The Deian War: Conquest (4 page)

   Calla turned in time to show Sabre a warm, inviting expression. Resplendent in her shining white armour, every feature of it spotless in defiance of the rain and sodden ground, she looked as striking as always. Lupus had often remarked to her that she was too elegant and beautiful to be in a war zone, but she could never believe him. Of course, he would blame himself for not being able to persuade her of that truth and there was little she could say to relieve him of that guilt. A strange burden, but one of many that he s
eemed to carry on his shoulders alone.

   Sabre approached the cluster of trees they were at, the same that the flanking assault had been sprung from just an hour ago. Calla smiled at him, beckoning him forward. When he bowed in deference to her
only, for he could tell that Gaia’s attention was elsewhere, she bid him to relinquish his urgent news.

   “My Grace, the Lion…” Sabre
started to say solemnly, though there was more protective care than anxious concern in his voice.

   “Speak
plainly, Commander” Calla replied, knowing she was about to hear something that would disconcert her as well. She had served with Lupus, Gaia and the legions under their collective control for the last two years. In that time she had gotten to know all of the legionary Commanders. Sabre was not one to exacerbate the reality that he saw.

   He saluted swiftly and spoke. “My Lord Apostle has ventured into the dark forest by the mountains. He would not hear my calls, or heed my concerns.”

  “Your
concerns
?” Gaia suddenly asked. Calla looked at her over her shoulder, but her sister was still paying most of her attention to the tree she was beginning to successfully restore. “What are those?”

   The neutral tone of her voice would have unsettled most legionnaires, as it certainly had done to Sabre in the first months of the battles following Pheia, but he was used to it by now. It was not that the Apostle was cold-hearted, b
ut she knew the balance of life and was slow to fall prey to any emotion without knowing some context.

   “There’s something hiding in the trees, I can feel it in my gut” Sabre openly admitted, not shy to confessing that he had no evidence other than a hunch.

   “You doubt the Lion’s ability, his strength?” Gaia questioned him, this time a little more penetrative than before. She had finished her work and now stood side by side with Calla, who in turn gave the slightest frown at her accusation.

   “Of course not, my Grace, but I…” Sabre began, but he found himself unable to explain his problem.

   “What is it that
really
bothers you, Commander?” Calla asked. “It is unlike you to be troubled be something this simple. An enemy escaped our net of attack and now the Lion is hunting them down. It’s not like anything can kill him Sabre, you know that”.

   Sabre looked from Calla to Gaia and back again, unsure of whether they would hear his next words without amusement, but he had to
voice them. “The Apostle did not seem…
himself
, my Grace” he finally answered, but more to Calla than her sister.

   Gaia cocked her head at this. “You think some kind of mind play is at work here?”

   Sabre nodded once. “Perhaps the Gore Prince wasn’t the height of enemy power here. Maybe there’s something else waiting for us in that forest and the Lion senses it.”

   Gaia smiled at the Guardian, her expression earnest and conciliatory. “You were right to bring us this news, but I fear you overestimate the foe, Commander. If there was a Phantom higher than a Prince here, I and Whitewolf would have sensed
it too-”

   Before she could finish her words a deep, loud roar resounded through the
trees. It came from the other side of the ruined enemy camp, where the treeline stretched back and faded into the darkness of the mountains’ shadows. Sabre immediately turned towards the noise and before he could register what it could mean, Calla thundered past him on all fours, her transformation into Whitewolf instantaneous and effortless.

   With the speed only the Blessing could have granted her, she vanished out of sight. “
…Even I don’t know how she moves so fast,” Gaia mused, reading Sabre’s stunned expression. The speed with which Whitewolf moved was one of the few things he had still to get used to. “Still, it’s for the best. There’s no doubt half her strength comes from her love for him, though. No matter how much the rest of us adore the Lion, we will never be as fast as her in reaching or understanding him. We will never be as close”. She hung her head, revealing a hint of jealousy that Sabre could somehow tell no-one else had seen before.

   “My Grace-
” he started to say.

   “Speak to no-one of what I have said, Commander”
she spoke over him, her eyes both pleading and demanding in equal measure.

   Sabre found no words to respond and
just chose to nod at her again. As she ran off, pursuing the distant Whitewolf, he realised that out of all the Apostles he had served under, she was the most perplexing. One paradox refused to leave his mind and try as he might to mull it over or let it slide from his notice, it remained there like a cancer.

   If Gaia truly was the Apostle that took on the aspect of nature from the Auranair, why then did she defy the fate of things?
If she was supposed to understand the world around her, why could she not accept the way things were between people as well as the environment? These were questions he could temporarily put out of his mind. For now, there were greater concerns. The Lion’s roar could mean only one thing; Sabre was right about the enemy survivor. 

LUPUS SUNK HIS teeth into the neck of the second Devii bodyguard that he encountered. He took down the first with a brutality that he surprised himself by when they burst from the tree trunks around him. Before the shower of splinters and bark could even blur his field of vision, he had taken form by sheer response of instinct and clawed down the Phantom nearest to him. Now a second red corpse lay ruined near the first.

   Without looking, he counted no less than a dozen foes.
As always it seemed, the odds were in his favour. Laying into him with their halberds, the nearest of them daring to engage in close combat whilst those further away unleashed volleys of flame at him, the devii hacked and shot at his form time and again. There was little effect, though and it became painfully obvious that they were distracting him from something else.

   A fierce, threatening growl of promised death behind him gave him the answer to that riddle
; he hadn’t been the target, she was. Calla had joined him in the shadow of the mountains. He should have known that Sabre would tell her where he’d gone. Lupus wished the Commander hadn’t done that because the enemy’s trap had now been irrevocably sprung. Though Calla launched herself into attacking the enemy at his side, ripping apart a pair of devii before they could land a strike, the cunning of the Phantoms was revealed as a further two dozen burst out of the surrounding trees.

  
Calla, get back!
Lupus cried, watching as the devii levelled their halberds in preparation to loose a devastating salvo of flame at her.

  
She looked up from her third kill in time to see a colossal, brown shape barrel into her. Lupus had knocked her aside and to the ground, using his own body as a shield against the deadly torrent of fire balls that were meant for her. She gazed up at him and her eyes reflected both her gratitude and her regret.

  
I’m sorry, Lupus. I couldn’t let you fight alone…yet now I’m a burden to you. Please, let me fight. Let me help you.
She told him, moving to get up and take her vengeance on the enemy.

   Lupus was visibly affected by the tirade of the Phantoms’ attack, but not through its violence; it was the orchestration that had him worried. Feeling Calla wrestle free from his protection, he leant over her back and forced her back down with his head.
Stay down,
he said, but he was too late.

   He should have seen it coming. He should have known that she was as stubborn as h
e was, that in the heat of battle she would sooner put herself in danger to be of some use than to take shelter and let him keep her safe. She yelped as an unusually precise spear of fire brushed her tail, searing off the tip. Though it wasn’t a grave wound, it was still an injury that stood as a testament of his failure to guard her in this deadly ambush.

  
Will you never listen to me?
He muttered, using his massive body to completely shield her smaller form. He began to steadily move her backwards until they were behind one of the larger trees that remained standing after the devii’s ambush. With one sweep of his claws, he changed that simple fact. The trunk came crashing down in front of them, granting a natural barricade against the enemy’s weapons. Fireballs thudded into the dank, soaked wood and the material refused to catch fire for now, but Lupus knew that would change quickly.

 
Stay here,
he told her. All around them, the Phantoms approached their newfound defence, a steady rate of fiery volleys eating up the thick tree trunk. Lupus was just thankful it hadn’t burst into flames yet, but he had to act fast if he wanted that luck to hold out. He looked down into her eyes and found himself in awe of how beautiful she was, even now in the midst of a fight that had seen her hurt. By now she had reverted to her human form, where there was no visible trace of her injury, but it was clear that her pain had translated into a mental weariness and physical agitation.

  
For a moment he allowed himself to revert as well. He stroked her cheek gently with the back of his hand, a feat given his capacity for lethal strength and his present thirst for violence. Kissing her forehead, both in apology of his failure and in infinite affection, he began to change again. Before he did, he promised her softly, “I will come back for you. Don’t be afraid; nothing can hurt me for I have you and you are my shield eternal…”

   Now the Lion once
again, he looked over the fallen tree at the enemy and found amongst them a creature that he had never seen before. The presence of death and torture exuded from its very existence and he actually wondered if his promise to Calla would hold true after all. Nevertheless, he gave her one last look.
I
will
return
, he assured her.

   With a deafening roar, he lifted his head to
his surrounding foes and bellowed out his rage to warn them of his wrath before their imminent slaughter. Then, leaping over the massive trunk with ease, he charged into battle with his love for Calla burning like a sun in his heart.

***

A HAIL OF
pulsar fire sailed into the ranks of the devii as Lupus pounded the ground with his paws. With a sharp intake of breath through his nose, he picked up the scent of his legion command squad. Evidently Sabre had gathered the Guardians together, fearing the worst. He was glad for their support; though the devii were no threat to him, they were to Calla now that she was even more vulnerable. He could focus now on destroying the unknown Phantom archetype that waited for him in the centre of the fight, baiting him to come closer.

   The creature, whatever
it could claim to be, salivated profusely from a pair of jaws so slack that Lupus wondered how it managed to articulate its wicked grin. Its body was hunched with a deformed appearance, yet its muscly legs and compact form held the promise of power and murderous ability. Its three eyes, pearl white without any other features, somehow seemed to stare at him in anticipation.

   In his peripher
al vision Lupus noticed the last of the devii break their attention from him and Calla, turning their weapons instead against the Guardians even as they were cut down by the legionnaires. Desperate to kill something, the Phantoms seemed to last longer than they had a right to do so, intent to survive as long as it took to retaliate. The last of them, a trio of ochre-skinned devii, were crushed by a tangle of roots and a hail of bark as a nearby tree was manipulated into an explosion of deadly shrapnel.

  
Gaia, Sabre, leave this one to me,
Lupus told them as he closed with the final Phantom. They needed no further insistence, seeing for themselves that Calla was in more need of their help than he was. They secured the area as he rushed the enemy.

  
The creature, still far away despite its original proximity to him, opened its mouth and spoke with what passed for its voice to Lupus. “Sssssttoppp” it ordered him. Holding its right hand up to reinforce its command, the seven bony fingers splayed out in authority, it finally took a step towards him.

   As it made the gesture, Lupus collided with an invisible wall of force and crashed to the ground. The
barrier was undoubtedly telekinetic, that much his gut told him. Even as he was brought low by the Phantom’s shield, Lupus could only wonder why he hadn’t noticed its presence on the planet before now. With a power this strong, it should have registered somewhere along the campaign.

   In seconds, he rose back up on all fours unhurt and undaunted. It was not arrogance that lead him to be fearless, but conviction and purpose.
Fight with honour, whelp
he mentally spat, a verbal growl providing the needed disdain.