Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (17 page)

The picture of Davin Storm formed in her head.

“No, not like that,” Silas said before he could think better of it.

Ariella frowned, and just like that her wall went back up.

“Like someone who doesn’t belong there. Someone who shouldn’t be there.”

She looked at him for a few seconds, then said, “You sure know a lot about the intricacies of prophetic abilities for a Phantom.”

“I’ve known my share of Prophets over the years. And people like to share with me. It must be my trusting face.”

From the other side of their meal leftovers, Leonidas snorted.

“So, this person who doesn’t belong,” Ariella said. “You saw my foresights. Who is it?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly see them. I just got a rush of your feelings and thoughts and a few images. Images distorted by your own mind. That’s how extraction works. I don’t get a play-by-play. That only happens when something like Synergy is involved. Or Unity.”

“But surely you have ideas?” she asked. He could no longer feel her, but he could read the desperation in her eyes clearly enough.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not even a person. Maybe it’s something else. It was just one idea.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“It’s not your fault. Maybe it’s just destiny that Aaron takes the Selpe throne.” Her laugh was weak and strained. “I just wish I could stop it. No good will come of it. Elitia will fall and our people will die.”

“Ariella, more than anyone, a Prophet should know better than to try to interpret a foresight. Who knows what led to that field of Elition bodies? Perhaps it would have happened anyway. Perhaps it would have been even worse without Aaron. You never know,” he told her. “Getting caught up in what may or may not be is no way to live. And for a Prophet, that way lies the path to insanity. The best we can do is fight each new day as it comes. ”

She snorted at the manic grin he gave her. “You’re right.”

“Besides,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like everything that’s coming will be all that bad.”

“If you’re referring to Davin…” She blushed as her voice trailed off. “Well,
that
I will only believe when I see.”

“I wonder if he got it into his head to sweep you off your feet before or after I knocked him upside the head.”

“Don’t you dare, Silas Thorn.” Ariella set her hands on her hips. “Don’t you even dare.”

* * *

526AX August 23, The Falsified Forest

A few hours later, they reached another clearing. It was larger than any they had seen since arriving in this strange environment: about the size of a typical running track. A maroon-matted running track did actually loop around the outer edge of the field, framed by a slim strip of potted palm trees. Silas could have shimmied between the pots, but he’d had quite enough of that in the forest. Besides, it didn’t fit with his image. He
removed
barriers; he didn’t squeeze around them in a really undignified manner.

Leonidas’s jaw dropped as Silas lifted a potted tree twice his height, but the spy didn't comment. By now, he should have gotten used to it. Silas set the pot down in front of its neighbor, and Ariella and Leonidas filed after him through the newly made opening.

A green field sat at the center of the multi-lane track. Silas stepped onto it and his boots were hugged by lush softness. Like the soggy ground of the first clearing, the ground here was covered by something that was not at all natural. Unlike the other ground, though, this one actually looked like grass. It just felt like carpet.

Stranger yet, neatly arranged atop the field of non-grass were various exercise machines arranged amongst a scattering of trees, an odd merging of nature and machinery. Silas recognized a myriad of weight-lifting apparatuses, as well as ones for running and rowing.

There were a few he'd neither seen before, nor could he even begin to fathom how to use them. The most bizarre was a ring of five thick poles—colored blue, red, green, brown, and purple—three meters high. From each pole sprouted a silver spread of a dozen flexible metal ribbons, each one appearing as though its tip had been dipped in crimson paint. Or was it blood? After navigating through one death trap after another over the past few days, Silas was tending toward that idea.

“What do you think this one does?” Leonidas asked, reaching toward an umbrella-topped mystery machine.

“Takes your fingers right off, if you’re not careful,” Silas said, stopping the spy’s hand with his mind. “Do
not
touch anything.”

“You’re really creepy, you know,” Leonidas grumbled. He tried to tug at his frozen right hand with the left—to no avail.

Silas gave him an icy glare. “Actually, you haven't mentioned that in the last hour, but thank you for reminding me once again.”

Ariella set a hand on his arm. He turned to look over his shoulder. She tapped her finger to her ear, then to her nose. Clearing his mind, Silas released Leonidas. The spy fell forward in an ungraceful stumble, just managing to avoid toppling over one of the exercise machines.

Leonidas’s curses nearly drowned out a light rumble. It sounded like it was coming from below them. Silas smelled smoke—no, not smoke. It was the after-stink of gunfire that was burning his nostrils. Someone was firing guns. A lot of guns. Silas scanned the visible area. It sounded like they were nearly on top of it, but he saw nothing.

His eyes fell upon a crinkle in the grass carpet. He stepped over to investigate, and that’s when he saw it. Below one of the machines was a hole in the ground just wide enough for a man to fit into. Well, an average man. Silas would have to squeeze and scoot his way through. Again. Whoever had designed this environment had done so with dwarves in mind.

Peering down into the hole, he saw a smooth metal chute. Flickers of orange light bounced against the silver sheet. The staccato click of rapid gunfire was interrupted by a series of five heavy booms. The sound thundered up, making the chute shudder. That sounded suspiciously like bombs going off. Incomprehensible shouts mixed with an orchestra of heavy-duty weaponry. Whatever was going on down there, it sounded like a full-out city siege.

Silas pulled himself from the edge of the chute and declared, “I believe we have found our assassins.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

~
The Crescent Order ~

526AX August 23, Tunnels

DIM GREEN-GREY light, punctuated with orange beams from Hayden’s and Ian’s flashlights, illuminated the service tunnel. The walls were made of bare concrete, unpainted and unadorned, just as the rough floor beneath Marin’s feet.

At least we aren’t defiling anything spectacular
, she thought as she popped her head around the corner to throw a quick volley of five bombs at the assassins.

It was perhaps a silly thing to worry about right now, standing at death’s doorway, but the Hellean’s floating cities were a technological marvel—even though they had been doing their utmost to kill her over the past week. She hated the thought of taking one down with her.

Stop it. You’re not going to die
, she tried to reassure herself.
They just want to talk. Because that’s what assassins do. Talk. With sharp blades and big guns.

The bombs exploded, taking down a sizable chunk of the wall the assassins were using for cover. The wall creaked and groaned but held. Marin had fashioned the bombs from a hodgepodge of parts she'd collected from the surreal environments. They were big and clunky—and had a fraction of the explosive force of her usual bombs—but they were better than anything else they had available to them. She didn’t think throwing their only two flashlights at the assassins would do more than irk them—or perhaps amuse them. Besides, then Marin wouldn’t have enough light to see that they had only six—no, make that five—bombs left. She somehow doubted the assassins would let up on their attack long enough to allow her to scavenge for parts.

She had only enough materials in her bag to put together another three, but that was better than nothing. She hastily constructed the final three bombs, wishing there were some more of those electric fish around. They were brilliant for making charges.

Marin froze at that thought. She was
not
going to wish for those demon fish. It had taken her a whole day to come up with a way to capture one, and they'd all nearly been barbecued in the process. Disassembling the thing while it thrashed and zapped at them had been even more perilous. Marin shivered at the memory. She couldn’t decide which had been worse—those hell-spawn fish or the hell-spawn wolf dogs.

The bizarre beasts seemed to have been modeled after mythological creatures and bred in some sort of laboratory. Marin had a feeling those contained environments were all part of this laboratory, and she, Hayden, and Ian had been the little mice running through the maze, trying to escape traps that would have left them mauled—or eaten. The technology required to engineer such an elaborate experiment was mind-boggling. The energy required to power the whole thing was unimaginable.

What were the Helleans up to? Why had they built these environments? Were they trying to engineer magic?

At least the beasts and machines had attacked the assassins too. From the moment they barged into her Oasis lab, Hayden had identified the six assassins as members of the Crescent Order, a group that used a mix of advanced human technology and old Elition magic. That fact alone was frightening, and the assassins' dour faces and excessive armaments hardly endeared them to her. Their singleminded drive to kill her wasn’t helping much either.

After Marin, Hayden, and Ian managed to get themselves swallowed up by some odd energy wave, they'd wandered in the forest of beasts for a whole day before hitting a dead end. One moment, they were pushing through a cluster of trees, and the next they hit a concrete wall.

It was then that Marin figured out the forest was not entirely natural. The assassins’ numbers had grown to twelve by the time they crossed paths on the second day. Marin’s group spent several hours hiding from assassins—and fire-spitting dogs—before they came across the ladder. It stood braced against one tree, standing as though it had every bit as much right to be in that forest as any tree. Once they reached the top, Marin saw that they were not in some grounded laboratory as she'd thought, but inside another floating city.

That’s when she decided the Helleans might not be so innocuous after all. This idea only solidified in her mind as they hopped from one engineered environment to the next, all contained inside the floating cities.

She couldn’t imagine they'd built these hazardous laboratory mazes—and managed to connect them via manmade portals—for purely benign reasons. They were running an experiment. An experiment with live, unwilling guinea pigs fighting for their lives. Marin had always respected the Helleans for their remarkable scientific achievements, but clearly they hadn’t become the world’s greatest innovators without someone paying the price. Marin had no intention of being that price.

Whether the Helleans were working with the Crescent Order, or whether the assassins had simply used the linked environments to their own ends, was unclear. The assassins had lost two people inside the beast forest and two at the cliffs—one to the fish and one to the dagger birds. The field of golems had claimed another two. That left them with half their fighting force, more than enough to deal with Marin’s paltry group. The bombs were throwing up a big show, but she doubted a group of six elite assassins would be taken down by a few explosives hacked together from scrap parts.

Marin, Hayden, and Ian had survived the trials of the past week with a whole lot of luck and the power of their wits. No one would claim two adolescent boys and a geek had done so by brawn.

The assassins had been close on their tails, but it was at the tree gym that they'd finally cornered them. Like hunted rabbits, Marin, Hayden, and Ian had fled down the hole in the ground and closed the latch. This kept the assassins out long enough for them to reach a dead end tunnel. While the assassins made quick work of the flimsy lock on the latch, Marin built bombs and the boys threw up a barricade from a pile of broken chairs and tables that they'd found in a nearby storage room.

Down the hall, a shadow slinked around the corner, and Hayden threw their last remaining bomb at it. The shadow slipped away before the bomb even detonated, taking the last of their hope with it.

Marin looked into the storage room, searching for something—anything—that she could use to deal damage. Her eyes settled on an old broom, the best of the junk offerings. The handle was made of metal. Maybe it could be used to bash someone over the head. Her legs grew weak, and she nearly stumbled to the floor. Who was she kidding? Those assassins were professional fighters. They would be the only ones landing any blows. They would dance circles around her meager swings.

Hayden and Ian sat beside the barrier. They turned their eyes to her, looking for guidance. She'd kept the three of them alive over those long, long days. She'd promised those boys that she would get them all out. And now she would fail them. Marin sat down between them, wrapping an arm around each. Together, they huddled, their hearts beating out the countdown to the inevitable. Light footfalls approached…

And ground to a halt. Grunts sounded, followed by two heavy thumps. Marin rose just high enough to peek over the barrier. Two bodies lay against the wall in a tangled heap of bloody limbs. Marin could make out flickers of movement against the light cast on the wall. An enraged man howled, then spit out a belligerent insult. The voice was a perfect match to Leonidas’s. Marin shook her head. She must be hallucinating. Leonidas was locked away inside some temple in the Elition Wilderness.

Metal scraped against metal. A breeze ripped through the tunnels, making the hairs on Marin’s arms stand on end. She'd experienced this feeling before. Phantom power. She ducked as a body was flung over the barrier. It hit the wall with a sickening crunch. Blood oozed down the assassin’s face, and an assortment of broken bones protruded from his chest. Beside her, Ian threw up on her shoes. Marin turned her back on the broken man and tried to wipe the image from her mind, struggling against the burn of bile rising in her throat.