PROLOG:
Who knew, as he sat alone inside the dark and musty cave, Kabris would be waiting as if in a suspended dream? Long, narrow legs folded beneath him, white feathered cape hanging limply at his shoulders as if he were some great bird in hibernation, Kabris drew slow and constant breaths. It was the only movement, the gentle in and out of his chest, that proved he was actually alive. But behind his closed eyes, behind the darkness of his trance, he was deep in concentrated thought. And all of his thought was on Match. The One-who-would-surpass, his equal in power even while only half his age. The One-who-would-surpass, the dark eyes of his nightmares. The One-who-would-surpass, the one thing that kept Kabris believing he really was alive. The chest rose and fell, the slim hands folded across bended knees. Sickly thin from the fasting trance, paper white from the immeasurable time spent underground. Kabris used his mind to keep a constant vigil, knowing that someday, the young untrained mind of the One-who-would-surpass would stumble past and give him the extra energy he needed to break his tomb. He only knew what he expected, he only knew what he had dreamed of and imagined for all the days that added to months which added to years that Kabris had sat. He had spent the first while conditioning his body, breaking what natural barriers he could with magic or willpower. He had overcome the need for strength, he had overcome the need for little more than token nutrition taken mostly from the air. He breathed in. He breathed out. He reduced the need for movement, and devoted all of his energy to the search, the hope, the dream, and the knowledge that Match would be presented to him.
Then a flicker. Only light, like a moth wing. A touch that the untrained would surely ignore. Kabris’ eyes sprung open, wide to almost complete blackness. He had felt it. And he knew it. Match, the Nightflame, the One. But Kabris had other plans. He saw his part in the life of the young prophesied one as much different than that of simple teacher. He had decided, in the years of banishment, not to let Match surpass him. He knew that if he could hold him in check, the power of the boy would become his own. And he knew that when this happened, all the years alone and patient to the point of going mad, would be worth it.
When he had descended, been forced into the cave, he had been a Nightflame himself. But as he now unfolded his tall thin form, he was reborn. He felt the trembling of life and energy, soul and the flow of power from the untrained mind of Match Nightflame through the soil and rock above him. Something above him was happening, and the chance was now upon him. No need for elaborate spells or gestures, Kabris used the power of his mind to wrap around the needed strength and use it to overcome the barriers that had been placed centuries ago on the cave to keep him contained. It was easy as stroking a kitten. He rose through stone without so much as disrupting a particle. Up though the ground, he winced and smiled as the sunlight hit his pale skin, his crystal blue eyes. He truly was reborn, in the white and glaring gaze of the benevolent Gaithperia. He was no longer a Nightflame. He was now a Whiteflare.
Chapter 1:
Match awoke from a horrible dream, the same nightmare he’d had for the past ten years. He was falling, and people he loved were all around him, screaming to him, screaming at him. He was crying out, trying to save them all. His parent’s were there in vague outline. All that remained in his memory were their twisted bloody faces, floating around his small head like death masks. And then he was awake, the arrow mark beneath his left eye itching like a new scab.
“You’d better get your butt out of bed,” a girl’s voice said as he sat up. His cousin Brit Pilotlite stuck her head around the corner of his door. Her face smiled at him, blond hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, blue cap bearing the insignia of the taxi guild perched on her head. “I have to be down at dispatch by six.”
Match groaned. He hated the new assignment he had been given by his own guild, that of the B-squad of Mercenaries. Taxi duty was one of the lowest, laziest forms of security and protection. It consisted of sitting in the back seat of a taxi for hours on end, listening to the inane chatter of the driver and passenger while trying to work out exactly what the point of it all was. And then to have been assigned to his own cousin, a cousin he hadn’t even known he had, it just bit deep. Real deep.
When Match came into the kitchen, Brit was poised with a small white letter in her hand. She slumped against the wall. “Oh this is just biting terrific.”
“What is it?” Match asked, his curiosity piqued.
“I’ve just been drafted by the biting Kard!” Brit threw down the letter and stomped back to her room. Match picked it up and read it, once, twice. It couldn’t be! It wasn’t fair! His biting cousin had been drafted by the elite University of Kard’arin, the fighting school of North Ieria because of her firearm certification. Well all taxi drivers had to be certified, but Brit, being only nineteen, was a ripe candidate for the Kard programs.
“I’m a biting archer and they draft you? A taxi driver before me! It’s not fair.”
Brit re-emerged from her room, red and fuming. She grabbed the letter away from him. “Oh go bite yourself! If you must know, I don’t want to go to the biting Kard! Bunch of military obsessed kids! Bite that!”
Match couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You don’t want to go? It’s an honor you know!”
“You know, they do have a voluntary draft. Why don’t you come with me. Maybe you will get in too. You are an archer after all. Maybe they’ll take you instead of me. Then I could get back to making money. Ciat.”
Match just stared at her.
“Come on then,” she said finally, stuffing the crumpled paper into her pocket. “Let’s go report this to dispatch.”
Chapter 2:
S’lin Shinestar was a study in parental neglect, military mistreatment, and the harsh upbringing that came to the very few born with the arrow of endurance. And what came out in the end was something no one could have imagined. Born illegitimate and sold as an infant to a traveling mercenary guild in the Bag’vian area of Ieria, S’lin learned from day one how to fight to stay alive. His name, given to him by his captain, meant Snake in the native language of the Bag’vians. His nature was one that aimed to please, and from the time he could hold a sword, he was striving to be the very best at what he practiced. The mercenaries were strict and trained children as if they were machines. Yet S’lin never let the tactics separate him from his personality. He seemed something separate when he practiced, when he fought, when he studied. Detached, yet always remaining in control. Soon, his training seemed to depart from that of the other children. He was told to run until he collapsed, punch until he blacked out, stay up for days on end, live without food in darkness. All of these things, young S’lin did, and came back for more. He was taught to kill. Silently, swiftly, painfully, he was taught to give his life to achieve the mission he was set to accomplish. But this was not done apart from other training. From these hard times came a belief in honor, in truth as an illusion. As a lesson in what the meaning of life was. “Our lives are fleeting and absolute, whether we die young and strong and brave, or live a long full life. For what is our life compared to that of a tree that stands solid and sanguine for 250 years? What is our life to a bird that lives for three fleeting years. But a bird gets to fly. Finish everything, because everything comes to an end. Finish that thought because every thought, every moment, is sacred.”
Then came the day, a day of great honor. S’lin had implanted in his mouth a tiny pill. A tiny pill that would only release its contents at the urging of a desperate Assassin. A suicide pill, one that all the mercenary Assassins carried inside their bodies. He was 10 years old.
But then, the mercenary band split. Internal conflict had forced the group apart. And the band which S’lin was a part of did not survive intact long. Soon, S’lin was out on the street, part of a gang of other boys trained in highly deadly skills, using them now to rob, steal and harass other gangs with in the Capital City of North Ieria. And when the opportunity presented itself, there was sex. Sex for money, sex with each other, sex for power and pleasure. When he was 14, he saw a familiar face in the seat of a taxi cab which flew passed him. It was Match, an old friend of his from the Mercenary guild. Match was working, hired out to protect the taxi driver from thugs like S’lin. S’lin was ashamed. He had heard that the North Ierian chapter of the military training facility known as Kard’arin was accepting voluntary drafts in preparation for an oncoming conflict with the south. S’lin left the streets and never looked back.
At his interview and background check, S’lin was intentionally vague about the intensity of his Assassin training. He was also careful to hide a certain mark on his right hand, on the soft area between his finger and thumb. S’lin had an arrow mark, the two edged sword know as both a blessing and a curse. Only recently were the arrow marks powers being discovered, traced and studied. It was known that the first appearance of arrow marks coincided with the fallout of dazium brought from the planet Lanitica by the barrage of missiles which destroyed an entire continent. But S’lin saw it not as a strength, but as a sign of weakness. If I didn’t have the mark, he thought, I could have done every single thing that I’d done as a mercenary. He didn’t need the help of magical powers. So he hid the sign, though it would have earned him an immediate high rank in the Kard, and the fact that he was an archer was not discovered.
But he was taught, and the days of long and stressful workouts returned.
Chapter 3:
“Is that it?”
Kova shook her head, her silvery hair shimmering in the night glow. S’lin frowned and squinted up at the huge white orb that hung above them.
“Well where in hell’s bedroom is it?”
Kova pointed again, up passed Tutho, the moon. She was pointing at Tmancrion, the tiny asteroid caught in terminal orbit around its much larger astral brother in the night sky. She looked back at S’lin. Her was staring at her, his infectious smile broad and clear even in the dim light.
“Why do you have to be so beautiful,” he asked, encircling her with his thin muscular arms. She could not help but hug back. Then she ruffled his peach soft hair, cropped short and close to his head. She signed, “Can you still see my hands?”
“I can see all of you, and it’s driving me mad.” He said back to her. Laying his hands on her face, he drew her near and kissed her, his lips caressing hers in a true gesture of gentleness. When they finally broke, Kova signed, “that uniform is really ugly.”
“What are you kidding,” S’lin asked in mock horror. “Do you know all that I had to go through to wear this rag?” He gestured to his unflattering gray one piece jumpsuit which hugged every line and curve of his slim body, leaving nothing to the imagination. The boots on his feet were light and rounded for stealth and speed, the body suit cut tight and smooth for the same reason. But Kova was right, all in all the uniform was hideous.
“Okay, I apologize,” she signed the gesture of forgiveness. She drew him close and they gazed up at the sky again.
“Kova,” S’lin said after a moment. “I’m really glad we’re together. I care for you more than I really want to admit.”
She squeezed him; she understood. As an Assassin, S’lin was in one of the most dangerous divisions of the Kard’arin. He was a highly trained, deadly weapon. Yet tonight, staring up into the starry blackness, she was prone to forget that. She wanted to forget it so badly. Suddenly S’lin extended his arm and pointed.
“Is that it? It seems too far out.”
Kova followed his arm and frowned. She shook her head, “No.” Then she became alarmed and stood up.
S’lin rolled to his belly. “What is it, a comet?”
She shook her head again, brushing herself off quickly, never taking her eyes from the fast approaching dot in the sky. She scooped up her wide brimmed hat and whistled shrilly. S’lin was on his feet in an instant. “Kova?”
“I don’t know,” she signed as the hoofbeets of her mount approached, “but it isn’t good.”
Chapter 4.
Match and Brit marched through the steel corridors of the Kard’arin administration building, their heals clicking on the tile floor. Both had been admitted, much to Match’s chagrin. He would have been happy if Brit had been turned away. She really had no fighting skills to speak of, had none of the intensive upbringing he had had in the merc groups. Except for the street smarts she had gained working as a taxi driver for the past three years, along with the mandatory small firearms she was trained in, Match couldn’t see why she had been drafted. Her taxi dispatch leader hadn’t been too pleased at hearing that he’d be loosing her to the Kard and they had complained about the university, the government, and life in general for a good half an hour. Match fumed in the corner. When she was finally done, they went to his commander, Captain Mia in charge of the Merc group B that Match was a member of. Much as he had expected, she was glad for him and wished him well. She also offered him a job back if his voluntary draft did not go as planned. Then she made him buy out his contract.
“You shouldn’t have gave her all your money, Match,” Brit was saying as they walked. “You didn’t have anything written down. You legally didn’t owe her anything.”
“Captain Mia raised me as her own since I joined the merc guild. I wasn’t about to just go and abandon her for nothing.”
Brit had a vague inkling of Match’s cloudy past. Apparently his parents had been some sort of nobles in some Northern province. In a coup of some kind, they had been killed and Match had been sold into the more or less slavery of the mercenary guild. He grew up there until the guild split a few years back. After that, his group, group B, had rented themselves out to the mayor of Capital City as local law enforcement. The taxi assignment was only one of the many levels of protection and security the mercs provided.
That Brit and Match had been discovered to be cousins was just one of those strange flukes of life that sometimes take you unaware at the strangest times. Both of them had to give blood samples for their respective jobs, a Capital City law to help curb the spread of any contagious diseases. With Ieria soon to be dangerously overpopulated, it was a necessary step. It was Match’s captain Mia who noticed the connection and sought to put the young boy with his older cousin. The boy, as Mia saw it, had no direction. She had hoped the girl Brit would be able to help him find some. And now, with both of them enrolling in the Kard, Mia was at the same time grateful and wary.
“Match? No way!”
Someone calling his name made Match turn from Brit’s side and look behind him. A boy with hair the color of summer melon, not quite red and not blond, was coming towards them with a huge grin across his face. He wore grays, a uniform Match knew as a symbol of the Kard’arin special forces. In the Mercenary guild they were known as Assassins. Who the hells was he?
“Match, don’t you know me? Come on, remember group A, the split! You really don’t know?” The thin boy came up and grasped Match’s hand in a firm shake, despite his wiry build. Match was about to pull his hand back and demand to know who the stranger was when he looked into the boy’s huge blue eyes and knew.
“S’lin?”
S’lin pumped Match’s arm as Brit looked on, confused.
“Oh yeah! I knew you’d remember, scared me for a second there! I thought woah, I hope that is Match. I haven’t seen you in like whatever, five years?”
“Seven since the split,” said Match.
“So what are you doing here have you been drafted?”
Match took a breath. “No, I came here on my own.”
Brit took the opportunity to chime in. “But not by himself. Hi, I’m Brit-here-against-my-will-Pilotlite. I’m Match’s cousin.”
S’lin’s eyes darted to Brit and he switched his handshake from Match to the girl. “Cousin really? No way! So you must have been drafted hu? Not to worry, you’ll learn to love it here.” His eyes shot to her hat. “T.D. hu? They snap them up. Oh I’m sorry, I take it you don’t know me. My name is S’lin-as-in-Snake-Shinestar or Surestar if you’ve seen me play gammion. By the way there is a game tonight if you want to stop by the commissary around nine. Anyway, I know Match from back in my Merc years, we grew up together before the guild split into A and B. But get this Match, you probably don’t know this, but like five years ago group A disbanded. Can you top that! Right in Capital City.”
“That’s where we lived,” said Brit, feeling a little exhausted listening to the boy. “No way, damned if I had known. Well, anyway, I’m sure I’ll see you around enough now. Ha ha right? Speaking of that,” he took a breath, “What are you certified as Match?”
A little embarrassed, Match answered, “Oh, only evasion and general weapons.”
S’lin seemed crestfallen. “That is boring. You should be in sprint guard or dash line. And with…” he pointed to his eye. Match touched his arrow mark self-consciously.
“I’m a protection archer,” he stated simply.
S’lin looked away, temporarily distracted by someone walking in the distance. “Well anyway, I’ll see you at the gammion tonight, remember nine ok? See ya!”
And in a breathless flurry he was gone. Brit looked at Match, an amused expression on her face.
“Okay so what was all that about?”
Match started walking down the hall again, his fist tightening around the paper schedule in his hand. “S’lin Shinestar. Crazy kid. He’s an Assassin.”
Brit’s jaw dropped. “You have to be kidding! He was like all over the place.”
“You’d be surprised, he’s really different out in the field. He was in a special team from day one. They worked him until he fell down and passed out. Then they yelled at him some more. And he was like six years old.”
“I can’t understand how you can miss that.”
“I know you don’t,” Match turned from her and walked towards the dormitory.
Chapter five:
The first assignment was on of investigation. A girl who’s name Brit caught in her notes as being a one Kova Firebridle, had seen a strange unidentified meteor streaking from the general trajectory of Lantica towards an island to the far east of Ieria. The way the faculty was talking, if the item that had crashed actually had come from Lantica, then the impending war between the North and the South would be forgotten like a bad dream. All the same to Brit, she sure as all hell didn’t want to go to war.
Her classes had been going well, but she was mediocre in anything physical. Except for firearms in which her aim ranked her high, and in her street fighting class in which she excelled because of her tight, controlled kicks, she felt utterly useless. Her flexibility was nil as was her endurance. Her arms were like noodles except when it came to controlling the kick of a mule gun. Match was in one of her physical and kinetic ed. Classes and he seemed to do his best to distance himself from her when sparring and pair exercises came. She didn’t really care, he was related in name only as far as she was concerned.
But when they got their group assignments, Match had been paired with her. He’ll just have to deal with it, Brit thought.
“Hey you,” she said as way of greeting. He looked up at her and his brow seemed to have acquired a couple more creases since she last saw him. Perhaps he wasn’t having as fun a time as he had first expected. “I haven’t seen you around.” Which wasn’t surprising seeing as the female and male dorms were on opposite sides of the Kard. Still, Brit would bet 100 to one that he had been avoiding her on purpose.
“I don’t know, I guess I’ve just been busy. Do you know anyone else in our assignment?”
“S’lin.”
As if conjured by the sound of his name, the slender form of S’lin emerged from the doorway and bounded into the classroom like a happy puppy. “Match an Brit was it? We’re on assignment! You guys must be really cooking along in your classes to be assigned three upperclassmen in your group.” The silent form of a girl, younger than Brit by only a year or so, solidified from the dark hall behind S’lin. She wore a large brimmed leather hat with a crested clap at her chin. She tipped it off her head as she approached and reveled starling gray-silver hair. “This is Kova Firebridle, windword expert extraodinar.”
Brit did not know the language of the deaf known as windword. She had seen quite a few people speaking it at Kard and each class had an interpreter, though most speakers could read lips as well. It was a rather violent language Brit thought, with many hand slaps and quick, jerking gestures. Supposedly it had been invented by Bag’vian prisoners to communicate to each other in the walking cells of the First Seconds War. Brit didn’t have anymore time to contemplate, for the third upperclassman entered the room and wiped her mind clear.
“And finally Ashton Blaze, in war theory and hand to hand if I am not mistaken.” Ashton nodded.
“Call me Blaze.”
Chapter Six
* Match is wounded in the left leg, it being badly crushed beneath a fallen building.
The man in white floated a foot off the ground and appeared seven feet tall to Match, as he lie shivering on the soft, moist ground. Their eyes locked and, in an instant, Match saw more than he ever wished.
“My name is Kabris,” a voice whispered, like cracks spreading over a frozen pond. Match felt beads of sweat break out along his brow line, from strain and pain and something else. But it was more than a voice. It was like every pore in Match’s body was stimulated to the shivering point of extreme emotion. Fear? Passion? No, nothing so mundane. Something inexplicable, unspeakable.
The voice came again, and Match literally felt his body quiver with the surge of emotion. “I have come to teach you. You are so much now, but you have the potential to be oh so much more. More even than I.”
Power. That was what it was. Tangible power flowing over the boy from the man, maybe twice his age, perhaps ageless. Match was unable to follow what Kabris was saying. He attempted to speak but was halted as the man’s arm lifted as if by a marionette’s string. “You don’t understand. But you will, and it is my duty to be sure that you do.” Gentle as a feather, the man descended and his feet, clad in soft white leather so thin Match could see the tendons tense and relax beneath, touched the ground. In a fluid motion, he was kneeling in the cold muck next to the boy. “May I help you up?”
Match’s mind swam. This creature which knelt in the mud next to him like some strange spiritual beast was asking permission to help him up? He couldn’t comprehend what was happening, and it frightened him to realize how powerless he felt. How powerless he was, and out of control. He tried not to let his features betray him, but he knew his shivering and perspiration were beyond his control. Besides, the blot of pain which was his left leg had already made the world around him disappear. He wasn’t even sure he could get up, defiantly not on his own. Very carefully, Match nodded.
Kabris did not change his expression. He simply reached a hand out and placed it on Match’s shoulder. Instantly, the world went dark and Match though he must have passed out. He soon realized, though, that he was conscience. He could see himself, his body, and the body of the man in white. But all around him was darkness. Darkness so black it seemed to writhe with unimagined forms. He drew his eyes away from it and back to the man, Kabris.
“Please, don’t worry,” soothed Kabris’ cool tone.
“I’m not worried.” Match was able to breath. “I am confused.”
The ice blue gaze of Kabris met Match’s wide violet eyes, and his voice came ringing like a church organ. “Yes, you are. Too much has happened to you too soon.” The form seemed to dance around Match like a specter. “But I can set things right. Better, I can teach you to set things right. I can show you what you are. What your power is. What your purpose is.”
Unable to draw his eyes away, Match’s mind began to clear. Slowly he realized that he was no longer lying on the ground, but instead he was standing, both legs extended comfortably. “My leg!” he began.
“Is healed,” Kabris finished. “By you. Your power. Your strength and belief allowed it.”
Kabris too was standing. No stain upon his knees from where he had knelt in the mud of the swamplands only moments before. Standing level to him, or more accurately floating for there was no ground to stand upon, Match could see that Kabris was only a half head taller than himself. The man’s hand on Match’s shoulder began to slide inch by inch down his arm. When it reached the end of Match’s sleeve, it touched the skin of his hand and Match was shocked by a sweet warmth.
“I want to learn,” Match blurted out. “I want to know. I want to feel like this.”
For the first time, Kabris smiled. It was a wolf’s grin. “I want you to feel like this always. But you must trust me.” His eyes cut into Match with a seriousness his voice commanded. Match found himself nodding. “Trust me,” Kabris repeated, “Listen to me, do as I command, and you will learn all that I know.”
Match closed his eyes. “I need this,” he said to himself, and he felt the arm of Kabris sweep over his back, to his other shoulder, drawing him close. His brain dizzied, Match caved inwards, towards the chest of the man in white. Kabris hugged him tightly, and Match felt safe, saved. The soft leather tunic of Kabris was warm and smooth against Match’s cheek. Match sensed a clearness, indescribable. He could feel it in his body, smell it like a gust of winter wind, but warm and comforting. No, cleansing. He drew as near as he possibly could, gathered up in the arms of Kabris which were, in fact, quite strong though they looked thin and birdlike.
He felt himself being lifted, as if he were a child again. Again. To many, Match still was a child. Yet how long had it been since he had allowed himself the innocence? The wonder? The ability to let go and feel again. But there was darkness all around. Who would see if the dark prince let his persona drop for a moment of freedom? A moment of hedonistic pleasure? It felt right. It made him smile.
Kabris took the boy to a place he remembered from long ago, before he had been imprisoned to the cave. A familiar place which held Kabris’ memories in every room. They drifted up the stairs, cracking and dusty from years of disuse, to a room which Kabris knew would remain untouched by the passage of time. The door opened to his thought, his will, and he steeped inside.
One dim candle burned eternal at a nightstand. There was a canopied bed against the west wall and a chair near the nightstand. That was all. The boy needed sleep. Sleep without the intrusion of dreams or thought or worry. This was the only place that was possible. Set apart from the world, from history. Kabris gently maneuvered Match to the bed and let him lie down. He watched the boy’s head sink into the mattress slightly rumpling the deep, plush, velvet comforter, his dark fine hair spreading a halo around his face, tumbling into his eyes. With a sender finger, Kabris lightly brushed at Match’s hair, then deliberately touched the arrow mark below Match’s left eye. It burned beneath his touch, but he let his finger trace the lines carefully before lifting his hand away. He watched a moment as Match’s chest rose and fell rhythmically. How long had it been since he had seen someone so alive? So solid? Kabris found himself resting on the bed, perched on the edge, watching the boy. The One-who-would-surpass, curled up on the bed. Where time never passed. The tall pale man’s head sunk low, to the boy’s chest. He laid his ear to it, resting, eyes open, listening. The heartbeat, steady and strong. It made Kabris’ own heart ache. More beautiful than a symphony played by the masters themselves, Kabris thought. And he allowed himself that thought.
Chapter 7
S’lin found himself laced to the wall with an intricate web of living tissue. He could not move save a desperate glance with wide eyes. As he tried to move his head, he was horrified to find the tendrils that constricted his neck were actually attached to his skin. He strained his eyes from right to left and could see suction type digits sticking to the skin of his shoulders and arms, like a parasitic vine clings to the side of a tree. S’lin pulled, tensing all his muscles, but only felt the tendrils constrict around him. The tendrils around his head and neck relaxed as he did. Some may have taken the moment to panic, but the Assassin code said, “Do until you die” and S’lin was far from ready to die.
He was wrapped like a cocoon in the tendrils. Whatever or whoever had put him there had pinioned his arms to his sides. His clothes had not been removed but his weapons had. He attempted to raise his arm but felt the tendrils burrow deeper into his flesh, right through the thin protection of his gray tunic. It didn’t exactly hurt but it made his skin crawl.
Then, suddenly, something began to materialize before him. He watched as the form of the Z-archer dripped out of the darkness. It’s mouth was closed and S’lin watched the mesmerizing motion of the veins pulsing with energy under the surface of the skin. As he was scrutinizing the face, trying to find what it might be interested in, he felt a bolt of electric shock shoot from every suction connection and into his body. His world darkened momentarily and his frame shook with the impact. His skin felt inflamed, burning, on fire. Then it subsided and the Z-archer sat dead eyed starring at him.
“Okay, you got my attention,” S’lin thought. “What do you want?”
Like an aching headache deep in his brain, far behind his eyes, he heard a voice. It was deep and gravely and S’lin felt fear spread like frost through his guts.
“You have great tolerance for pain.”
S’lin’s mind was blank. He felt the tendrils buzzing, humming like a threat. He felt the living cables tighten around every limb as he fought to breath as the sticky tentacle encircled his neck. There was something obscene about such a horrible thing touching him where he had not long ago, felt Kova’s kisses. On the thin tender skin of his throat, he felt the fingers attach to his body and he had to try hard to keep from gulping and perhaps disturbing them further. “If I relax, the tendrils relax.” He thought, and his body obeyed.
“You are important,” the voice came again, like a fleeting thought that was not his own. “And I need you alive. That is why I have already taken the death pill from your body.”
“Oh no,” S’lin thought and probed his mouth for what he knew was not there. The secret area where every Assassin had his or her suicide pill. S’lin’s was missing. “Ciat, what does it want?”
“Ah, the fear of an Assassin. Delicious.”
“Get out of my head!” S’lin thought. He tried to calm himself, shutting his eyes to the horrific looking Z-archer. But when he did, it was if a movie was playing on the back of his eyelids. He saw Match and Brit and Kova and others. They were bound to the large fleshy pink wall as he was. It was intimately clean and smelled of a warm animal. But what he saw made his eyes fly open.
“They are all here?”
“They feed me. They make me strong.” The form of the Z-archer below him stood up on two legs and took on the distorted form of a human. “What do you think of that?” the voice thought at him.
Again the tendrils coursed with electricity. S’lin felt his body react without his consent, arching forward, limbs growing ridged and numb. He felt the stab of pain only briefly, like needles piecing his skin, through muscle, through even his bones. Then he felt heat, radiating from his chest. It was a sensation he knew he had never felt before and it made his ears ring. The edges of the world started to blur, curling like burn paper into blackness as his body lost touch with his natural senses. “No! I cant! I have more to do ! I can do another round captain!” The world grew dark as his eyelids drooped. “I can do anot…” His thoughts were cut short by the white heat of a pressure in his chest. The pressure increased to a crushing magnitude, not allowing his lungs to take in oxygen. S’lin’s mouth flew open, gasping involuntarily. Like lighting, the tendril wriggled past his teeth and began to work its way down his gullet like a wiggling fish. He gagged and choked as the suction cups began attaching to the inside of his throat.
“You are not dying,” the Z-archer said simply, and S’lin felt his mind open at the thought. The Z-archer didn’t want him dead, only incapacitated. That gave him a chance, a chance to get out. He sucked in a shallow breath through his nose and then bit down, feeling his teeth sink into the flesh like biting into a tomato. The tentacle recoiled like a wounded snake and the gagging reflex as it flew from his mouth was too much to ignore. S’lin heaved what was inside him up and onto the floor. Blood and tissue and tentacle flowed over his lips and then he strained against his captor, pushing forward with all his strength. He was able to get a tiny space between him and the spongy wall behind him, sliding his hands behind his buttocks. The fleshy wall reacted, as if it realized what he was doing. He pulled his left hand free of the leech-like attachments and grabbed a tentacle, tearing it away from his head and neck. He felt it tighten its grip again and he ripped at it with his fingernails and bit at it again and again. He tugged his right arm free. Near his hand, he felt for the release of the hidden blade built into his outfit. It was disguised to make it appear part of his knee reinforcement, but he knew exactly where to press for the blade to spring into his hand. He thrust down and stabbed deep into the wall which rippled like a linen sheet. The thing recoiled and S’lin, gripping the knife, fell forward like a child escaping the womb.
He pulled himself free, body marred from the hundreds of little hook-like attachments. His clothes were torn in places and his shoulder harness had stayed stuck to the wall. He dove forward, out of the reach of the tentacles and freed another hidden knife into his right hand.
The wall squirmed, squirting clear liquid out of the stab wound and perhaps a bite mark. It didn’t make another effort to grab for him but instead tore his winged harness apart. He turned his back on it and faced the Z-archer.
Chapter
“The chaos that the broken archer brings is the least of your troubles, I can guarantee.” The priestess smiled. “He is only the beginning
“What are you talking about,” asked Match, his voice edged with annoyance. He knew that the priestess was insane, and he trusted nothing that she said. Still, he was desperate for any hint of where the Z-archer might strike next.
Her eyes flew dangerously from side to side and her crazy smile did not falter. “We know what you don’t, what you are all hiding from. The facts. And the archer is our avatar. Long live the broken archer! Long live the chaos! Offer yourselves to it and you may be saved!”
S’lin shot forward and shoved the grinning priestess hard in the chest before anyone could stop him. "Shut your mouth, useless piece of worm trail!” Match grabbed him by the shoulder and held him firm. S’lin didn’t take his eyes from the priestess, his ice blue eyes all but burning through her. “What are we still doing here listening to this crazy worm?”
The woman stared back at S'lin, eyes glittering like a cats. “He touched you didn’t he, young snake archer?” S’lin sucked in his breath at her revelation. “Oh, I can see more than you imagine. I can see it in your eyes that this is, what, personal?”
S’lin shrugged angrily away from Match. “Sure as hell it’s personal.” He whipped the glove off his right hand and revealed the two stumps of his severed fingers. “Your biting archer did this to me, and a whole lot more, as if you care.”
“And still you don’t know,” The priestess asked calmly.
“Stop talking in riddles,” Match interrupted. “Stop telling your prophecies. If you won’t tell us where the Z-archer is, we are leaving.”
“But that is what you don’t understand,” she cried loudly, the smile finally gone and a bit of recognizable sanity in her face. “It does not matter where he is. You shouldn’t be concerning yourself with him. It has been foretold and it is here to start the chain reactions which will end this sorry planet for good don’t you see? The archers were first after the great destruction of Toraland. Now the broken archer has arrived, the second step. Don’t you see, it is useless to combat it.”
“no I don’t see!” Match nearly yelled. “Quit asking unless you are going to tell us.” His violet eyes stayed locked with the priestess briefly and he actually thought she would tell him the end to her prophecy, would answer his question. “What is the end?”
But her inner light faded as he watched and she drew back into her dark hood. “If you do not know, then you are blind.” Chapter 8
Match, alone despite those around him in the pinky steaming depths of the cave, the cave with the walls that were alive and watching him, felt a sickness overtake his heart, like the sight of a doomed animal second before it expires. He had grown use to this feeling and pushed it deep into the far reaches of his mind, unable the luxury of thinking about what he was doing in the cave. Unwilling to ask the question, “why me” without unleashing the fear and unworthiness he felt being put in the predicament he now found himself. Fear. Fear of how oh so very wrong he could be. Fear that his luck could not last.
“In the belly of the devil,” whispered his cousin Brit as she walked along close behind him, the heels of her boots making indentations in the soft substrate of the cave floor.
Finally the time was right. Match could stand it no longer. “Go now!” he signed to Ashton Blaze and Brit. They shot forward, down the rocky embankment, through the ice cold cave to where S’lin hung suspended and naked above the sandy floor. Match followed. S’lin didn’t look much better close up than he had far away, and he smelled terrible. There was no time to contemplate though.
“S’lin! It’s us, hold on!” He said through clenched teeth. S’lin’s skin was clay cold and quaked beneath his hold as Match wrapped his arms around the boy’s bare legs. Brit, bracing herself against Blaze’s shoulders, slit the cord suspending S’lin from the ceiling and he slipped down into Match’s arms.
Matched stumbled, then found himself looking into the wide, bloodshot eyes of S’lin Shinestar. “S’lin!” he whispered.
S’lin tottered, his ankles weak beneath him. “’Bout time you got here.” He said, his words rasping like a death rattle in his throat. His face was a beaten bloody mess of scabs, cuts, scrapes, and large discolored areas of bruises. Blaze and Brit appeared at his side and helped support his arms. S’lin winced as they touched him.
“Careful,” breathed Match, then to S’lin, “Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.”
“I am?” S’lin asked, his dry lips cracking as he managed a dim smile. “Oh good.” Then his eyes rolled back and his head lolled forward. Suddenly, every muscle in his body relaxed and he became suddenly heavy with unconsciousness. Blood trickled quietly from his mouth as S’lin Shinestar slipped quietly into a coma.
chapter 10
Match knew the danger. He had been a victim to it before. But it was getting to the point that there was little choice left. The Archer was out of control, and there would be little left to defend if he didn’t act soon. How could things get any worse, he thought, with an ironic shake of his head.
He walked into his room and locked the sliding door behind him. There was tightness in his chest at the thought of what he was about to do, but he pushed it aside. He walked through the main room, to his bedroom. This was always where he felt it the strongest. This is where he dreamed.
He lay down. In the silence he could hear the hum of the internal air system, the distance sounds of movement, doors sliding, slight clicks and creeks of a building that are never heard except in extreme quiet.
“I know you’re always there,” he thought. “I know you haunt me. You listen in to my thoughts, you watch me, trying to determine where you went wrong. Planning your next attack.”
Match felt approaching warmth. But unlike most other times, he did not try to block it out. He let it come; let it rise like a long repressed memory.
“You flatter yourself,” came the familiar voice. “I have no interest in you any more.”
Against his will, Match felt his heart jump at these words. He felt the satisfaction in the voice when it came again.
“I am touched that it still bothers you.”
“Bothers me?” Match said out loud to the room. He sat up on his bed. “I beat you. I won. I killed you.”
“Yes,” the voice rang in his head, “but I did something to you that is so much more enduring than death.”
Match clenched his teeth. “Obviously I effected you in a way that transcends death. You couldn’t leave me if you wanted to.”
They sat for a moment in uncompromising silence. Finally, Match gave in and flopped down on the bed. “I need your help.”
“What?”
“You know,” Match said, irritably.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I don’t care about your games anymore. It’s S’lin. He is unreachable, and unless he wakes up, they’ll declare him dead. I know he’s still in there, but I can’t do anything about it. You can. I am asking for your help.”
“Match.”
It had been a long time since he had said his name. Both of them felt it. “You were mine. Listen to my voice. This is all I am. I cannot hurt you anymore. Close your eyes.”
“No,” Match said automatically. He knew with darkness would come dreams.
“You wake from dreams,” the voice echoed. “It is all I have left. One dream.”
“One nightmare you mean,” said Match, turning on his side. “You come and take me in my dreams anyway. What difference does it make?”
“What difference? Dream or nightmare, neither one is real. But it makes all the difference to me.” A pause, then, “I will help your friend, regardless.”
“You can?”
“You must have learned by now not to doubt me.”
Match was quiet. He did not openly consent, but without reluctance, he let his eyes close.
*
When Match opened his eyes again, he gasped. Kabris stood mere inches from his face. His eyes shone like gemstones, pulling Match into their depths.
“Do you want me to stop you?” asked Match.
“Do you want to stop me?”
Kabris brought his hand to Match’s face. He did not touch, but traced in the air the angle of his cheekbone, the curve of his neck, the gentle arch of his shoulder. “There is so much we missed. Our lives could have been so easily reversed. I do not hate you for killing me. I want so badly to kill you.”
Match blinked and found he was looking at a mirror. But no, it wasn’t a mirror. He was looking at himself from the eyes of Kabris. From a body taller, thinner, he looked down at himself, and his own violet eyes stared back. “This is how you appear to me.”
Disoriented, he didn’t know where the voice was coming from, his own throat, or from the mouth of the body he was now in. Again, Kabris’s slim hand rose to Match’s cheek. But this time, it alighted on his cheek and caressed the side of his face. Match both stroked the smooth skin of his own body and felt the touch. He could not repress a shiver.
Then Match saw his hand reach up. He wanted to yell, “NO.” But he was in control of neither body. He was a passenger in this dream.
“Please,” begged Kabris in Match’s voice. “Let me have this.”
“I don’t have a choice,” thought Match. He was suddenly terrified and sickened. He felt like a caged wild animal, angry and afraid, yet paralyzed with fear.
Then with a jolt they were apart. Match stared from his own eyes at the tall thin form that stood alone in a barren expanse.
They starred at one another. Match knew this man, or demon or whatever he was. He had not seen him in the flesh for over a year. But here he stood real as ever, his fine features etched like sculpture.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?”
Kabris looked away, over Match’s head. “What can I say? You are right. I could not leave you if I wanted to. As no other, you hold control over me.” His eyes darted back. “And there have been plenty others. Ages worth.”
“Why me?”
“You are my grand mistake.”
Match waited, as Kabris let his eyes drift back to meet his, and then travel over every inch of his body with an aching hunger. But Kabris said no more.
“I wish it were different between us.” Match said finally. “Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s pity. Maybe it’s the fact that I realize you’re right. Our lives could be reversed. I hate you. But I need you.”
Kabris disappeared, and Match was left alone. He stood for a moment, then Kabris flashed into existence again, fearfully close.
“I know,” he breathed. Match shut his eyes and turned away.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in his bed.
Chapter 10
S’lin was hooked to the general array of critical machines. The scan bed held a burn gel mattress to repair the shallow wounds on his back. Cushions of a different gel that would protect the damaged bones and soft tissue of his ankle supported his right leg. They had not been able to save his left foot; the damage had been too extreme. A starch white bandage covered the stump.
One arm was at his side, under the arch of the scanner bed. The other was extended, needles pumping intravenous drugs and sustenance into him.
Kabris hovered in the dark, listening to the respirator pumping the boy’s lungs in and out.
He considered the situation and Match’s request. He knew vaguely of the freckle-faced Bag’vian boy, an acquaintance of Match’s throughout the years. Looking down at the broken form, thin and sickly yellow, broken bones, filleted skin, missing appendages, teeth, Kabris wondered if the boy wanted to be brought back.
He floated above the bed, hungry for the pain just inches from him. He would not be able to heal this boy as he had healed Match, a fellow archer. He would be able to draw the dizzying taste from him without ulterior motives. He let his hand fall from the sky.
S’lin took a breath on his own for the first time in a month.
Kabris saw only red. His ears rung, and he felt himself begin to be absorbed by S’lin. He wanted to let go. He wanted to lay down inside the boy’s body. A grin crept across his face as he embraced the boy’s heart.
“You are stronger than you appear,” Kabris said in a low whisper. He began to reconstruct the building blocks of life within the body, slowly remembering and relearning the inner workings of the mortal shell, as he always did. There was a lot to be done, a lot the doctors had missed. S’lin was rotting from the inside, taken over by the infection of his own organs.
But Kabris had to stop himself from doing too much. To completely heal one so wounded would mean shock and relapse. Besides, Kabris liked to leave himself wanting more. With a sigh, he began to withdraw.
A shock rippled up his arm, jolting him into focus. S’lin’s hand, still bristling with fluid- filled tubes and needles, held fast to Kabris’s forearm, the latter still partially penetrating the former’s torso. Kabris, without need for a racing heart or gasping breath, froze with the shock nonetheless. The boy had not moved for 24 days, had not been able to eat or drink or relieve himself without the help of hoses and pumps, pans and nurses. Yet Kabris watched in terrific horror as S’lin, his eyes still shut, parted his lips.
“Please.”
In a split moment’s decision, Kabris yanked his arm back. Like a dead thing, S’lin’s arm flopped back onto the bed, some vital mechanical connections loosened, and the medical tape pealing off the back of his hand.
Kabris stared dumfounded at the inert form. Thoughts flashing through his brain posed possibilities he was almost afraid to consider. He felt as he had never felt before; not as he sanguinely confronted the broken archer, nor any of the times he had died, not even the first.
He felt the urge to flee.
He fought the urge to run back to Match’s arms, back to someone who’s heart could race, and who’s breathing could quicken, and who could have beads of sweat break out on his brow. He wanted to demand Match explain what sort of creature this Bag’vian was.
But, no. He wouldn’t go back to Match. Not yet. Tentatively, he reached out and touched S’lin’s hand.
The hand was warm and dry, the same temperature as the air. There was no movement at first, the dead little hand lay softly against Kabris’s skin. Then a flutter, and the fingers moved in a smooth motion over his hand. Kabris gapped, and moved his other hand over the boy, tracing his every ache and wound, his swollen shoulders, along his other arm with its scaling sores, and over the bump in his wrist to an older wound. One that happened at exactly the same time Match had fallen beneath the rock wall of the compound, his leg crushed and twisted like a rose stem. At that very time, in a hail of bullets and confusion, S’lin’s right hand had been punctured. Struck between the thumb and forefinger, in the soft area bereft of bone, vital nerves, or veins, the apparently minor wound was bandaged. Only S’lin had known what he really lost.
Now Kabris knew as well. He looked at the boy’s beaten face, the hose that snaked down his throat and made him to breath, the tubes up his nose. Slowly and ever so gently, Kabris laid himself against the boy, mirroring him like a shadow, falling into him as if he were a reflection in a pool. He sank into the boy’s body, melting behind his skin.
He found himself instantly in the embrace of a golden light, writhing in slow ecstasy. He was aware of a strength flowing through his body that almost made him loose consciousness. When they broke apart, he could see the boy.
“Who are you?” the boy demanded. He wore the gray uniform of the university special forces. He was the same age as Match, and about the same height and build. Kabris stared hard.
“You,” he managed. Then, composing himself, “Match asked me to check in on you.”
