fifty
Everything was crashing around Mira, and she didn’t know what to do.
While the exovacuation was underway without much issue, there remained the death of Hannu, the missing Relics, and now… Ramaron was unconscious, and Sulim had almost been killed by the man who had helped give Mira life.
Sulim was mum about much of what she had seen.
All Mira gleaned, once she was at the scene, was that Nerilis had done something to Ramaron and had snatched Sulim’s necklace containing the zatbah stone that Mira had given her.
He called it the Third Piece. What does that mean?
She would have asked Ramaron, but he was indisposed—hell, he wasn’t even on Cerilyn anymore.
One of Master Vallahar’s assistants took him back to Yahzen, where he would be safe.
While Mira was grateful, she was worried that she was now completely alone in understanding the metaphysical machinations of this now dying planet.
Because Cerilyn was dying. The jungle plants may have been green and blowing in the breeze, but the earth violently shook every hour, and even someone only on her first assignment in the priesthood like Mira could feel the decentralizing pulsing through the air as the Relics were forced together.
We don’t have much time. She told Olma as much, who claimed that everyone was moving as quickly as possible in the evacuation process.
But without a host of julah to help with instantaneous teleportation, it would take several more hours to get the civilians willing to go off the planet.
Only then could mercenaries go. I will take Sulim off this planet personally.
Honestly, Mira had a couple of teleportation trips in her, but she wasn’t using them until it was time.
She carried the staff wherever she went, using it both as a symbol of her power and authority, as well as a crutch to tie herself to as she suffered bouts of panic and needed something to steady her breathing.
It was also the only thing she had left of Ramaron now that he was gone.
Alive, I suppose, but gone. Every time she brought this up, Sulim was on the verge of mentioning something, but never made it far enough to utter a word.
There was always something else to worry about, instead.
“I heard about what happened.” Mira came upon Sulim and Sonall in one of the large hallways on the second floor. Although they did not touch, his concern for Sulim was poignant enough to make Mira stop her approach. “Are you all right? I mean, clearly you survived, but—”
“I’m fine,” she interrupted. “We’ve got work to do before this whole place goes.”
Her candor set him off balance. “I’m going with you. Nobody should be by themselves.”
“I can take care of myself. Protect Kema, if you need someone to fuss over.”
That was Mira’s cue to make herself known. “No, I agree. Nobody should be alone right now.” Especially you, she amended in her mind. “Both of you should return to the docking bay to help with—”
She stopped. So did time itself.
Even so, the other two in front of her turned their heads, a reckoning on Sulim’s fair complexion while Sonall looked like he had been waiting for something as strange as this to happen.
Yet while their limbs moved through the invisible sea of sludge around them, Mira concentrated her sorcery through the stave and dispelled the clicking, crowing sounds that had amassed around them.
“The hell is that?” Sulim hissed.
Mira swung the stave around, illuminating the air with the sight she used when someone had recently died. Sure enough, golden butterflies burst into the air.
“Shit!” Mira followed the trail of butterflies down the hall and realized that their drunken, somewhat crazed routes were amassing near the entrance to the warrens, where the infirmary, the smithy, and the crypts of those not given to the earth were kept. “Do you see that thing?”
She knew the odds were not good. For what she beheld at the end of the hall was a Shadow, a giant, skulking mass of souls that had gotten lost on their way to the Void.
For all I know, Hannu is one of them. Mira stepped in front of the humans and brandished her stave while they held up their weapons, as if that would do a damn thing to the creature that was tall enough to touch the high ceilings and strong enough to crush them all.
“I see it!” Sulim cried, much to Mira’s disbelief. “What is it?”
Shit. That was not a good sign, was it? “A Shadow,” she explained.
“They’re what’s created when souls get lost on the way to the Void… then, they find each other. I’ve only seen a couple before in my life.”
Studying them had been a part of her advanced spiritual studies in the Academy, and when a Shadow was located on a war-torn planet full of forgotten refugees, Mira joined her advisor, Master Obello, to see it for themselves.
Humans can’t see them. Well, they weren’t supposed to be able to see them.
So for Sulim and Sonall to have a forbidden gift…
She would ponder that later. Because the Shadow had locked a hundred golden eyes on them, and the fluttering of wings pushed it forward down the hall.
“Go! Run!” Mira shouted at Sulim and Sonall. “I have no idea what it might do to you!”
Neither of them moved, despite the hulking creature stumbling down the hallway. “What are you going to do?” Sonall asked, lowering his firearm. “Kill it?”
Mira didn’t have an answer for him. She was too busy holding up her stave and creating a barrier around them, hoping to give the humans enough time to run for it.
“I’m not leaving without you!” Sulim informed Mira. “Teleport us out of here!”
If there are Shadows in the fortress, it won’t matter where we go.
And Mira could only “kill” one insofar as she could dismantle it back to its basic pieces—lost souls that she had once taken vows to protect.
They’ll just amass again. Or, even worse…
They would be destroyed. A fate worse than natural death.
“Mira!”
That was her cue to lower her shield and grab both Sulim and Sonall by their sleeves.
She could have taken them back to her apartment, or her office, but neither was protected from evil like the inner sanctum.
And the Temple in town was too far away from the chaos that they must oversee.
We must go where survival is highest. Mira only hoped that there was no one down in the inner sanctum.
Who knew what she might lead down there?
“Holy shit!” Sonall stumbled over the leftover debris of Joiya’s statue, acting as if he were about to step on Hannu’s corpse.
As he regathered his bearings, bending over and catching his breath, he must have realized that the body was gone—one of Master Vallahar’s men had already returned it to Yahzen for an autopsy and proper burial.
All that remained from that morning’s scene was the broken rubble strewn across the floor. “What the hell is going on?”
Mira reluctantly released Sulim from her hold so she could secure the stave in her hands. “The planet is dying. For a Shadow to be made already, it must be composed of the recently deceased… and those who are already disappearing into the Void.”
“They’re not ‘disappearing into the Void’ if they’re here trying to attack us,” Sulim noted. “You acted surprised that he and I could see it. Why?”
“Because only julah can see Shadows. And even then, some are not attuned to the Void enough to see them. Untalented julah often can’t see them.”
“So, why can we see them?
Mira didn’t have an answer for Sulim, who stepped away to recollect herself. By then, Sonall knelt beside the broken statue and surveyed the damage as if seeing it for the first time.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that these are all signs that we’re fucked.”
Sulim turned on him before Mira could think of something to say. “Are you fine with that? Because I’m not.”
“Of course I’m not fine with it, zel! The point is that if there’s fuckall we can do about it, then shit, why fight it? Get us off this planet already.”
While Sulim countered his doomerism with her own flippant optimism, Mira was trapped between watching their aggressive hand gestures and replaying what he had called her in her head.
Zel… In Basic, it meant “darling,” or “beloved.”
A word of love exchanged between two people who had been together a long time, and who might even be together in death.
Sulim had not corrected him. She was more inclined to gripe about the nihilistic thoughts he always quaffed down like bad milk.
Does he often call her this? Mira knew they had dated before, but…
Ah, yes. Because this was the most important thing to think about while the world fell.
“I’ll get you out of here,” Mira said, addressing both. Sulim immediately shushed while Sonall slowly gave her his attention. “Both of you. I’ll get you to safety, then come back here to see this through with my father.”
“Where?” Sonall asked. “Anywhere you take us besides the evacuation ship will label us as deserters and could get us killed.”
“I’ll take you to Yahzen.”
“He’s right,” Sulim said, as if she hadn’t heard what Mira said. “We’ll be hunted down like dogs when this is over if we weren’t there until whatever end comes. We’re set up to be on the last ship off Cerilyn if we’re lucky. Wait…” She wrinkled her nose. “Yahzen?”
“Yes.” Mira was prepared to do it right now.
I could go there and come back. Carry them, even.
It would use up a lot of her strength, but adrenaline was as powerful at fueling sorcery as a good night’s rest.
“House Lerenan will take you in and set you up if I ask. My grandmother will see to it. The visas, money, everything. She’ll do it for me.”
She almost didn’t miss a beat. “You will be protected there. Especially if you stay together.”
“What’s that mean?” Sulim asked.
Mira only had eyes for Sonall, who remained silent, his big blue eyes turning into crescent-shaped slits that determined whether Mira meant what she said.
“Asha.” For the second time in minutes, Sulim was addressed with a word that held more than one person’s love.