The Deian War: Conquest (15 page)

   As magnificent as it was, there was something even more poignant that struck her heart with lightning strikes. Only he knew how to find this place. Prior to their arrival here, she had overheard him directing Orion to the precise location, even the Captain evidently unaware of the co-ordinates for reasons of secrecy.

T
hough Lupus hadn’t given away any crucial details, wary of her listening in, she had heard enough to suggest the 617th had wiped their records of this place, leaving only Lupus with the knowledge of how to return. The reality that, if he wished, he could have kept the secret to himself forever, made her admire him more than ever but, at the same time, made her feel entirely unworthy of this gift.

   The question that she had nearly asked before he revealed the galaxy of suns to her came back with a vengeance, but when she spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Lupus…why have you shown this to
me
?”

   Then he turned to her and he gave an answer that threatened to take her breath away. “Because, Calla, you and I…” he began, turning to regard the scene outside. “You are I are
greater
than this…”

THOSE WORDS WOULD stay with Calla for the rest of her life. They made her want to cry, smile, laugh and embrace Lupus with all of her being. Here was a man who had saved her life more than once, been there through thick and thin and waited a decade for her when he had never known he would see her again. The size of his heart eclipsed everything that he was unfolding beyond the
Luminon
and he had dedicated it to her.

   “How can I ever match this, Lupus? Saying ‘I love you’ will never compare and I have no grand gestures to prove how completely I belong to you” she finally said, elevated beyond words by his display of emotion but hurt by herself that she had no way to return it in kind and do her
own feelings justice.

   When he replied, he surprised her even more with his sensitivity. “But don’t you see? You don’t need any of this to make me
understand. You still being here with me alone is the biggest gesture you could give me.

You have seen the ugliness of me in battle, heard my screams at night when
even my dreams attack me, but now you have seen true beauty and yet you still seek to tell me how you feel. Anyone else would have refused to return their attention to me after seeing what’s out there. I am forever honoured by you, Calla”.

   She laid a trembling hand on his chest, his words making her nervous to touch the man she loved for fear of him fading away. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Lupus” a soft tear ran gently down her cheek, “but I’m glad I did it”.

   Lupus lifted her chin with a finger and brought her eyes to his. Here was the one thing in the entire universe he ever really wanted to protect. Whatever happened, no matter what horrors the war would bring, he would save her. He loved her beyond words, beyond even the galaxy of suns, but he knew she could never understand the depth of that. Yet, the hopeful curve to her smile and the pleading look in her eyes for him to be real, to be the man who had saved her already so many times before even when she was human, was enough to make him believe they were bound together.

   He leant in and kissed her on the lips. Her hand dropped from his chest to rest on his hip and he pulled her in. It was a kiss fuelled by a love that they rarely had a chance to celebrate. Whole legions had witnessed their relationship on the battlefield as they fought together, but only a select few had ever seen them openly show their affection in a romantic sense.

Now, with no restrictions in their way, they embraced one another like the heroes they were for one another. Each was a saviour to the other, each a person beyond compare. They had withstood the test of time, resisted the death and decay of war and faced down a plague threats to their love, but still it continued and still it grew in strength with every day.

   When Lupus pulled away to see the fondness in her eyes, Calla pulled him down by the back of his neck like a timeless lover and kissed him on the tip of his nose. It was the big gesture she claimed she could never show him, filling him with a feeling of completeness that was simply past description. The emotion built and built inside him until it found a release, bursting out in a harmonious sadness so deep that  it
had taken its opposite to reveal itself.

   Yet, it didn’t belong to him; he sensed it emanating from Calla
and he had only reflected it. “What troubles you?” he asked, pained to see her upset when it was supposed to be a day of happiness for them both.

   She looked away, her eyes flickering from the scene outside that surrounded them on all sides. Then she looked back to him and he could suddenly anticipate the words he had always expected one of them to say.

   “Lupus, I’m scared…” she whispered.

   The confession struck him like a hammer to an anvil, because although he had always known she was afraid, the tone in her voice suggested he had never worked out what that fear
actually was. “Of what?” he said.

   “I’m just…
I’m terrified that we’re not going to survive the evil we’ve been fighting all this time. I don’t know why, but I can feel it in my bones…something terrible is going to happen to us and I don’t know how to prevent it”.

   Lupus hugged her close, hoping that the enclosure of his arms would give her the feeling of security that she needed. “Don’t be afraid…I’m not going to let that happen”.

   With her head against his chest, Calla could hear the thumping might of his heart and she believed him, yet still her fears remained. “But what if something takes you from me? What if the war forces us apart?” Then she pushed reluctantly away and asked a question that she knew was insane, but she had to ask it anyway. “What if someone else takes your heart for their own?”

   Lupus was incredulous and yet, how could he blame her for asking? They were involved in a war brought to them by the gods and their purpose was the salvation of the human race. They both knew what people thought, even if some of them did support their relationship. They knew what they were doing was, by all rights, impossible and yet still they pursued it. After so many wordless conversations, sharing looks that had filled whole hours of silence when they were
alone together, they had an understanding of what their future might involve. Even so, Lupus was amazed that she thought anyone could take her place.

   In that moment, he fought for her with everything he had. Not just against her fears, but against the reality of their lives. “There is nothing, nothing that could steal you from me or me from you. There is no pain, no betrayal, and no injury that I could suffer to tear
us apart. A thousand years away from you would not wither my heart nor make my love wane. There is no army that could stop me having you, no truth that could change me wanting to be with you.

You see me for who I am, all of me, the good and the bad and yet you remain
by my side. How could you ever expect me to leave? I have waited a time beyond measure for you, for us, long before we even met at the Academy…What madness would inspire you to think I would want anyone else?”

   A nervous laugh escaped her lips. She knew she was mad to have ever thought it, but somehow she needed to hear him say those words. They both did, because it validated the efforts they had made to stay together even if it meant pushing others away, her sister most of all. “Forgive me, I know I can be difficult…I just don’t want to lose the only thing that’s ever made me feel like I’m not alone in this world”.

   Lupus wiped a tear away from her. “There’s nothing to forgive” he said.

   Calla rested herself against him and turned. They stood side by side, hand in hand, and watched the miracle of creation
he shared with her. They spent the whole night together, locked in each other’s company, their expressions of love more intimate than they had ever been before.

“IT IS TIME I took my leave, Raina” Gaia announced.

   Raina opened her eyes, her consciousness deep in thought but pulled back at the slightest effort by the sound of Gaia’s voice behind her. She turned to her sister and felt a mix of emotions course through her. There was respect, for she was an Apostle; love, because they were bonded as being demi-gods together; trust, forged from battles they had fought as one; and
more recently, guilt.

   Raina didn’t like to admit what caused the last feeling, but she knew what it stemmed from. The fact was, Gaia admired the one man in the dimension that Raina never could. Of course, Gaia wasn’t the only Apostle that shared that trait and it made Raina hold a private grudge against all of them. Still, the guilt was dwarfed by the friendlier feelings she could associate with
all the Apostles bar the First.

   “You will be missed, I promise you. I regret the way we left things…” Raina admitted. The confession was hard for her
, since she could rarely admit she was wrong, but her desire to heal the rift that had opened between them from their argument the day before won out.

   Gaia smiled, but her dark green eyes gave little away. “I know, but there’s nothing to forgive. It’s only natural that we should all have our disagreements, I should know”.

   Raina nodded, the feathers on her helmet waving softly in the light wind. She turned to gaze back upon what had thrust her into reflection before. The two of them stood on the crest of a hill, but it quickly descended into field after field of crops. The promising yields had been mostly flattened by the grounding of a score of legionary ships, but it took nothing away from the beauty and rightness of the sight the two Apostles were given.

   The battle for
Fernus was over, but there was little time for rest. The legions had regrouped and amassed on the southern continent’s rich agricultural lands to be embarked on the carriers and Blackstars that would take them to the next world. From where Raina and Gaia stood, it looked as though thousands of ants were crawling around plated beetles. They both knew the truth, however, that the legions were nothing like insects to be herded and thrown at an enemy target.

   The Black Guardian legions were a deadly weapon, but required precision and care. They had not the numbers for long, drawn-out warfare, but they excelled at decisive strikes and swift counter-offensives. Of course, there would inevitably come a battle where a long-term strategy was required and brutal tactics were needed. Sometimes they just had to be a hammer against the enemy and crush them with force, but the war had spread them so thin that such actions were almost impossible now.

   In the beginning, it had been different. The Apostles had learnt many things from Pheia, but it had taken almost a year for them to realise that Solitaire had been right; the enemy did want to destroy everything, everywhere. The dark god didn’t want to aim straight for Gothica and tear out the heart of the humans that way; he wanted to be unpredictable, taking the Empire apart piece by random piece, which meant the Chosen had to part ways and divide their forces.

   Yet, at the start, when they were still together for a time after the tragedy at the Frontier, war had been glorious and easy for them. With
hundreds of thousands of legionnaires at their command, the Apostles had used their numbers to deadly effect. They had met the enemy with full strength across a dozen worlds, creating an impenetrable buffer. The waves of Phantoms would crash against the Guardian lines like waves upon a beach, threatening to overcome them but always pushed back. Eventually, however, the Phantoms found ways to get around their cordons. The war that Solitaire had insisted they needed to fight had become the only one available to them.

   On the hilltop, it seemed Raina and Gaia were both thinking abou
t how different things were now as they watched the legions being marshalled by the Commanders with practiced efficiency. They would be off of this world within a few hours, with the final vestiges of humans safely evacuated and sent on their way towards the Meridian Sector to be secure for the remainder of the war. For a long moment, neither of the Apostles said anything, too aware of the rare opportunity in the lull of fighting to forego seeing the guardians getting ready to redeploy. They were content in the knowledge that, for now, they were safe.

   Eventually, it was Raina that spoke. “Strange, isn’t it?” she muttered
, almost to herself.

  
Still, it was enough to catch Gaia out of her own reverie. “What is?” she asked.

   Raina didn’t turn to look at
her. Rather, she carried on staring at the bustling activity before them as she explained herself. “This…moment. It feels like the time when you are about to rest, to fall asleep. You know not what your dreams will bring you, but you know that you are safe for a time. You are in limbo because you are about to enter a world of complete and unlimited possibility, yet you cannot say whether what will happen will be good or bad. Like now, we are
safe
; the enemy has been beaten and the closest threat is a day’s journey away by their capability, but now we venture onto a journey where anything could happen.”

   “Hmm,” Gaia began, caught off-guard by Raina’s though
t-provoking perspective. “Do you fear the nightmare or the sweet dream more?”