Shadow Assassins (The Second Realm Trilogy) (21 page)

The survivors of Moonriver Academy milled about the ruined school lot, not sure of what to do. Some abandoned the group, heading off to hopefully find their families. Chaos brewed and without any real leaders, order was going to break down fast if no one stepped in.

That was what worried Dante. With friends and family dead, the survivors of Moonriver Academy were on edge. Even the surviving teachers were in no position to lead their students; they looked just as broken as the others.

She tried to help people, tried to organize them together, or at least stay in one main group. People snarled at her in their grief, they cursed her hybrid nature.

“Why should we listen to you?” a familiar voice asked.

Dante looked over. A seventeen year old girl with long blond hair challenged her, expression haughty and angry despite the devastation around her. Dante felt that all too familiar anger rise up. This was the mage she had argued with and would have fought with if someone hadn't have pulled her away and sent her to Dirk.

The challenge, combined with the memory of Dirk, caused a wave of anguish and rage to rise up.

“We need to organize,” she said, as calmly as possible. “No good will come of us just milling about and who knows if more knights will come!”

A boy beside her piped up, his voice high with panic.
“If more come, we're as good as dead!”

Others around him murmured their agreement.

Encouraged by their replies, she nodded. “Right. Which is why we need to organize! If we stay here as we are, we might as well go and throw ourselves into the funeral pyres with our friends!”

Her statement did what she intended – shocked everyone around her into silence. She felt the stares of her peers upon her as they took in what she said.

Then the blond girl spoke up. “If we follow
you
, surely we will end up in a pyre faster – or dead with no one to care for us! We were kind enough to burn the dead knights, but do you think they'll be so kind to us?
They
dig mass graves for the opponents in battle!”

There was a low rumble of agreement and disgust. As the students followed the traditions of Moonriver Academy, many did not understand the foreign burial rituals of the Emeralde Kingdom. To be buried in the ground after death was a thought that was disturbing to them. How would the spirit reach the heavens if the body was buried under the dirt?

The survivors around them started gathering together into two groups, one beside Dante and one beside the blond girl, called Kara by the people around her. Dante looked around. She wanted to
organize
, not divide into two clear parties!

She glared at Kara, then at the people beside her. “Don't you remember what just happened? Who died here? The Emeralde army
slaughtered
our fallen brothers and sisters! Are you really going to let them get away with that?”

“Alright, so what do
you
propose we do?” Kara sneered at her.

Dante glanced around her again, at everyone gathered. Her answer was dangerous and there was a chance that she would lose all support, but she had to say it.

“We go to King Emeralde himself.”

Her answer caused
an uproar. An explosion of protests followed, along with a minor explosion of support.

“Are you
insane?
” a tall, dark-skinned earth mage cried. “You'll be killed before you even cross over into the Emeralde Kingdom!”

“No, she's right!” called a half demon girl with one blue eye and one black eye. “The king must die!”

Dante hadn't specifically said that the king was who she was after, but the half demon made for a good point. As arguments erupted around her, Dante tried to rein control back in. When calling for them calmly didn't work, she let loose with a shout that cracked the air like thunder.

The people around her hesitated.

“I'm not suggesting we kill the king,” she said, carefully, ignoring the sounds of disgust and protest that began to rise up. “But the king surely is responsible.
His
knights destroyed the school,
his
knights killed our friends, all under
his
orders. Is he not responsible?”

More mixed shouts followed, with cries of support drowning the protests.

Kara shouted over the noise to be heard. “There is a more peaceful way to do this! If we all show up at his door looking for battle, we'll be killed on the spot. But if we march into his kingdom peacefully, with no intent to harm–”

“You will still be killed!” the same half demon girl shouted. “King Emeralde kills those who use magic and you suggest knocking on his door?”

“What else is there to do? You propose we storm into the kingdom for...for
regicide?
Do you even know what killing the king would mean?”

“A stop to the knights!”

Dante felt that the situation was going to spin out of control unless she stepped back in. Without any sort of organization, what this half demon girl was suggesting was a mob, an out of control mob bent on wild, uncontrolled killing. Not what she had in mind. Unfortunately, she couldn't get their attention with the frenzy they were in.

She glanced around,
then found a useful raised platform made out of destroyed castle rubble. She climbed the somewhat shaky rock stand and again shouted for attention.

“Listen to me!”

The chaotic arguments around her came to a sudden halt.

When she was sure that she had their attention, she spoke again. “
Listen
. We are the survivors of Moonriver Academy. We are lucky to have survived! But this is also all that our school has left. We can either petition for peace in a kingdom where they will surely kill us on sight or take more drastic measures. I'm
not
saying we kill everyone in the kingdom. There are innocent people there, just as innocent as our fallen brothers and sisters. They don't deserve to die any more than our friends did! But if we are to march into the Emeralde Kingdom, they may try to kill us.”

“What do you think we should do?” a particularly ordinary-looking boy asked.

“Let us go into the kingdom and kill those who get in our way – no more than that.” Dante hesitated over what she said next. She could feel her heart pounding wildly in her chest. “Then...we take the king. Make him stop his army and call them back. Force him to stop these meaningless attacks!”

“What if he won't cooperate?” the half demon girl asked, her lust for the king's spilled blood clear as day.

Dante hesitated again before looking the girl right in the eye. “Then we kill him.”

Sound exploded all around them, this time as the mob of people gathered together and cheered. A massive war cry started up, gathering speed as it spread to other groups of people who gathered to them.

“Death to the king! Death to the king!”

Dante stared down at the gathering rally, unable to believe what she had really just proposed. Killing King Emeralde meant destroying the Emeralde Kingdom in the process, politically speaking and possibly literally as well. It meant turning these kids before her, some of which who really
were
children, they were so young, and making them fight. It was something to unify what was left of the school, though, something to keep them together and from attempting to attack themselves.

There was just the problem of what to do with those who would protest their operation.

She shouted to the people below her for attention once again. “Those of you who do not wish for violence are welcome to join us. Come with us for the journey to the kingdom, and if you do not want to fight, go to El Flora. It's on the way and it's always neutral territory.”

El Flora was a metropolis near the Emeralde Kingdom. With its careful position of neutrality, it was never under the threat of the Emeralde Kingdom, even with Emeralde's army on the loose. As long as it remained neutral and didn't fight the kingdom, it was considered a sort of safe haven for those with nowhere else to go.

At least the protestors liked that idea. There was a general consensus spreading through the school: that they travel to the west and split up into two different parties, with the peaceful party seeking refuge in El Flora and the war party heading for the Emeralde Kingdom.

“Fine,” Kara spoke up. “If you lead the war party, I lead the peace party.”

Dante glanced at the blond girl, who, previously, she would have enjoyed beating into bloody submission. Now she nodded.

“Agreed.”



Evangeline watched from a distance as her sister had rallied the school into a wild frenzy. Dante had to be crazy. Going to
war?
Half of these kids wouldn't even be old enough to join the military in the First Realm and they were offering to put their lives on the line now.

She wanted to interfere, to stop her sister from going into dangerous battle, but she knew there was no stopping now. The
frenzy had built up so much that to try to stop them would mean a battle right here and now.

“What are they doing?” Kaleb
asked, his voice soft and weak from his half-transformed mishap earlier. He sat beside her, eying the rally with weary exhaustion.

“They're organizing for war.”

“What do we do?”

She shook her head. She didn't know what to do, now. Dirk had employed them on behalf of Moonriver Academy. Now there was neither a Dirk, nor a Moonriver Academy to answer to. Should they go home? They had no place in this war.

She glanced around and found the prince also watching the frenzied crowd. No, they
did
have a place in this war. They had all gotten involved with some party, somehow, that connected back to the war. Kaleb had the werecat tribe, Marco had the elf tribe. What did she have? The son of the man responsible.

Fear fluttered around in her belly. If they were rallying to kill the king, that meant they might turn on the prince as well. They had been kind to him before, but now?

The prince's life was in just as much danger as his father's was, now.

Flying on the back of a dragon was something Kaydee thought she would never experience. She sat in the ridiculous wooden carriage with Leta, peering out through the wooden square that qualified as a window. There was no glass pane, so the wind whipped through the carriage, until Leta insisted on closing the wooden covers over the window.

Darkness streamed into the carriage, interrupted by the thinnest beams of light from cracks in the wooden covers. Wind howled through, but with more noise than effect now. Leta reached into her endless bag and pulled a flint and a small lantern from the absurdly small bag. With a quick moment's work, she had the lantern lit, the tiny flame giving them dim light.

Kaydee didn't know how much time had passed, but soon enough, there was a knock on the side of the carriage.

“That would be Atrimalous, I'm guessing,” Leta said calmly.

The notion sounded ridiculous to Kaydee. They were hundreds of feet up in the air – not as high as an airplane might travel in the First Realm, but definitely high enough to cause some serious damage. How was Atrimalous just standing outside?

Leta opened the window cover when there was another knock at the door. Atrimalous was indeed standing outside the carriage. This time, the wind didn't howl into their carriage – it passed by calmly, raging only after passing over Atrimalous, as though he was a part of the little wooden structure.

“Come out here, Kaydee,” he called. “We're going to be hitting Aurialis soon and the sun is rising.
Same to you, Leta.”

“How?”
Kaydee asked, confused. She looked down at his feet and saw that he was floating in the air. How was that possible?

“Don't worry about how, but I've got you. You won't fall.”

It was perhaps the kindest thing she had heard him say in the short time she had been in his company, but it didn't do much to comfort her. If he wanted her to float in mid-air, he'd have better luck teaching this dragon how to do back flips.

“Trust me,” he said again. With his hood down, his face was totally calm, although those bright amethyst eyes still held the same intensity as always. He didn't seem threatening though, just...calm.

“Okay,” she said, heart pounding as she stood up.

He opened the door to the carriage and instead of having it blown completely off the side of the wood as she expected, it stayed there. The wind was calm around him, like a bubble of serenity.

“You're crazy!” Leta cried as Kaydee took a step out the carriage.

Kaydee didn't trust herself enough to just throw herself out of the carriage and hope that she floated. The rope ladder had been thrown out of the carriage with the wind and now it dangled precariously on the hooks that held it in place. She stood on the rope, feeling it sink beneath her feet as it held her up.

Atrimalous backed up and held out a hand. “Come on.”

She took a deep breath...and stepped out into the open air.

Her heart and the bottom of her stomach took a plunge, as though she had just leaped off of the dragon carelessly. Instead, she stood hundreds of feet above the ground, cushioned by what could only be described as the wind itself. It felt solid beneath her feet, but it shifted as she moved, as though she were stepping through sand.

“How is that possible?” she asked.

Atrimalous actually smiled then. It was the smallest motion in his lips, the smallest movement upwards, but for one split second, he had worn an amused grin. Then, more seriously, he said, “It's magic. Everything in this land is magic. Now come on. You'll have a great view from where we are.”

Atrimalous led and Kaydee followed behind him, as they made their way to the front of the carriage. He told her to sit at the front and she realized that the carriage was a modified horse carriage, with a spot to sit at the front for the driver. The dual-element mage sat beside her. Some distance away, James was leaning against the flat side of razor-sharp scales, looking perfectly at home atop the fearsome creature that defied the laws of gravity.

“We're coming up to Aurialis, girl! It's a beautiful sight!” James called out, his voice loud and clear over the wind.

She glanced around. The wind should have been ripping her to shreds at this altitude and speed, but Atrimalous kept the wind around them steady and at the minimum he could make. The wind whipped her hair around her face but she ignored it. All around her, the sky was beginning to light up as dawn approached. She couldn't see anything below her, but the smell and the taste of the air reminded her of the ocean. She could have been above the water for all she knew; she wasn't able to see below.

At James's command, Night Spark dipped a bit, losing a small amount of altitude. She gave a surprised cry as they sank, but remained steady.

“Don't worry, miss,” James said to her. “Night Spark and I are a perfect team. We'll keep you safe.”

She smiled back at him. She had no doubt in her mind that they would.



As dawn approached, the former students of Moonriver Academy organized fast. Dante and Kara worked well together, when they weren't trying to fight. The students were grouped by Dante and Kara into the separate parties – the war party that would take hold of King Emeralde and the peace party that would seek refuge in El Flora. Kara mostly had adults with her, the surviving faculty. Although they had once been her superiors, under this new order, they didn't mind being led by someone so young. The adults, in turn, helped organize what would be needed to travel.

Everything was coming together surprisingly fast. Everyone sifted through the rubble to find what had survived. Weapons had been salvaged from fencing classes or combat courses. The horses had survived the brutal assault. At first, there was debate about who would use the horses and who would not. In the end, Dante introduced the Shadow Assassins and Prince Erik to the others and gave them four of the few horses they had left.

“Whatever you decide to do from here, you're still guests of this school,” she said. “Dirk would have insisted that we treat you well.”

They tried to turn the horses down but Dante was insistent. As they obliged, she bounced around the next group where horses were needed. Carriages and carts were taken out of various holding places and prepared for use. Those who would ride were those too injured to walk on their own. They weren't given the chance to choose a side for themselves. Given their current condition, they could only go to El Flora to heal. Not even the healers among them could do much, spent as they were. The healers were exhausted as they flitted from group to group, healing what they could.

Supply carts were drawn up, filled with what food could be salvaged and other supplies needed for the journey. Some of the survivors still had their book bags on them and the books were ditched in place of medical items that had been salvaged. The newly made medic bags were then given to the spent healers.

The sunrise bathed the ruins in its fiery glow, giving the land sudden light. Now Dante had a better look at her soldiers. Dirty, tattered and torn, the people who had agreed to fight with her looked as though they had already been through enough. Yet, despite the torn clothing and injuries, they looked to her as the leader they saw her to be. It gave her hope.

As daybreak grew into mid-morning, someone above her gave a shout.

“Dragon!
Dragon!
”

There was screaming as others caught sight of it.

Dragon?
She turned looking to where others were pointing. Dragons were rare enough in the Aeriad mountain range, where they belonged to the dragon riders. In the wild, randomly flying about? It was almost unheard of.

The proof was right in front of her, though. She could only see a shadow at first, but then she saw the giant body of a golden-scaled dragon. It was a massive creature and it was coming down from the sky.

There was a scramble as people hurried to clear the area below it. It wasn't as though they could scare the dragon off or just tell it to land somewhere else, so they moved everything below it. The horses gave panicked cries as they tried to bolt, but most were tethered in place either to the carriage or the rubble, out of the dragon's landing path.

It was only when the dragon was almost at ground level that Dante
saw the absurd little carriage on its back.

The dragon landed with a great and terrible
thud
that shook the wooden carriages and threatened to topple the people and the horses over. Instead of attacking or even roaring, the dragon calmly lowered its long neck to the ground. A man hopped off of the great creature, while another man helped two women to the ground.

One of the women glanced around nervously. “I think we made a bit of a scene...”

There was an excited squeal from behind Dante. She looked back and saw her twin running towards the new people.

“Kaydee!”

The woman who had spoken glanced around until she saw Evangeline. Before she could say anything in reply, she had been tackled by the angel-demon hybrid, almost knocked over in her excitement.

“How did you
find
us?” Evangeline asked as she squeezed her friend.

The two other Shadow Assassins joined them. They looked just as bruised and battered as the rest of the survivors here, but they smiled.

“Glad to see you alive,” Marco said wryly, smiling a bit.

Kaleb, on the other hand, said nothing and just pulled them all into a hug.

“Alright, enough with the touchy-feely stuff!” was Marco's protest a moment later.



Kaydee couldn't remember the last time she felt this relieved to be around her friends, or the last time she had felt so happy. Seeing her fellow Assassins made her feel safer than anything else had in a long time. Instead of remembering being captured and spending a horrible amount of time on that slave ship, she remembered her friends and the jokes they cracked, the fun they had and even the jobs they had taken on. It seemed so normal, so ordinary in comparison to everything she had been dragged through.

She felt her new companions watching her, curiously, so she got the attention of her friends and introduced everyone. Gesturing to her new companions, she added, “They've been real good to me, with helping me find you.”

Kaleb took on role of the leader as he thanked them. In truth, the Assassins' only leader was Dr. Fyrn but among the four of them, leadership shifted between Kaleb and Evangeline. Kaleb was the friendlier of the two, naturally.

Atrimalous eyed him darkly.
“Of course. I certainly wasn't about to leave her to die.”

“Die?”
Kaleb echoed, instantly alert.

Her dark-spirited guardian figure was going to scare all of her friends right then and there if she didn't do something. Nervously, she changed the subject, asking about what happened to the school. As Evangeline filled her in, the events just grew darker and darker. While she had been held captive, her friends had seen the beginnings of war?

Atrimalous cleared his throat after. “Sorry to interrupt, but there is a dragon waiting.”

“Are you leaving?” she asked.

He must have seen something in her eyes, maybe fear, because he didn't answer right away. When he did speak, all that was said was, “We shall see,” before turning back to his dragon rider friend to have a word.

“Something doesn't seem right about him,” Evangeline muttered quietly, so he couldn't hear.

“He's alright,” she whispered back. “Just...odd. But good to have in a fight.”

She glanced back to the man whom she had begun to see as a sort of guardian. He was talking to the dragon rider in hushed tones. Leta joined in and it looked as though she was trying to reason with Atrimalous. The ice mage
glanced her way a few times, each time smiling kindly, as if trying not to arouse that ever-present anger within her companion.

“Alright,” Atrimalous said out loud. “It was great seeing you again, James.”

“You too. Take this.” James lifted a golden chain from his neck. A golden, intricately sculpted whistle dangled from it. “I trained Night Spark on this whistle. His hearing is so good that he can hear it hundreds of miles away. Keep it on you, got that?”

Atrimalous only nodded and slipped the chain around his neck. “Thanks.”

With that, James leaped back onto the golden dragon and found his way back to where he had been leaning. He shouted down to them as the dragon rose up to full height and became airborne. “Good luck!”

Everyone watched as the dragon flew off. It was a sight that couldn't be ignored. Sunlight shone off of the golden scales, casting reflections of light on the rubble. Dirt and wind kicked up as he soared into the sky, becoming nothing more than a vague shadow once more.

Kaydee turned to her two companions, who still stood beside her. “You're not leaving, then?”

Leta came up to her and gave her a one-armed hug.
“Not yet, girlie. We figure that with what looks like war approaching fast, you might still need us around.”