A Flight of Broken Wings, page 8
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
Even with no energy-shells, however, it took at least three to four fully armed Hunters to take down a single unarmed Aeriel. Only a very few of the most skilled and experienced Hunters were allowed to Hunt in pairs, instead of the traditional teams of four.
He looked up to see Simani launch herself at the Aeriel, firing a shot a little off the creature’s right wing to distract it. The shot was never meant to hit its target, but it got the Aeriel to move instinctively leftwards in a bid to avoid another bullet to its wing. There, Simani’s right hand shot out at lightning speed, slashing viciously at the Aeriel’s exposed left wing with her sifblade. Once again, blinding light issued from the spot where the sifblade had touched the Aeriel’s skin, and the creature let out another ear-splitting scream, flying away and backwards. Simani followed it, firing two shots right at the creature’s chest as she tried to get close enough for another strike with her blade.
Ruban felt it before he saw it, the familiar prickling sensation as the air around them heated up with gathering energy. The Aeriel flew up and out of Simani’s reach, flapping its injured wing desperately to propel itself upward and farther away from its opponent. It needed distance for the momentum to build, Ruban realised, as he saw the first vestiges of an energy-shell forming in the Aeriel’s outstretched palm, a tiny dot of light that kept getting bigger and bigger until, within moments, it was the size of a small tennis ball.
“Sim!” he shouted, but his partner had already realised what was happening. Against every instinct in Ruban’s body telling him to make her run away from the inevitable blast, Simani stood perfectly still, as if petrified by the oncoming attack.
Then, as the Aeriel launched the smouldering ball of pure, fiery energy at her, Simani threw herself sideways with all her might, her body shooting out of the range of the attack just as the energy-shell flew harmlessly past the spot she had been standing in moments ago. Had she moved a moment earlier, the Aeriel would have had the time to change the direction of the attack, and the shell would have connected with its victim, obliterating her in a matter of seconds.
The deafening sound of an explosion buzzed in Ruban’s ear as the shell connected with some inanimate target in the distance and went off, flooding the area with sudden, blinding light for a few seconds.
Even as the Aeriel lost momentum and altitude in its moment of exhaustion after the blast, Ruban gripped his sifblade, and raising his hand in an arc over his head, threw the weapon with all the strength and accuracy he could muster at the Aeriel. The creature had its attention fixed on Simani, who was just recovering from her bruising leap, and did not notice the blade until it was too late.
It connected. The sifblade struck its target right in the throat, lodging itself firmly in the silvery flesh as the Aeriel writhed and convulsed, trying to throw the weapon off its body. The creature collapsed to the floor, its silver hair pooling in the ground as light flooded from its injured throat. Seizing the opportunity, Simani leapt forward and drove her own blade through the writhing Aeriel’s heart. For a moment, the creature remained stock still, moving not a muscle as two sifblades drew blinding light from its body. Then it fell back, dead.
Ruban jumped back to his feet and ran towards his partner, anxious to check on her and retrieve his sifblade. Even without an immediate threat in the vicinity, he felt vulnerable without it.
Barely a moment before he reached her, silver flashed in the corner of his eye, and Simani was lifted into the air and thrown with crushing force across the field. She landed with a resounding crash, her prone form bouncing painfully against the mine wall before landing in an unconscious heap onto the grimy floor. Her sifblade clattered to the ground along with her gun.
Damn it! Ruban thought, as he stood in front of an unconscious Simani with his back to her, staring at the new Aeriel. Damn it all to hell. He should have known there would be more than one. How could he have been so damn careless? His sifblade was still stuck in the dead Aeriel’s throat, utterly useless, and all he had was a gun.
Guns were good as a distraction technique with Aeriels, as long as you had sif to back it up with. But without that, it would just be a minor annoyance to the Aeriel, and the creature looked annoyed enough as it was, glaring down at the lifeless body of its comrade before looking back up at the Hunters with pure, unadulterated fury. This one looked like a male, Ruban thought deliriously; not that one could always tell with Aeriels. As he watched, it raised its pale, almost translucent hand, palm facing Ruban, and he could see the tiny pinprick of light beginning to take shape in the air around the Aeriel’s skin.
If he were to dodge the shell, it would hit Simani directly, and there was no way in hell she would survive that. If he remained where he was, however, and took the brunt of the attack, she might just escape with a few shattered bones and lots of bruising. The surviving Aeriel would probably be satisfied with both the Hunters down and proceed with whatever task it had come here to accomplish in the first place. Aeriels were not known to be sticklers for detail, one of the few advantages humans had over them.
To Ruban’s mind, it was not a choice at all. Simani was his subordinate, his responsibility. He should have anticipated the presence of more than one Aeriel. That he had not foreseen this was his fault, a flaw in his planning. It was his goddamn job to anticipate the enemy’s next move, his only job, and he had failed at it; failed spectacularly at that. There was no reason whatsoever why Simani should pay for his stupidity.
Ruban squared his shoulders and spread his legs a little farther apart, trying to cover as much of Simani’s body as he could before the shell finally hit. The more of the impact he could take, the less injury his partner would sustain. As he watched, the ball of light grew larger, and Ruban prayed silently to anybody who was listening that Simani might get out of this alive.
Just as the Aeriel was about to throw the shell at the Hunters, however, a dizzying blur of black and grey launched itself at the creature, knocking it off balance. This caused the energy-shell to fly off at an angle, missing its targets by a wide margin.
For a moment, Ruban stood stock still, half blinded by the light from the misfired shell and completely unable to process what was going on. As his vision cleared and his mind kicked itself back into action, though, he realised in a heart-stopping moment that their saviour was none other than the whiner extraordinaire, Lord Ashwin Kwan.
His braid flew in the air behind him and his grey frock-coat fluttered around his lithe form, giving Ruban the faint impression of wings propelling his body forward, as he arched gracefully in the air, his foot connecting with the Aeriel’s jaw in a resounding crack. The stunned creature flared its wings, flying up into the air as Ashwin landed with undiminished poise, straightening. He looked up at his opponent almost casually, as if waiting for it to come down and play with him again.
Ruban had to forcibly suppress the urge to yell at the man to get back into the goddamn car! But just at that moment, his eyes caught a glint of sunlight reflected on metal, and he saw his sifblade, protruding out of the dead Aeriel’s throat a little ways to the left of where he stood. Moving as quietly and carefully as he could, he crept towards the weapon even as the Aeriel descended on Ashwin with an enraged snarl, drawing its arm back for what Ruban could tell would be a forceful strike.
Before the arm could connect with his skin, however, Ashwin jumped, flipping mid-air to land a solid kick against the Aeriel’s skull. Before the latter could recover, he reached out a hand to grab onto the tails of the Aeriel’s feather-cloak to keep himself in the air and drove the side of his palm sharply into its exposed throat, even as the creature flailed to dislodge him.
Despite its disorientation, the Aeriel managed to catch the Zainian’s attacking arm in one of its hands at the last moment, trying to twist it mid-air and throw him off. Ashwin responded by bringing his left leg up in a swinging arc at the Aeriel’s throat, in an attempt to accomplish what the hand had failed to do. This too, the Aeriel managed to catch with its other hand, smirking triumphantly at the sight of the boy dangling awkwardly in the air, his limbs caught painfully in the creature’s death-grip.
This turned out to be a temporary relief for the Aeriel, however. With both the creature’s hands now occupied, Ruban finally saw what Ashwin had been meaning to do all along. Pulling his right leg back as far as it would go and using the Aeriel’s own hold on him as leverage, Ashwin aimed one final, crushing kick at the creature’s throat. With both its hands occupied in holding its opponent in place, there was nothing the Aeriel could have done to stop the inevitable. The kick connected with a resounding crack, almost breaking the creature’s neck, and causing it to lose its hold over Ashwin. As the Aeriel staggered back through the air, flapping its wings desperately to keep from toppling to the ground, Ashwin finally let go of its cloak and landed on the ground with his customary grace.
Seeing an opening, Ruban threw his recovered blade at the disoriented Aeriel, this time striking an outstretched wing. The blade tore clean through the appendage and came out the other end, losing momentum and falling to the ground with a thud. The Aeriel’s wing spilled light in all directions as the creature collapsed, writhing in pain.
Before Ruban could move, however, Ashwin had the blade in his hand, his body shaking slightly as he stood over the fallen Aeriel. “You don’t deserve it,” he was saying to the dying creature, so quietly Ruban almost couldn’t hear him. He strained his ears, moving closer to the duo. “But I’m going to end it for you quickly. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” he murmured, sparing a quick glance at the Aeriel’s tattered wing, before burying the sifblade hilt-deep into the creature’s chest. “And you’re far from it.”
For a moment, light from the stab wound obscured the Zainian’s form, and Ruban thought he saw the afterimage of wings where Ashwin stood.
Then everything was quiet once more.
Pressing an ice-pack to his already-bruising chest, Ruban sat beside an unconscious Simani in the ambulance taking them back to Ragah. Half her face was obscured by an oxygen mask, but he could already see colour flooding back into her formerly pale cheeks. Her breast rose and fell rhythmically with unobstructed breaths. She was recovering.
Ruban closed his eyes, leaning back slowly into his seat, trying to find a position that didn’t further distress his tortured muscles. “How did you do it?” he asked the young man sitting across from him in the back of the ambulance.
“Do what?” asked Ashwin, his eyes wide and guileless, as if torn out of some private reverie by Ruban’s question.
“Beat that Aeriel. How did you know how to fight it?”
“I didn’t beat him,” said Ashwin, looking genuinely surprised. “You did. I couldn’t have done shit without the blade you threw at him.”
“Him?” repeated Ruban, raising an eyebrow.
Ashwin shrugged. “Dunno. It looked like a ‘him’ to me. I could be wrong.”
“Don’t play games with me, my lord,” Ruban snapped. He was too tired for this right now. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“Ah,” said Ashwin, with a slight smile. “That’s a tale for another time.”
Before he could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Ruban felt himself being dragged under by the blissful oblivion of sleep.
Chapter 4: The Formula
The room was large, with an air of old-world luxury. Comfortable, if mismatched furniture of indisputable quality littered the space. Heavy, embroidered draperies – a few decades out-of-fashion – obscured the high windows on either side of the room, casting the place in shadows despite the relatively early hour.
The man thought absently that it was unlike Aeriels to prefer darkness. But then, nothing about his present companion had ever been conventional anyway.
“It has to be done soon, if it is to be done at all,” Tauheen said, her voice soft and intimate. She shifted slightly on the large sofa to curl closer to her mortal companion, one hand snaking out to wrap loosely around his torso. She held him down with deceptive strength. “We need to have it before it’s too late.”
“I am not a magician, Tauheen,” the man replied irritably. One of his hands moved instinctively to touch the Aeriel’s flawless, almost translucent skin, stroking along her arms in slow, caressing motions. He closed his eyes. “It’s dangerous now. Ruban is a capable Hunter, as I’m sure you know very well.” He spared her a sidelong glance. Her expression told him she hadn’t forgotten the man he spoke of, or the Parliament attack, during which Ruban had almost casually slashed the throats of two of her best soldiers and closest associates. “He will leave no stone unturned to stop us, to stop you.
“And there will be nothing I can do to help, if it came to that. He will have all the resources of the state at his disposal. Even you cannot hope to win against those odds. As long as nobody knew or suspected, we had the element of surprise. Now the whole country – from the chief justice to every goddamn shoe-polish boy in the capital – is buzzing with talk of Aeriel plots and conspiracies. It’s too dangerous to make a move in such an environment.”
Tauheen’s wings flared with evident indignation, flooding the surrounding gloom momentarily with a surreal, silver light. Then, just as quickly as it had happened, it was gone, and the chamber was plunged back into darkness. The Aeriel smiled, tightening her hold over him ever so slightly. “We’ll do it when he’s there, then,” she murmured, her voice barely audible. The intimate promise of her tone sent a thrill down his spine. Tauheen was excited, he could tell. And when she was, she had ways of expressing it that he thoroughly approved of.
Getting a hold of his racing heart, the man forced himself to say in as stern a voice as he could muster. “Do what?”
“Why, steal the formula, of course,” Tauheen said, looking into his eyes for the first time that evening.
Her eyes shone with anticipation. They weren’t like any he had seen on an Aeriel before. She had dark eyes. Not as dark as a human’s; nobody would ever mistake them for mortal irises. They were sprinkled with flecks of silver that shone with an almost cutting light against the sun. Dark and alert, full of life, they weren’t anything like an Aeriel’s pearly orbs either. He couldn’t bring himself to look away. “We’ll do it when Ruban Kinoh is in the building. That way, he will lose the confidence of the department and you can replace him with somebody…less troublesome. And even if he’s not replaced, he’ll lose credibility and access to much of your precious resources. Even a man such as himself cannot hope to do much damage without state support. Then, after it’s all done, we can take care of him at our own leisure.”
“And what makes you think he’ll let you steal the formula from under his nose, anyway?” the man asked, frowning.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, my love.” Tauheen ran a gentle hand over her companion’s chest, a rare smile of true pleasure appearing on her beautiful face. “I’ll take care of all that.”
The seminar hall echoed with claps as Professor Dawad finished his speech on the matriarchal structure of the pre-Rebellion Aeriel monarchy. Ruban sat near the back, clapping softly as the other guests began to move out of the hall. The professor’s speech had been the last one in the seminar line-up and the guests were now headed to the dining hall for tea and snacks.
It wasn’t often that Ruban got the chance to visit Bracken Academy these days. But with Simani temporarily out of commission and the report on the Ghorib case yet to be fully processed by the higher-ups, he had found himself with some free time on his hands.
He always tried to keep up with Dawad’s work whenever possible. Ruban had never considered himself particularly inclined towards academics, but Dawad’s classes had always fascinated him while he was still a student at Bracken. The man certainly knew his subject. And unlike his classmates, Ruban had not subscribed to the view that the Aeriel History and Culture classes were a waste of time with no practical application. His father had always said that you cannot fight what you do not understand. And while Ruban doubted that Abhas had meant the advice quite in this context, he believed it to be true nonetheless. You couldn’t fight an enemy you didn’t understand. And so, while at college, Ruban had scrupulously attended all of Professor Dawad’s classes, trying to glean any information he could about possible weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the Aeriel psyche or social structure, that he could exploit in a fight.
And while Dawad had not always approved of his student’s single-minded focus on the military aspects of his subject, even he could not have denied Ruban’s obvious natural skill, or his eagerness to learn. Ruban smiled as he remembered the many evenings he and his small group of friends had spent at the library with the little Kanbarian academic, steaming coffee in hand as they talked into the wee hours about the First Advent, the Rebellion, and the last Aeriel Queen, Dawad tutting occasionally to bring the conversation back on track when his students got too carried away with imaginary battle strategies and creative plans to dissect non-existent Aeriels in increasingly unrealistic ways.
Once the hall was almost empty, Ruban walked up to his old professor, inclining his head respectfully when he caught the old man’s eye. Dawad’s bright green eyes lit up the moment they saw Ruban, and his dark, wrinkled face split open in a toothy smile – ebony skin rippling to accommodate his pleasure. His curly white hair seemed to fluff up around his lean face, enthused by his joy at seeing his old student. The man was the world’s foremost expert in his field, but singularly eccentric in almost every other aspect of life. Ruban felt a sudden surge of affection for the strange old man who had helped him through so much during those first few months after his arrival at Ragah to join Bracken. He had lost the only home he had ever known. Nobody could have made Ruban forget, but Dawad had helped him to manage and channelize his anger and hatred towards something less corrosive and more productive. He would be eternally grateful to the man for that.
