Dire Destiny of Ours (6 page)

She stood, eyes blazing with ultraviolet. "The Brightlings treated us like servants and animals! When we tried to claim basic rights, they killed protestors and exiled most of us to Pjurna! You will excuse me if I think mating with our oppressors is disgusting!"

I thought of Lanaeia, an elfin Brightling with silvery white hair who'd defected from Daelissa's side. She was a kind gentle soul from the little I knew of her. "Do you like Lanaeia?"

Nightliss slumped a little. "She is different."

"How about my mom?"

She pressed her lips tight and gave me a cross look.

I pressed the attack. "You told me yourself there were Brightlings who joined your cause. They aren't all bad."

"Yes, and there were Darklings who fought against us." She folded her arms. "Unfortunately, there are very few Brightlings who consider us as Seraphim as they are."

The skyway crossed over a mountain and entered a new bowl-shaped valley that stretched as far as I could see. I blinked with amazement at what I saw. A giant island floated above the bowl, almost as if it had been carved from a mountain and cast into the sky. I looked for a whirlpool or other supernatural phenomena keeping it afloat, but couldn't find anything that stuck out. Sand with an ultraviolet hue carpeted the valley. Trees and other foliage dotted the land. From what I could tell, there were no houses below.

The island was another matter.

Shiny ultraviolet spires literally reached into the sky since the floating chunk of land was already on level with the skyway and us. I magnified my super vision and oohed at the organically twisting buildings and alien designs. I spotted dozens of Seraphim floating on skyways in all directions from the city in the sky.

"Tarissa?" Nightliss said in a questioning tone. She turned in a circle as if uncertain about her location. "The city was little more than a collection of hovels and small houses when I last saw it."

"I guess they've had time to modernize," I said. "It has been a couple thousand years or so since your last visit."

She stared with open wonder. "It is so beautiful."

"And really purple." Depending on the way the sun hit the buildings, it looked almost like black chrome in places.

"I suspect Murk was used almost exclusively to build the structures." A smile lit Nightliss's face. "It would be lovely to tour."

I sighed. "We're not here to tour. First thing we need to do is find their equivalent of a healer and convince them to take a little trip with us." I touched Nightliss's shoulder to draw her attention back to me. "Do you know where to go first?"

She gave me a helpless look. "Everything has changed, Justin." She looked back at the city. "I don't even know where to begin."

"Where did you go in the old days?"

"There was rarely a need for gifted healers until the Eden War."

I gave her a confused look. "Eden War?"

"Your people called it the Seraphim War." She continued before I could get in a snappy comment. "We selected a core group of Darklings to hone their healing skills. During the course of the war, the group grew as our needs increased."

A horrific thought crossed my mind. "Were they all caught in the Desecration?"

"No."

Relief melted the sudden knot in my stomach.

Nightliss offered me a smile. "We sent some home to help with a new uprising against the Brightlings in the hope that the war had weakened them here at home. That was shortly before the Desecration."

"Surely they've expanded their knowledge over the millennia." A new hope suffused me. If that was true, we could definitely find someone to heal Elyssa quickly. The positive thoughts had barely entered my mind when Nightliss gripped my arm.

Her green eyes filled with worry as she looked ahead. "Oh, dear."

I turned toward the city where a large pearly gate guarded the end of the skyway. Shimmering walls extended about a hundred yards to either side of the gate. The gate looked about twelve feet tall, and wouldn't have been an issue for the two of us to scale.

The large squad of stern-looking Seraphim in black armor, however, were a different matter.

The skyway slowed as we neared the gate. I looked to either side of it and wondered if Nightliss and I could levitate to the wall and run for our lives. I willed the skyway to remove the wind barrier and felt a breeze on my face.

"Think you can levitate to the wall?" I asked Nightliss.

She shook her head. "The skyway safety measures won't allow it."

I wrinkled my forehead. "The wind barrier is off." I reached to the side of the skyway. My arm hit resistance about three inches out. "An invisible barrier."

Nightliss sighed. "It's to prevent anyone from accidentally falling to their death."

I looked back at the gate and was met by several glaring guards. We were less than fifty feet away. "We're probably stronger than they are since we've fed on humans. Maybe we can bulldoze our way through."

"Perhaps it would be best if we didn't antagonize them." Nightliss smiled sweetly at the soldiers. "Let's see what they want."

Several soldiers drew shiny black swords that emitted a dark glow. "Judging from the way they're holding those swords, they don't want to hug us."

Nightliss began talking in Cyrinthian under her breath. She made a frustrated noise and spoke again. It sounded as if she was practicing her old language.

I didn't even know how to ask where the restroom was, much less carry on a conversation.

"I will tell them you're from Murika," Nightliss said. "That should keep them from wondering about your poor Cyrinthian language skills."

I blinked. "From where?"

"During my youth, Murika was a powerful province that refused to adopt Cyrinthian as the official language." She sighed. "They were once the most powerful province in terms of commerce, but their dominance faded as power shifted to Zbura."

"Murikan?" Panic gripped me. "How do they talk? How do I act?"

"Just use your broken Cyrinthian and you will be fine." Nightliss made a nervous noise. "I just hope Murika still exists after all this time."

I planted a friendly smile on my face and hoped for the best as the skyway came to a stop. Meanwhile, my eyes searched for escape routes.

A soldier with a set of wings on the breast of his black uniform said something in an angry or scolding tone as he approached the gate. I assumed he was the leader. He touched something I couldn't see. An ultraviolet light flashed and the gates swung open. The leader pointed back the way we'd come and said something else.

Nightliss replied to him and gave me a sad look.

A couple of the guards rolled their eyes at me and shook their heads. Some of them looked at my clothing as if they didn't know what the hell I was wearing. It suddenly occurred to me I wasn't exactly dressed to blend into the crowd. Nightliss's Templar uniform, however, almost fit right in, though the native uniforms had an interesting honeycomb armor. I just hoped my guise as a Murikan made the jeans and T-shirt seem normal.

The leader looked me up and down and addressed me.

I didn't have a clue about what he'd said, so I improvised. "I from Murika," I said in broken Cyrinthian. "You are leader?"

The soldiers burst into laughter.

Nightliss gripped my arm and whispered, "Why did you say he was pretty?"

I felt my eyes widen with horror as I looked at the seraph. He didn't seem amused with my mistake.

The leader jabbed a finger at the skyway and spoke again.

Nightliss's eyes widened with innocence. She shrugged and replied.

I felt completely lost and wished I had a universal translator handy. I remembered that Nookli's translator program might help me understand some of this gibberish, but didn't want to pull out an arcphone in front of these people.

A pleading tone entered Nightliss's voice but the leader turned and spoke in a commanding tone to his soldiers. Before I knew what was happening, two of the soldiers gripped me while a third wrapped a glowing strand of what appeared to be Murk around my wrists.

"Son of a goat," Nightliss said angrily as they secured her. "Apparently, travel on this skyway is forbidden. They are taking us to a holding facility until we can be sentenced."

"I'm not putting up with this." I noticed curious looks from bystanders as the soldiers marched us down a walkway toward the edges of the city. "Let's break free and make a run for it."

"Perhaps there is a better way," Nightliss said. "If you feign an injury, perhaps they could bring a healer to us. Then we could escape and take them back to Eden."

Her idea wasn't bad. "Won't they think it's suspicious if I suddenly act like I'm hurt?"

"Perhaps we could pretend to fight."

Fighting under these circumstances wasn't practical. "If most Darklings have healing abilities, won't they just patch up my scrapes?" I shook my head. "You'd have to cut off my arm to get a super-skilled healer."

Nightliss lowered her head. "Then we have no choice. We must fight our way free and find someone."

I actually thought about letting her cut off my arm or severely injuring me in some other way. If it brought me a Darkling that could heal Elyssa, it'd be worth it. Just as I was about to say this to Nightliss, I thought back to a trick I'd once used while hiding from vampires by covering a deep hole with the illusion of solid stone so the vampires looking for us would fall into it.

I'd gotten a little better with illusion during my time at Arcane University, but hadn't used it for any practical applications since. This might be one of those times. I typically needed a wand or staff as a focus for Arcane spells, but simple illusions could be done without their aid. I pictured a stain of blood spreading across my T-shirt. I looked down and saw a pinpoint of illusionary crimson spreading across the fabric.

One of the guards did a double take when she looked at me. She called ahead to the leader and pointed out my bloody shirt. I knew they might want to see the wound itself, so I created the illusion of a huge gash across my stomach, and threw in a bit of protruding bone just for the hell of it. If they touched the fake wound, the gig would be over.

The leader halted the march and said something to me.

"He wants you to lift your shirt," Nightliss said with a confused look on her face.

"I'm gravely injured," I said, putting a pained look on my face, lifting my shirt with bound hands.

Nightliss hissed when she saw the wound. The soldiers merely looked at it, but didn't react much. I could only assume they'd seen some gruesome injuries in their time, or else they just didn't give a crap. Despite the horrors I'd seen fighting the Brightlings, I still hadn't grown used to death and destruction.

My primary mission here was to score a healer for Elyssa. But that wasn't my only mission—we needed the Darklings from Seraphina to help us. I considered telling these soldiers the truth and hoping they'd take me to their leader. Then again, they might not believe that I'd come from Eden. With the Alabaster Arches dysfunctional for over two thousand years, they might think I was just crazy.

I pulled down my shirt and groaned to buy a little more thinking time. An idea finally came to me.

"Nightliss, tell them that I was attacked by a Brightling who was inspecting the arch at the other end of the skyway." I resisted the urge to wink at her.

"I don't understand." Worry flashed in her eyes. "Why would I tell them such a thing?"

"From what Lanaeia told me, there's a stalemate between the Darklings and Brightlings." I feigned another wince of pain to make it look like we were talking about my injury. "If it looks like the Brightlings are trying some new tactic, the Darklings might take us to someone in charge."

Understanding dawned in her eyes. "So you can speak to them of an alliance."

"Exactly." I cried out in pain, causing several of the soldiers to look at me with concern.

Nightliss translated the story. Judging from the looks of worry and disbelief in the eyes of the soldiers, my story had hit home.