The Revenants Read online

  Darius waited until she was close, then thrust out his hand and imagined her flying away from him on a gust of air, but this time she was ready for it, and nothing happened. Her blade swung down toward his outstretched arm and he barely managed to pull it back and block before she could slice off his hand.

  This time she didn’t lock blades with him, but broke away and struck again, aiming low for his legs. He parried, then countered when he saw an opening, but it was a trick. She batted his sword away with such force that it flew out of his hand.

  She hit him with another gust of air; he went flying over the bed and into the wall. This time he blacked out when his head cracked against the wall. When he came to, he sat slumped on the floor, and Nova was rounding the bed to reach him.

  “That’s more like it,” Nova said. “Any last requests?”

  “My daughter,” he breathed. “Don’t make her fight.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t grant you that, Darius. She’s no Luminary, like you or I, but she has great potential nonetheless, and we’re short of soldiers, especially with all of the other Luminaries fighting me for control of the Crucible.”

  A loud knock sounded on the door. “Is everything all right in there?” a woman asked.

  Darius didn’t recognize the voice. Before Nova could reply, the wooden beam barring the door exploded, and a pair of women in silvery armor stormed in. They immediately began glowing in the light of their shields, and they drew their swords.

  “Madam Augur, do you need assistance?” one of them asked.

  “Stand down, Adept! I’m fine. This will be over in just a moment.” Nova bent down in front of Darius and lifted his chin with one finger. She placed her glowing blade right under his chin, and flashed a wicked smile. “I’ll say goodbye to Cassandra for you.”

  Darius felt cold fury burning inside of him. His ears began ringing, and he saw red. He couldn’t see or think straight, but he managed to focus his thoughts enough to imagine ripping the swords out of the hands of the Revenant soldiers standing behind Nova to send them plowing through her chest from behind.

  One of the soldiers shouted something, but the sound was muffled, reaching Darius’s ears as if from a great distance. He heard whispers, loud and furious in his ears, just like he had in his visions.

  Nova’s eyes widened in outrage and shock, her lips moving, but no sound coming out. She half-turned away from him, her sword leaving his throat to block an unseen attack. She was just in time to bat two glassy black swords out of the air. They shattered and exploded into gleaming shards at the touch of her blade.

  Darius seized the moment and reached into the ZPF once more. He imagined his fallen sword flying into his hand as if drawn by a magnet. Darius saw a dark flash as the weapon sailed through the air, and he jumped to his feet just as the hilt of his sword slapped against his palm. Nova rounded on him, but her arms were pinned rigidly to her sides, and her blade dangled uselessly from her fingers, as if it suddenly weighed too much for her too lift.

  “How...” she trailed off, veins in her arms and neck bulging as she strained against the invisible forces holding her.

  Darius let loose an unintelligible roar and charged. Nova’s eyes widened in horror just before he ran her through. His glowing blade disappeared in her chest, halfway to the hilt, sparkling and crackling against her shield.

  Nova’s mouth formed an “O” as shock registered on her face. Her sword fell from nerveless fingers, and her shield vanished. Darius’s sword remained buried in her chest, smoking and sizzling with the sickening smell of roasted flesh.

  Her skin curled away in glowing orange sheets, like bark from a burning branch, and then she burst into flames.

  Nova recoiled from his sword, stumbling away as he pulled it out, and fell thrashing to the floor. A moment later, she lay still, but the flames roared over the charred black mound of her corpse.

  In the background Tanik started, as if waking from a dream, and his head turned to regard Darius with a faint smile. “I told you it was your destiny to kill the Augur.”

  Part 2 - Destiny

  Chapter 28

  “How did you know she’s the Augur?” Darius asked Tanik, all the while watching the two Revenant soldiers who had burst in. They both still stood by the door, seemingly frozen in shock at the sight of Nova’s charred corpse.

  Tanik glanced at them, then back to Darius. “Don’t worry. They’re coming to their senses now. I’m sure they’re nothing but grateful that you killed her. As am I. Thank you.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Darius said slowly. “How did you know she’s the Augur?”

  “I heard everything she said to you. Controlling another person’s mind doesn’t disengage their faculties, only their will.”

  “So it’s true? The original Augur is dead?”

  Tanik glanced over his shoulder once more. “Perhaps these Adepts can answer that.”

  One of the two women in the doorway nodded. Without knowing their names, Darius differentiated them by their hair. One was blonde, the other a redhead.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” the blonde said. “He died here, on Ouroborus, twenty years ago. That was when Nova took over.”

  “That might explain how I was able to escape his influence....” Tanik mused.

  The woman looked at him. “Who are you again?”

  “We’ve already been introduced, have we not? I am Tanik Gurhain, a former Sentinel in the Augur’s army.”

  “Tanik Gur...” the woman trailed off, shaking her head. “I don’t recognize you.”

  “I’ve been gone for twenty years, hiding in the Union. I’m Samara Gurhain’s husband,” Tanik supplied.

  “Samara.” The blonde looked to the redhead. “She was the one with the locket, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” the redhead nodded. “I remember her,” she went on. “She never took it off, not even to shower. She was really in love with you.”

  Darius’s brow wrinkled at the mention of that necklace. He strode over to Tanik, giving Nova’s corpse a wide berth.

  “You didn’t seem to know what I was talking about when I mentioned that locket in front of you,” Darius said.

  “It’s been twenty years, and I was under Nova’s influence when you asked,” Tanik explained.

  Darius arched an eyebrow at that. “I thought you said being controlled by another Revenant doesn’t affect your faculties?”

  “Perhaps I should have said it doesn’t affect your memory. Nova suppressed my recognition of the locket to avoid drawing suspicion to herself,” Tanik replied.

  “I don’t remember you from the battle of Ouroboros,” the redhead interjected.

  Tanik offered her a thin smile. “It’s been twenty years. Besides, I wasn’t in the first wave with my wife. I was in the second. By the time I arrived, the battle was almost over.”

  “I was also in the second wave...” the redhead said.

  “Then you must have missed me. It was chaos down here.”

  “I didn’t catch your names,” Darius interjected.

  “I’m Adept Lora Addison,” the redhead said. She pointed to the blonde. “This is Adept Asha Wilks. Who are you?”

  “Darius Drake.”

  “Nova said that you’re a Luminary. Is that true?”

  “It is,” Tanik confirmed.

  “What does that mean?” Darius asked.

  “It means you have the ability to influence other Revenants, like the first Augur, and Nova.”

  “Oh,” Darius said, glancing behind him at Nova’s smoldering corpse. “So it’s another title—like the Augur.”

  “Yes,” Tanik confirmed.

  “Dad?”

  Darius’s head spun around at the sound of the voice. Cassandra stood in the open door behind Lora and Asha. Dyara was with her. He grinned. “Cass!”

  “Dad!” Cassandra came running. She slammed into him and wrapped him in a fierce hug. “They told me you were dead, but I couldn’t... it’s like I was someone e
lse.” She sniffled against his chest. “I couldn’t even cry!”

  She was crying now, her tears soaking into his tattered jumpsuit. Darius kissed the top of her head. “I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. Samara was controlling everyone, even Tanik. Her real name was Nova.”

  Cassandra looked up, her blue eyes bright and shining with tears as they searched his. She withdrew to an arm’s length and looked to Tanik. “How is that possible?”

  “She was the Augur.”

  Cassandra gasped. “I was right! But I thought the Augur was a he?”

  Tanik explained how Nova had taken over twenty years ago.

  Dyara came in and stood awkwardly to one side. “Hey,” she said, smiling wanly at Darius. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Something stirred inside of Darius at the sight of her, and he withdrew from Cassandra’s embrace. Crossing quickly to Dyara, he took her face in both of his hands and kissed her, long and hard. For a moment she was too shocked to react, but then he felt her kissing him back.

  A few seconds later, she leaned away to regard him with a puzzled look. “I thought—”

  “Life’s too short,” he said, cutting her off with a shake of his head. “And I’ve already wasted enough of mine.”

  Tanik cleared his throat. “You two can profess your lust for each other later. We have important matters to attend to.”

  Darius turned to Tanik with a frown. “Can’t it wait a minute?”

  “No.” Tanik jerked his head to Lora and Asha. “Gather the other Revenants. We have much to discuss.”

  “Who put you in charge?” Lora asked.

  “I was a Sentinel. You’re an Adept.” Tanik jerked a thumb at Darius. “And he’s a Luminary.”

  “Untrained,” Asha pointed out. “And you just admitted that you’ve been AWOL for twenty years.”

  “Untrained or not Darius is all that’s standing between you and blind servitude to the next would-be Augur, so I’d suggest you treat him well.”

  “How do we know he’s going to be any better?” Lora asked, while tucking a loose strand of red hair behind her ear.

  “We should get out of here while we still can,” Asha said in a low voice, her eyes darting between Darius and Tanik.

  “And go where?” Tanik demanded.

  Asha grimaced and chewed her lower lip, but Lora wasn’t so easily intimidated. She drew herself up, and said, “We still have control of the Crucible, and the Eye. We could brand ourselves with the seal of Life, take our ships, and go to the Union. It will take a while before one of the other Luminaries realizes that Nova is dead and comes to fill the power vacuum.”

  “And then what? Go into hiding?” Tanik asked.

  “You did,” Lora pointed out, nodding to Tanik’s wrist, the one bearing the glowing triangle with an eye inside of it—the seal of life.

  Tanik snorted and turned over his other wrist, revealing the glowing, sickle-shaped seal of death. “And look where it got me.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Lora insisted. “You must have done something to earn that.”

  “I did. I led the Coalition fleet against the Union for twelve years,” Tanik said.

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought. And anyway, you’re not a Luminary, so you can’t make us stay here. Even if you could, why bother? The Keth are gone. The war is over. It’s time to go home.”

  Darius cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  “What?” Lora crossed her arms over her chest.

  “If you have control of the Crucible and the Eye, don’t you think you should use the opportunity to change how the system works?”

  “Change it how?” Lora asked.

  “You could send everyone home with the Seal of Life. Keep identifying the ones with the potential to become Revenants, but let them choose if they want to be trained or not. Send the ones that do to a training facility in the Union, somewhere that their parents could visit them.”

  Lora smirked at that, but Darius noticed Asha nodding along. Tanik was quiet but smiling from ear to ear.

  “Don’t you think that would be better for everyone?” Darius pressed.

  “Sure it would,” Lora said. “Right up until the Cygnians wonder why they’re not getting any fresh meat for their hunting grounds, and they start picking people at random to prey upon.”

  “The hunting grounds need to be disbanded, anyway,” Darius said.

  “Good luck with that,” Lora scoffed. “You’ll trade one war for another! The Keth are hiding, defeated. Done. But the Cygnians are more powerful than ever. Do you have any idea how many people would die in a war with them? And without them holding the Union together, it won’t be so unified anymore. You’ll splinter it in a hundred pieces, and none of those pieces will be strong enough to fight the Cygnians.”

  “So we unite the Revenants and fight them ourselves,” Darius said.

  “You’d have to kill all the Luminaries first. They’re convinced that the Augur was right about the Keth and that the Crucible is a necessary evil. And who knows? Maybe they’re right. Or at least they were. We’d never have conquered Ouroboros without the Crucible feeding us fresh soldiers.”

  Darius frowned. “How many Luminaries are there?”

  “Besides Nova? Another six, each with their own fleet and their own star system. You’ll never be able to defeat them all. Nova was arrogant enough to fight you herself, but the others won’t be that careless once they realize what they’re up against. You’ll either have to destroy their fleets, or infiltrate their palaces and fight through swarms of soldiers to get to them. Even if you force us all to fight for you as Nova did, we can’t beat them all. The only way to win would be to use the Crucible to swell your numbers until your fleet is stronger than all of the others combined, and that would take years.”

  Darius sighed, stymied by Lora’s objections.

  Tanik placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded to the Adepts. “Gather the other Revenants. Give me a chance to tell you about my plan. Darius knows the end goal, but he hasn’t given enough thought to all of the steps along the way. Once you’ve heard what I have to say, you can decide if you still want to leave, and if so, no one’s going to stop you.”

  “Fine,” Lora said. “But your plan had better be brilliant, or you’re going to lose your army before you ever have a chance to use it.”

  Tanik nodded agreeably. “I’m aware of that, Adept.”

  Darius watched as both Lora and Asha left the room. “What plan?” he asked after they’d left. “I thought your plan was to kill the Augur and threaten the Cygnians with weapons of mass destruction? Well, we killed the Augur, but now we’ve learned that there’s six more just like her. We could probably still threaten the Cygnians, but what good would it do if the other Revenants are fighting us from behind?”

  Tanik answered that with a cryptic smile. “Patience, Darius. You’ll have your answers soon. In the meantime, why don’t you go down and wait for me in the entrance hall? I need to get dressed.”

  Darius’s gaze lingered, but Dyara’s hand slid into his, and he felt her tugging him toward the door. “Let’s go,” she said. He nodded, and Cassandra went ahead of them, leading the way.

  Whatever plan Tanik had in mind, Darius hoped it was good enough to convince the other Revenants. They needed help if they were going to defeat the Cygnians.

  Chapter 29

  It was standing room only in the entrance hall of the castle, but Darius had found his seat before all of the others had arrived. He was sharing an empty storage crate with Cassandra and Dyara, each of them sitting to either side of him. Besides the seven Acolytes, there were eight Marines, and thirty Revenant soldiers in their shiny silver armor.

  Tanik stood at the center of the gathering, in front of the fireplace, dark with soot and coals. Like the other Revenants, Tanik was also wearing armor, but his was black power armor from the Deliverance, the same as the Marines wore.

  “Now that everyone’s here, I can explain why you shouldn
’t all go run and hide in Union space,” Tanik began. “The first and most obvious reason, is because whoever the next Augur is, they won’t let you go. They’ll come looking for you. You’ll be hunted and dragged back to the Crucible, having gained nothing for your trouble. And the second reason, is because we have a chance to take over the Union for ourselves.”

  “What about the Cygnians?” one man asked.

  “How many ZPF bombs do you have in your fleet? A hundred? A thousand?”

  “More than a thousand,” a woman said. Darius recognized the voice. It was Lora Addison.

  “And how many do the Cygnians have?” Tanik pressed.

  “None,” someone else replied.

  Tanik nodded sagely. “So we press our advantage. Threaten their worlds. Give them a demonstration, and warn them what will happen if they don’t respect the Union’s independence.”

  “They won’t,” Lora said. “So you’re suggesting we commit xenocide.”

  “If it comes to that, yes,” Tanik replied. “In a society divided into predators and prey, the rule is kill or be killed.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then, we install our Luminary as the new regent of the Union.”

  Hushed murmurs spread from one Revenant to the next. Darius recalled that only Lora, Asha, and the other Acolytes knew about his potential.

  “Darius, would you stand up please?” Tanik asked.

  He stood, and offered a tight smile to all of the Revenants who suddenly turned to stare at him with a mixture of suspicion and hostility.

  “We should kill him while we still can!” someone said. Heads bobbed, and someone started pushing through the crowd with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  A sharp jolt of adrenaline lanced through Darius and he raised his hands. “Wait. I’m not like the others. I have no interest in controlling anyone. I never even met the original Augur. Nova tried to kill me twice before I eventually killed her, because—”

  “Because you wanted to take over as the next Augur!” someone accused.