niklaus disappeared over the roof’s ledge, Calver unhitched the dowaga from his back and steadied himself. He’d battled with the Survivor for nearly a ten-day. Now a new battle awaited him, but this one he’d trained for eight years to meet.
Calver pushed back the Survivor’s veil with a void mantra. Be gone.
{Do you recall nothing?}
VOID.
The creature rippled. {I’ll wait for your plea, when he has you on the brink of defeat.}
With its descent came a rushing return of sensory stimuli.
Salty wind against his skin. The sting of sweat in his eyes.
The world was brighter, louder, and thrumming with the rapid beat of his heart.
Calver waited: watching smoke spill into the blood-red sky, hoping he hadn’t been wrong in the belief that Cul’Mon would come for him here, wishing he’d given more of himself to Dex, to Niklaus. To Fankalo.
A minute passed. Then another. With every creeping second, a stone grew in Calver’s gut.
He might have gotten it all wrong. Perhaps Cul’Mon hadn’t put a priority on his capture with the battle imminent.
And perhaps Raimee had changed her mind.
He’d asked her to do a reckless, stupid thing. She’d probably come to her senses.
Or she might have been killed in the blast. Or by Thyatira before he turned her over to the Tohatu. It was just as likely she’d died in her sleep from the slow energy drain he inflicted on her.
Calver’s insides shriveled. Kretch, was he a fool.
There were few things dumber than conspiring to topple an empire, but surely pivoting plans on how to topple that empire on a whim—and all because he had fucking butterflies for someone he had no future with—was one of those things.
A sudden scraping sound raised the hairs on his arms. His grip tightened on his weapon, and he let his consciousness seep into the void.
Death.
Destruction.
Failure at every turn.
In his mind’s eye, an indigo-uniformed body flipped over the lip of the western wall and onto the roof.
Moments later, the vision came to fruition.
A Tera’thian soldier joined Calver on the roof, unhitched his steel, and fell into a fighter’s stance.
Then another. And then one larger than the others by half.
Familiar in the worst kind of way, the sight set Calver rigid.
Cul’Mon, Tera’thian Tohatu, master of legions, murderer of slaves, rose before him.
Their eyes locked, like serpents intertwined.
“My boy,” Cul’Mon rumbled in the invaders’ tongue. “How you have grown.”
Calver lifted his dowaga. Cul’Mon’s attendants fanned out to either side, shining dowagas raised.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d see through my decoy. And I wouldn’t have believed the Red Wing would anticipate our interruption. But your victory ends here. I have reinforcements.”
He still expected Tera’thian victory. And if everything Calver sensed was true, he was right. No. No no no. Not today. Not after everything he’d risked.
“There is no other resolution. You know what we’ve planned. You will return with me now.”
Calver searched his memories from the void: the Tera’thians’ plan to take Nelfindar, following the change in Tera’thian regime.
Their overwhelming odds. The weaknesses they’d sown in Nelfindar’s governance.
Despair wormed its way around the gleaming ball of hope Calver had held onto since Raimee first said she needed him. With it, the mind-djinn returned.
{You have no destiny beyond the one we’ve forged, Calverous. I’ve told you again and again. Release, and let me finish this.}
It wanted him to go with them. Willingly. If anything could have been Calver’s guiding light, it was doing whatever the Survivor did not want.
No.
The creature clenched harder with each passing moment. The world unfocused as Calver turned to the battle inward. The suck of water lapping against the cliff face below became so loud it was nauseating. Darkness saturated the corners of his vision as the pressure compounded. His hold began to slip.
{Answer to me.}
No.
{You’ve always been mine.}
I found a new destiny.
The creature shivered and retracted, and a realization struck Calver so suddenly, it cleared the darkness like a northern wind. He’d been fighting the Survivor for so long because he hadn’t wanted to become it. Because he didn’t want to do the things it did.
He’d never fought the Survivor because he wanted to stay himself. But ever since stumbling on a sea-kelp scholar in the depths of the Sharinash, and for as long as he’d wanted to stay himself—to stay alive—it had been easier to control it.
There was a version of him that needed to live beyond the Survivor’s intent for him. He would fight for that man.
The Survivor withered further, and the foreboding of Calver’s second sight ebbed.
Then, not twenty meters into thin air over the Casowhatan, a window opened in the sky—an unnatural thing, both completely devoid of light and also an abstract array of color.
The sight of it turned Calver’s stomach.
It flashed silver and dissolved into nothing, revealing a silhouette against the burning sky.
Raimee’s limp body arced backward and plummeted into the sea.
Calver’s heart went with it. Definitely not the plan.
His gaze snapped to Cul’Mon, whose eyes were fixed on the space where she had fallen.
“Retrieve her,” he uttered to his men, low voice tight with authority.
Shit.