Celestial: A Progression Fantasy (Surgecaller Book 7), page 24
‘I want to look inside.’ Kelni stepped forward. He pulled on the doors. They were locked, of course. He took a step back, looked them up and down. Then, stepping forward, he aimed a powerful kick at the lock.
The noise was almost deafening. The power in that kick… Huon was an Immortal himself, yet it was still sometimes difficult to believe how much strength they wielded.
The lock didn’t just break, it exploded through the door, splintering the wood around it. The doors themselves still stood, surprisingly.
Kelni lowered his foot, then pushed the left-side door gently open. ‘Come on.’
Huon could have refused. He could have ordered Kelni to join him, and get the others. But he didn’t. He stepped forward, into the Everlasting King’s castle.
⚅ ⚄
Chapter 29
The castle was as deserted as the streets of Glenhaven had been. A fine layer of dust had settled upon everything. The doors opened onto a grand foyer, one reminiscent of somewhere Huon had visited before—the Sentinel of the South’s castle.
Two wide staircases on either side of the large room led upward, while a hallway led forward. On the walls were tapestries depicting different landscapes with armies in their foreground. Huon’s gaze did not linger on them long, though even from a quick glance he could see that the soldiers wore Honourbound armour, just as he had once.
He imagined there would be portraits and paintings of the Everlasting King himself. Perhaps ones that depicted the duels he had fought with the Immortal Seven to bind each one to his will. Though they would be nearer the throne room.
‘This is wrong,’ Kelni said. He walked forward.
Huon didn’t move from where he stood, having just stepped over the threshold. ‘What if the cores are not here?’
‘I doubt that he would move them.’ Kelni did not pause, his steps echoing in the grand foyer. ‘We must find out. If there is no one protecting this place, then we can destroy them ourselves. Let’s keep moving.’
Huon hesitated. It wasn’t fear he felt, but caution. The tension that had permeated the very air for so long was as thick as it had ever been after they had walked through those quiet streets. He had wondered what returning here would be like, so many times. In none of his imaginations did he think it would be like this. That no one would be here at all.
He didn’t know if all the surgeless that had been in this city had been killed or taken from here, made to follow the Honourbound army. He didn’t know where all of the surgecallers of ranks lower than Knight would be. If there were no surgeless to bind them, had they been inducted into the Honourbound army?
Except that… that didn’t feel right.
There was a knot of worry in his chest, and his mind was grasping at something he couldn’t quite get a grip on. Like he had an idea of what might have happened, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself.
‘Kelni, stop,’ Huon said.
The former Immortal of Fire halted in the centre of the grand foyer. He turned and faced Huon. ‘Why did you make me stop?’ There was anger in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Huon said, ‘for controlling you, but this isn’t right. We should get the others. Liona, at least, should be here with us. We do not know what we might face here.’
Kelni took a step toward him. Though Huon knew the man couldn’t harm him, he still saw a threat in his eyes. ‘I need the Everlasting King to lose his power.’ He faltered, stopped walking, the rage fleeing from his eyes, replaced with a wild-eyed fear. ‘The longer he remains strong—the longer he remains alive—the higher the chance of him controlling me again.’
Huon frowned. ‘You’re worried about that?’
Kelni looked at Huon as though he were stupid. ‘It consumes my every thought.’
Huon stepped further into the foyer. ‘That isn’t going to happen, Kelni.’ It felt strange, reassuring the Immortal of Fire. His mother’s murderer. But stranger things had happened. Especially lately. ‘I won’t let that happen to you.’
‘You would be powerless to stop him, even with soul essence.’ Kelni faced down the hall. ‘We must destroy those cores.’
Huon walked closer to the man. ‘Not without the others. You do not give the orders here.’ He tilted up his chin. ‘Remember?’
Kelni looked as though he wanted to argue, then his shoulders drooped. He shut his eyes. ‘Indeed. I remember.’
Huon let out a sigh of relief. As much as he wanted to find those cores and destroy them, he would feel much more comfortable doing it with Liona by his side. Even if no dangers lay in this place.
‘Good,’ Huon said. ‘We’ll be back within hours, Kelni. I give you my word.’ He turned to face the doors when something sounded at the very edge of his hearing. He froze.
What was that? he thought. A door closing?
He turned back to Kelni. The man’s head was cocked to the side. He had heard it too.
Huon had been pushing his senses out, trying to feel if there were any other surgecallers cultivating, but he had only sensed Kelni’s cultivation of breath essence. Though it was a good way of locating surgecallers, it only worked if another surgecaller was actively cultivating something.
Huon opened his mouth to speak, but Kelni raised a hand for silence. Huon attuned his hearing.
There were no more sounds. At least, none that he could hear, and he should have been able to hear everything.
Then… something. Something soft. Incredibly soft. Footsteps?
Huon put his hand to his sword hilt, wrapping his fingers around it.
Definitely footsteps.
More than one set, and they were coming from deep within the castle, at Immortal-level speed.
‘We must run,’ Kelni said.
‘Too late, Brother.’
Huon’s eyes widened in shock as he heard someone speak behind him, at the stairs just outside the castle, the ones leading to the double doors Kelni had broken through. He turned and saw a woman he had seen before—twice.
The woman wore white, and she had pale blonde hair. At her hip was a long, slim straight sword in a style Huon wasn’t familiar with. In her hand, a double-bearded halberd with a metal shaft.
Caeli. The Immortal of Air.
The woman’s pegasus was nowhere in sight, but it was most definitely her. Huon had seen the Immortal up close only once, when he was standing in the streets of this very city, on the day Crowley’s compound had burned to the ground.
The day Bern had killed Crowley.
Though that wasn’t the only time he had seen her. Huon remembered the sight of her riding upon her beast, fighting against an Immortal on a blue dragon from the Queendom of Arisalon. It had been a startling display of power.
How did she get here without me hearing? Huon wondered. Some sort of silence surge… He should have been more alert. Should have known this place wasn’t deserted.
The footsteps from deep within the castle became louder, clearly those who caused them were no longer bothering with stealth.
Huon turned back, and saw two more people—ones he knew by sight and name.
A man with massively broad shoulders. He wore no armour. His closefitting clothes did nothing to obscure the rippling muscles he held beneath. He looked far stronger and physically imposing than any other Immortal Huon had seen—and Huon had seen his fair share.
Fortimer. The Immortal of Strength.
The other man was Terr’al. The Immortal of Earth. Huon saw no sign of the man’s giant golem, of which he was glad. The man looked powerful enough without it. He didn’t wear full-plate armour, though he wore solid rock armour that resembled it well enough, intricately sectioned as it was.
The Immortal of Strength wielded no weapon. He crossed his arms at his chest, biceps bulging through the fabric.
The Immortal of Earth had a sword at his hip. His hand rested upon its hilt, though he had yet to draw it.
‘Where have you been, Brother?’ Fortimer asked, staring at the Immortal of Fire. He stepped toward the man, arms still crossed, a look of confusion upon his face. ‘No one has heard from you in over a year.’
Kelni’s gaze snapped from one Immortal to another.
Brother, Huon thought. They all used to be that close? He supposed they had been in the service of the same man for a thousand years.
‘I would like to know that too,’ Caeli said.
Terr’al’s attention turned toward Huon. His gaze became piercing. ‘You.’ He tilted his head to the side, took a step forward. ‘You should be dead.’
Huon swallowed. His left hand went to the hilt of the Oath Shearer dagger. One swipe was all he had needed to take out the Immortal of Fire’s bond with the Everlasting King. What if he were to do that again? With three of the Immortal Seven? To have them all on their side, and to deliver such a large blow to the Honourbound army…
Assuming they could get out of here alive. I wish Liona were here, he thought. He was used to fighting by her side now. He felt his reserves. His soul essence. At least he would be able to take these people by surprise.
Terr’al looked at Kelni. ‘Why is he not dead, Blaze?’
Kelni’s jaw was locked shut. His cheeks quivered. Huon felt a deep rage emanating from him. The man didn’t look as though he was going to speak.
Is there a way to convince them he is still one of them? Huon wondered. Perhaps that way we could—
Huon’s thoughts were cut off as the former Immortal of Fire spoke, each word falling from his mouth like a stone, ‘My. Name. Is. Kelni.’
The others exchanged glances. Caeli’s mouth opened, her eyes wide. The Immortal of Earth took a step back. Fortimer frowned, his forehead creasing deeply, his muscles tensing and relaxing.
‘What did you say?’ Fortimer asked, his voice strong and powerful, echoing off the walls of the grand hall. ‘Your name is Blaze. You are one of the Immortal Seven.’
‘Not anymore.’ Flames shot forth from Kelni’s hands. The man had been so quiet and reserved for the past year that Huon sometimes forgot how powerful he was. His sword was whipped from its sheath and glowing brightly with an infusion of fire essence in less than a second.
I guess we’re fighting. Huon surged speed, stamina and strength.
And he surged soul essence, imagining the place he wished to teleport to. There was no point wasting any time.
He appeared behind the Immortal of Air. His dagger drawn in his left hand; his sword drawn in his right. He imbued Immortal-level sharpness essence into the Oath Shearer dagger as he slashed across the woman’s back.
All he needed to do was inflict one tiny wound. Draw blood. That would be enough.
Only Caeli was no longer there. She had launched herself high up in the air, as though she had known exactly what he’d been about to do.
Huon cursed. He should have seen that coming. He should have gone after the Immortal of Earth or the Immortal of Strength first, but he knew that out of the three of them the Immortal of Air was the fastest. The most graceful. The one most likely to slip out of his grasp, which meant she was the one he most needed to take by surprise.
Huon had trained for this. For hours upon hours, he had trained for this. Though Kelni didn’t know how to use mind spaces himself, as he hadn’t wished to learn the skill at a time when he did not even trust his own mind, Huon and Liona had learnt how to pull him into their mind spaces, as the Devil of the West had pulled Huon into his own on multiple occasions.
There, he had shared with them his combat experiences with the other six of the Immortal Seven. Every single thing that he knew about their fighting styles. Just as Huon and Liona had fought the Immortal of Fire in their mind spaces when they had been training to defeat him back in Temtoria, they had done the same with each of the Immortal Seven.
Except that in every single one of those scenarios, Huon was only able to defeat them with Liona by his side. They had simply been too powerful for him to take on his own. He might be an Immortal, one with soul essence at that, but that didn’t make him stronger than someone who had been around for a thousand years.
Though it had been months since they’d had the chance to train against these Immortals in the mind spaces. Not since they had arrived in Harolan, pulling the boats up the sand of the hidden beach.
Huon wished Liona were here. He wished that he had trained with the Immortal of Fire in those mind spaces as well. He knew how the man fought well enough, but they had no ability to fight as a team. No strategies. Nothing that tied them together except the bond Huon held over him. And that bond was nothing like the one he had with Shurie. He couldn’t communicate with the man telepathically.
That would help, he thought.
There was no time to dwell on all of those things.
The fight started in earnest.
Huon moved like the wind, leaping up after the Immortal of Air. The woman had such strong control over her wind surge that it almost seemed as though she were able to fly.
Huon, on the other hand, was able to fly, and the massive foyer with its high ceilings was large enough for him to spread his wings.
In two sharp stabs of pain at his shoulder blades, his blue wings sprouted from his back. A startled look of shock ran across Caeli’s face as she registered what was happening, but her expression quickly turned steely as she whipped her halberd around.
A gust of wind struck Huon straight in his chest. It wasn’t just strong, it was sharp. It would have cut straight though his armour were it any weaker.
Huon gritted his teeth. Just because he had lost this fight a thousand times in the mind spaces, didn’t mean he was about to lose it now. They had discovered that mind spaces were notoriously unreliable. They only worked on what the user knew, and to some degree, their beliefs shaped that reality.
If Huon fought within that mind space against one of the Immortal Seven while he was harbouring even a hint of doubt that he could win the fight, then he wouldn’t be able to win the fight.
It had taken them a long time to figure that out.
Huon teleported again. The ability was a costly one, especially as he was now maintaining soul-essence wings, but it was also his best chance. One slash, he thought. That’s all I need.
Though he couldn’t be sure that it would be enough. Couldn’t be sure that breaking their bond would mean they would stop fighting.
But it had worked for the Immortal of Fire.
Huon appeared behind the woman. He surged wind to close the gap between them, aiming his dagger for her back once more.
Caeli whirled around, pushing herself backward out of the reach of his dagger, and putting him at range of her halberd, which she slashed straight at his face. Huon blocked the blow with his sword, felt the strength of it rock his arm.
And he realised something. Something good.
He had gone through a similar scenario a hundred times, and as an Immortal his memory was complete. The shock such a block would cause him had always been stronger than what he had just experienced.
Which meant the mind space had been wrong.
I can do this, Huon thought.
In his peripheral, he could see Kelni facing off against the Immortals of Strength and Earth. The man was doing surprisingly well, holding them off, but Huon doubted it could last long.
‘You have to run, Huon!’ the man’s voice boomed. ‘Get to the others!’
Huon cursed inwardly. Others. Why had he said that?
The Immortal of Earth’s voice rang out. ‘Others? There are others?’
‘Go, Brother,’ the Immortal of Strength said. ‘Our sister and I can take care of this traitor and the child Immortal.’
No! Huon thought. He’s going to go after the others! With so few people around, how long would it take for an Immortal to hear where Liona and the others were camped?
Not long, Huon wagered. Not long at all.
But he couldn’t leave. They might only have one chance at this. He couldn’t simply run and leave the Immortal of Fire here to die.
He needs to lead me to the cores, Huon thought. Without him, we might never find them.
Huon had to remain here. He had to remain here, and fight.
And he had to win.
⚅ ⚄
Chapter 30
Liona paced back and forth at the top of the ridge. ‘They’ve been gone too long.’ She glanced over at Gale, who sat on a rock nearby, gazing down at Glenhaven, the Capital of the Everlasting King’s Realm. ‘Haven’t they?’
Gale shrugged. ‘It’s only been a few hours.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘I’m sure they’ll be back before dawn.’
Liona looked at the horizon. She couldn’t yet see a hint of the sun’s rising. ‘This doesn’t feel right.’
‘I know,’ Gale said. ‘I agree.’
‘I shouldn’t have let him go alone.’
‘He’s with Kelni.’
‘The man who killed his mother.’
Gale looked lost for words.
Liona supposed she couldn’t blame him.
She kept pacing.
‘Hmm.’ Gale tilted his head to the side, his gaze on the city once more. He’d been staring down at it for the past twenty minutes as she’d been standing there pacing. ‘Do you notice something… off about the city?’
Liona blinked. ‘Off?’ She turned to face it.
‘How long did you live in Glenhaven before we met?’ Gale asked.
‘All my life. At least, until I escaped with Huon.’ The memories of their escape from Glenhaven were in the forefront of her mind. She remembered when her binding had disappeared. The fear she had felt. The anger when she had discovered Huon trying to escape.
She’d held a sword to his throat…
She couldn’t imagine doing something like that now.
Liona stared at the city. Gale was right. There was something off about it. She surged sight, trying to get a closer look, then she realised she didn’t need to surge sight to see what he meant. ‘There are no lights. No lanterns. No lamps. No candles in windows.’
