Spring Changes, page 24
“If you were not bonded, why did you do it?” Sakrost asked. It was a genuine question in the flicker of his eyes.
“I did it because we were friends,” I answered. “Friendship above anything means more to me than my life. I put my life on the line and so did my team around me for the future of all, for your king.”
“You just want his power, his connection to us.”
“I do not need his power,” I said. “Or his connections to your people through his crown.”
Sakrost laughed then. “You don’t?”
“No,” I said and stood tall. “Tiftia and Barsis stood by me in a time of need, as did Clan Takar over the battlefield of Flaoer. They worked with me to save many. They trusted me then; they’d trust me now without Yun’s bond.”
Sakrost cast his eyes to the seating above Yun, and I noted Tiftia and Barsis there. “You would stand with someone not of the Sitha if he asked you?”
Tiftia and Barsis stood. Then within seconds, the whole section around her also stood. I glanced at Yun, who looked up as Rayth and Lenko also stood.
“You have quite the sway, Kyle,” Sakrost admitted. “I do not understand this at all.”
Ethran spoke out again, but this time his words came with tremendous force. “The darkness he has within him has tainted them all, they cannot be trusted!”
Sakrost cast them a glance, and then to me he said simply, “I see no taint on him.” He cocked his head to one side, his eyes searching in my soul.
“You see no taint on me because I defeated the darkness, the one who aided me, and to whom I owed a tremendous debt.”
Ethran laughed in the background still, but Sakrost’s demeanour changed towards me. If that was a good thing or not, I didn’t know. “You defeated one of the darkness’s soldiers?”
“Not just a soldier,” I said. “His name was Captain Immor under General Fidel.”
The room erupted around Clan Takar and I. They all sat back down.
Sakrost listened to the shouts of some of the others. I could hear them but didn’t know what language.
I can’t work that one out, Hiroto said. It is still Sitha, but I don’t know what the differences are in their dialects.
Sakrost turned to me. “If you have indeed fought off the general’s first captain, then this changes our position here slightly.”
I nodded. “I thought it would. You want me to prove I am no longer tainted?”
“That is up to the—”
There were more shouts from the others around, but Harth stepped forwards in ear range, and I heard him speak to Sakrost in clear tones.
“I implore you not to do this,” he said.
“It is not my choice to do this, but of the council.”
I looked to Harth. “Do what?” I asked.
I mean, I’d gone through fighting Barsis so I could take on Ethran if I needed to, but this, with how things had already turned, didn’t seem like it was happening. Yun? I asked. What are they talking about?
I don’t know, Yun said honestly. But I don’t like the feelings reverberating around the room.
Neither do I, I said.
I looked to Sakrost and Harth as they seemed deep in debate.
Sakrost pushed him away. The older man wobbled on his feet, slightly lowering his head. He also wouldn’t look at me.
I swallowed and waited while someone from the top level made their way down the stairs towards us. He was much older than even Sakrost; his wisps which floated around him were greying. He stepped towards Sakrost, and he bowed and moved away without saying anything.
The new man approached me and placed his hand on the circle. “There is only one way the people around us here will take your place at Yun’s side seriously. I’m afraid you and Yun might not like what I am going to say.”
“I don’t know all of your customs, or your ways of life,” I said to him. “I do know that right now, as a species, this infighting and the trust issues have to stop.”
“That, young man,” he said, “I would agree with above anything.”
“Good, then no matter if we like it or not, this will be settled today.”
“It still might take more than a day for what is coming. Please.” He bade me come out of the circle. “I must address the council and inform them of the path we now travel.”
I stepped out of the way, and he took the circle.
“It is with deep sadness we come to this conclusion today. The fact Kyle defeated the darkness within means Ethran’s challenge is no longer feasible. The truth must be decided by our ancestors, and Kyle will face them in the Servota.”
There were many hushed whispers this time and Yun tried to stand, but Tiftia held onto him. I guessed with the hushed silence of those around us that this was more serious than just a fight.
Have you got anything on this Servota? I asked on the inside.
Nothing at all, I’m sorry, Xe said.
I searched all databases the universe over. There’s nothing. Whatever this is, we’re going in totally blind, Hiroto added.
Well, great, I guess.
I waited for the old man to do something else, but he stepped out of the circle.
“You will come with me. We shall leave them to the rest of their discussions and arguments.”
“We’re allowed to leave right now?”
“Yes, very much so. They cannot stop this. Come. You will see what you face in a short while.”
I glanced at Yun once more, his mouth open. I reached out. Don’t worry, I will see you soon.
Kyle, I—
And he was cut off. I didn’t know a powerful force was enough to do that, but I looked at the man by my side.
“My name is Bane. I am neither aligned to any clan here, nor really Sitha.”
We walked out of the building, and the Sitha guards moved to close the doors, then they stood and watched me. “I get the impression this is something that doesn’t happen very often?”
“No, it does not. Only the king would get to see the inner circle of those who passed before us.”
A shuttle waited at the bottom of the path we were on. “I cannot come with you on this journey, and no one else can either. You will go with the vehicle till it stops. When you alight, there will be another building. Enter it and move to the centre of the room, sit and wait.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yes. For your sake and those around us, I wish you well, young man,” he said.
I looked up into his eyes and saw something of myself in them. Once when he’d been young, I had no doubt he was the epitome of a soldier and man.
“Thanks, Bane. I hope for all of us I pass whatever tests they think are necessary inside that room.”
He lowered his head at me and motioned toward the vehicle. I made my way towards it, not looking back.
You’re a very brave man, Xe said. Heading into the unknown.
Brave or stupid? I asked, opening the door.
I agree with Xe, Hiroto said. Your inner strength astounds me.
Thanks, guys, I said. You both give me that strength, and as much as Bane said I was to go in alone, I am never alone. Even if you weren’t with me right now, I know you’d never be far away.
Too right, Xe said.
The vehicle drove off when I sat down, and I just went with it, watching the scenery around me change with it. We were next out amongst beautiful trees and then through them and into desert lands. It was quite beautiful. Sharp rock formations jutted into the skies. Strange angles, but beautiful none the less. Here and there were short spiky plants gathered around other, taller trees. Water sources? I asked Hiroto.
Yes, it’s a good sign.
A while later ahead of us a building grew, it wasn’t large or fancy, just a plain-walled, circular building. There was one Sitha guard on the outside. I opened the door and looked to him before I moved to the building. He didn’t say a word as I touched the door by his side.
“Guess you were expecting me. See you when I see you,” I said, and I pushed the door.
It opened and there, inside, was just as Bane had said. It was just a dark room. I walked in, and the door closed with a clunk behind me.
“Place your hand on the panel to your right,” a voice said.
Out of the ground, a silver panel appeared. There was a small picture of a hand, and I placed it on the panel.
They’re asking me to leave, Xe said. I don’t want to.
Do as they ask, please, Xe.
My whole system was evacuated. There wasn’t one nite left.
I don’t think they’ll ask me to leave, will they? Hiroto asked.
I don’t know. You can’t really leave me, I said. Right?
“The second mind inside you can stay. Please step to the centre of the room and sit.”
That was good. At least I had Hiroto with me to process all of this, whatever it was going to be afterwards.
I moved forwards but found the room seemed heavy. Every step was harder and harder.
When I did reach the centre and I sat, it felt as if the weight of the world settled on my shoulders.
“That is because it is,” a soft voice said. “You are facing more than impossible odds. You are here with that weight on yourself. This is nothing to do with us.”
I swallowed. “Tini?”
“There are not many who would use my pet name,” she said. “My full name was Titania Mavron.”
“You’re the calm before the storm, I gather?”
“Yes, I am. I fought with them to give me this opportunity to thank you.”
“You do not owe me anything,” I said.
“You saved my son. The young man seen out there is everything I wished he could be.”
“I saved him once, he saved me many times, and then vice versa. He’s my partner, my friend.”
“That is what they are going to determine. He might have the power, the energy to lead our people, but you are something of an enigma. They must see you, who you really are.”
“I’m ready,” I said. I placed a hand on each knee and hoped it would be enough to keep me upright for what was to follow.
I had no idea.
The room darkened, and I could hear many voices. They were speaking the old language of the Sitha.
Death to the human.
He will never have the strength.
He will crumple at the first hit.
That’s when I saw all the faces, many faces. Warping, morphing, twisted, and evil.
I panicked. I’d never seen this side to the Sitha; they were predatory, and they wanted something from me.
Someone appeared before me, his face contorted in a grotesque, rotten vision.
“The Sitha are not like this,” I said into the darkness.
But the face before me laughed. “Not like this . . . not like this . . .”
He pulled something from out the centre of his chest. A curled filament. “I never thought I’d get a chance to use this in the afterlife, to take the force of someone like this. You will give me everything you are, Kyle Ranz, and I will devour you before my peers to prove you are nothing.”
When the curled-up filament lashed out at me, I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place. The shielding I thought I still had in place against Ethran or anyone else who would try to take my life never stood a chance against this creature. It penetrated through it like a sharp knife to freshly cooked bread.
What I expected to be painful, I had no words for.
Hiroto screamed out. I didn’t feel anything. The face in front of me laughed and annoyed the hell out of me.
“You do not attack my friends,” I said.
My soul split. I grabbed hold of the attached string sucking the life out of me. This time it didn’t move, though.
Movement to my left, and someone took hold of my other hand. “You cannot stop what is coming,” the new voice said. Then it also lunged towards my chest. “You are going to die!”
This time I fucking felt it.
This time I screamed.
My health shifted and dropped. The kenosi being sucked out from me. I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
There was nothing in my inventory here, nothing in my skills lists that would help at all. I tried to think of Lavinia, the crest, but when I did, the tattoo on my body just fluttered and died.
I was losing it; I was losing everything around me. Hiroto’s wailing in the background was the worst thing in my life.
I’d done everything I could for Yun. Everything I could for those in the galaxy, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
I was going to die.
I was going to fail once again.
My health dwindled, and I saw something else: Hiroto’s was as well.
I focussed, and instead of feeling the pain around me, I felt friendship. For everyone I had in my life, there was a connection. Little lifelines of a bond throughout the system. I didn’t need to tap them, but they were there. And I could see their energy draw. There was more energy here than what the Sitha ancestors had. I leaned forward, my hands on the floor. Pure kenosi laid bare before me, the purest I had felt since I’d been on Drudel.
You don’t get to make that decision for me. Those that are already dead do not make the choices for the living. I am here only to show you the strength I have.
I pulled this time, and I pulled from the planet itself.
“Yes!” Tini shouted her encouragement.
“Don’t give in, Kyle, you can do this.” I heard Hiroto’s too.
25
I focussed on the Sitha before me, and my eyes locked with his. I did exactly the same with the one who had attacked my real body; this time, I pulled too. I pulled from them.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “You can’t draw from the dead.”
“You have no idea what I can do. I can take the energy freely around me, from the planet’s core itself. I can take what no one else would want to. The energy force of those past. Those who would wish the world around me harm. I will not let you or anyone else hurt this world. We deserve more than what our ancestors brought for us. We deserve a future without pain.” I yanked hard on the cords between us. “We deserve a life of real friendship. Yun is not just your chosen king. He is more than that; he is a joining force to mine. One that no one has ever seen before, because it wasn’t needed. I am the accumulation of experience within the worlds. I am an anomaly that everyone loves and loves to hate. You cannot bring me down.”
I saw more of the Sitha try to get in close to me, their coiled, draining fangs waiting to strike. The more of them that attached to me, the worse my pain was, but that pain only fuelled my anger, and I struck back at them instead. They wouldn’t get what they wanted from me. I would not let them.
The surrounding air stilled with the swirling mass of Sitha.
One after the other tried to be the one that would take me down, but they couldn’t. Thousands and thousands of them.
My strength kept on growing. Instead of them draining me, I drained them.
The first one that had attached to me started to struggle.
I did not want this.
I knew Yun needed the history of his ancestors. As much as they wanted to take me out, I knew it was for the right reasons.
I didn’t know how to do this without killing any of them, though; I didn’t want to do that.
“You have to stop this now,” I said. “There’s no more you can throw at me that I can’t take.”
The Crest of Lavinia burned now, brightly. There was more kenosi running through my veins than there ever had been.
“You can’t ask us to give up until this is over,” the first voice croaked out to me. “You cannot ask us to lie down while you change everything we are.”
“I’m not asking you to lie down. I’m not asking for anything no one wants to give. Do you not see that in me?”
I waited while the Sitha before me searched for his answer in my memories. He saw everything I did with the denti queen. The lives she took from me and the memories.
“You don’t even know what the system took from you in those, do you?” the voice asked.
“No, I do not, but I’d give all of my memories to fight for everyone in this universe. If I had only one purpose, I would still keep doing it without even knowing who I am anymore. I would continue onwards forever.”
The energy draw they were trying shifted. Was I really winning or was this a ruse?
“Would you die for Yun?” someone in the corner asked. “Would you die for us?”
“I would give my life for any of my friends, Hiroto and Yun especially. They mean more to me than I ever thought they could.”
“Hiroto means a lot to you. Would you make a different deal and sacrifice his life right now to take the place at Yun’s side?”
I was stricken. There was no way in hell I was ever going to make that choice.
Do it, Kyle, Hiroto said. You need him.
“Shut up,” I said. “Shut up, now. There’s no way in hell, ever, and I mean that. I would not sacrifice anyone for that. If I can’t pass their tests without killing someone, then I will die here right now so that you both can live.”
The room shifted around me. Something changed from them.
“You’d die right now if it meant they lived?” someone asked. “No matter the outcome?”
Tini moved in beside me. “Tell them, Kyle, tell the truth what your friends mean to you. What this life means to you.”
“Everything,” I said. “They mean everything to me. No words describe what I feel for them, no love stronger, because this means more. They mean more than love.”
Each connection to me loosened and then dropped.
“You feel stronger than love for one of ours?” the man before me asked.
“There are just no words for what I feel; it’s ancient . . . beyond the words that this world gives me.”
“Say it, Kyle,” Tini whispered in my ear. “Say what is in your heart.”
