Gion didn’t have time to kill any more Phases. He didn’t even want to. Blood and gore clung to the edges of his cape as he took the steps two at a time.
“Gion!” He heard someone shouting his name and instinctively looked back over his shoulder.
Isaacs, one of Parald’s top soldiers, second only to Gion, pushed aside a dead man. He scowled at Gion. Like most Air Phases, Isaacs sported blond hair and aristocratic features.
Gion’s own hair was licorice black and fell past his shoulders. He’d always been a little bit different than the rest of the Air House.
Of course, Isaacs was nobody’s poster-child for blending in, either. Blood smeared his face, giving him the look of some demonic savage, which actually wasn’t far off. Isaacs had been born a mean son-of-a-bitch. He just usually hid it behind an affable, toothpaste ad smile. Now, the maniacal grin had been replaced with grim focus. “Where the hell are you going, Gion?! We’re at war!”
“It’s not my war.” Gion snapped and kept climbing upward. Damn if he’d
ever
go to war for Parald’s idiocy. Especially, not when Parald himself was locked up in his chambers, hiding from the conflict. Gion had far more important things to focus on.
Ty needed him.
She wasn’t sick. He’d know, somehow, if the plague had struck her. But, something was very, very wrong.
He could feel it.
Gion had always known that the universe would end bloody. There was really no other way for the curtain to close, but on a scene of misery and suffering. And, for himself, Gion could accept that.
He didn’t want to die.
Why
he cared he wasn’t entirely certain, but he’d put a lot of effort into staying alive. Still, Gion could accept a death like this, with war and plague falling like a shroud across the face of the evil world.
He was not a good man.
Arrogant, cynical, and apathetic to the point of cruelty, Gion had long suspected that his death would come in some painful and probably entirely justified way. Gion’s father had been a part of the Wood House, so he’d been indoctrinated in religious conviction since childhood. Not zealotry, but just a deep certainty in the existence of God, or Gaia, or what term you wanted to use for the ultimate source of Good.
Gion always retained that faith. More than even he’d realized. Because, here at the dawn of the dystopia, he knew there could only be two camps: the righteous and the damned. And he also knew what side of the battle he’d be cast on. When the final judgment came down, Gion, of the Air House would burn with the other villains of the world.
Gion was a murderer.
Certainly, it didn’t thrill him, but Gion had skated on the edge of disaster since he was a boy. The odds of a happily-ever-after had always been stacked against him, anyway. His own choices had seen to that and he could accept it.
But he could
never
accept innocents suffering for the sins of the wicked.
Ty, of the Water House was an innocent and, right now, she needed him.
Unless the plague got him first, Gion’s fascination with that woman would one day get him killed. Ty would never be his, so the obsession registered high on the hopeless, pathetic, and crazy scales. But, Gion could accept that, too. Because, Ty was the only thing in his life worth dying for. The only thing he’d ever believed in.
“Gion!” Isaacs bellowed, again. “It fucking
is
your war, you bastard! Do you want the Air House to fall?”
“The plague made us
all
fall.” Gion roared back. “It
is
the fall!”
He really didn’t think about the words before he shouted them, which was unusual. Gion normally considered every sentence he uttered. He certainly never expected his retort to become the
name
of the entire epidemic. Later, he could never be sure how anyone else in the battle even heard his shout or why it had caught on so quickly, but the nameless plague had its official moniker: the Fall.
Someone tackled Gion from behind, driving him to his knees and sending him sliding backwards down several steps. Gion whipped his sword around, aiming for his attacker’s head and encountering another blade. The other guy was fast. Sparks flew out as their swords slammed against each other.
Gion’s icy blue gaze flashed up to his opponent as he scrambled to his feet.
Uriel, of the Wood House glared back at him. “What have you done?” Uriel demanded. His brown eyes flashed. Dirt and blood covered the mahogany streak at the temple of his military style crew cut. “What the hell have you
done
to us?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Uriel.” Gion warned. “Just back off.” Uriel’s grandmother had been Gion’s fourth cousin. Gion wasn’t sure how that made them related, but he didn’t relish the idea of killing him. Uriel, like most Wood Phases, was honorable and righteous; committed to fighting the good fight and following the rules of both the Elementals and Gaia. Wood Phases might have been the best soldiers in the Elemental realm, but they were essentially innocents.
“‘Back off’?!” Uriel echoed furiously. Their swords spun together in a quick successions of thrusts and parries. Uriel took the offensive, driving Gion up several steps. “Vonner is dead because of this disease! My baby brother is dead because of you!”
Shit.
Vonner had been a child. Barely twenty years old, Vonner was the youngest Wood Phase and the apple of everyone’s eye. Even Gion felt a pang of sorrow at the news and he’d barely known the kid.
“I never hurt that boy.” Gion deflected a sword strike and resisted the urge to stab his distant cousin, or whatever Uriel’s DNA made him, right through his thick skull. “I’d never hurt any child.”
At least, not deliberately.
Not that the distinction mattered.
“This disease is killing
everyone
.” Uriel took another swing and nearly detached Gion’s left ear. “You’re fucking standing with murderers and you want me to just
back off?!
”
Murderer
.
The truth about what he was echoed in Gion’s mind.
He didn’t have a choice about where he stood, though. Phases couldn’t just switch Houses on a whim. Gion had been born an Air Phase. That was the only Element he controlled and the only place he’d be welcomed as an adult. When the Council Banished Parald for attacking Ty and Job, they’d consigned all the Air Phases to hell. Most other Houses refused to allow any Air Phase in and
no
one
would ever open their door for Gion.
He was too dangerous.
Another massive blow arced out. This time, Uriel actually made contact. Gion felt the pain of it sing up his arm as the blade cut deep into his flesh. Gion staggered to the side and gave up trying to protect Uriel. It had been a stupid impulse, anyway. God, only knew why he’d bothered.
Gion drew on his power, again; something that would severely piss off Uriel,
jus in bello
stickler that he was. Blasting out his energy, Gion used it like a battering ram. Not killing Uriel, but shoving him away hard enough to send the younger Phase flying across the room. Gion ignored Uriel’s outraged bellows and continued his race up the stairs.
He had to jump to the Water Kingdom and, to do that, he needed a clear space and about three seconds of time where no one was trying to kill him. Not so very easy to achieve down in the midst of battle. He had to get to his room and…
From out of nowhere he heard Ty’s voice. Suddenly and without warning, it filled his head with frantic cries.
“Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!”
Gion froze, panic eating through him like acid.
Ty was in danger. Frightening. Calling for him. Gion had no idea how such a thing was possible. Phases weren’t psychic. None of them could project thoughts ESP style. Except, that it
was
Ty and he knew with an absolute certainly that he had to get to her.
Now
.
Everyone within fifteen feet of Gion found themselves blown backwards by hurricane force gales. The rush of Air scoured the room, so that even Phases locked in mortal battles turned to gape as the wind screamed passed them. Gion didn’t notice or care. He’d created his own space for the jump and that was all that mattered.
Gion locked on Ty in his mind and jumped right to her. Ripping through the Water House’s barriers, he landed in the dead center of the Water Palace’s courtyard.
And right in the middle of another war.
The sick Water Phases were rioting. They shrieked at Ty, blaming her for renouncing Parald and causing him to release the Fall. The riot filled the kingdom with the smells of death and the twisting of flames. Buildings burned. The funeral pyres of the Fire House lit up the distant sky. In the pitch black of the night, the mob’s torches glowed. Their hysterical voices rose and fell. Their eyes glowed with mad frenzy as they attacked their target: their queen.
Ty lay on the ground. Not moving. Barely breathing.
Dying.
Gion’s vision narrowed like something from the movie
Jaws
. A zoom in, pull out sensation that made him dizzy and unaware of everything else around him. He no longer saw anything but Ty. The world became black and white, so that the only color he could perceive was the vibrant red of the blood pooling around her. He didn’t hear anything but Ty’s fading voice inside his head whispering for help.
They’d tried to decapitate her.
Ty, of the Water House, a woman who’d never spoken a single word to Gion and who belonged to Parald, a man Gion despised.
A woman who feared and hated Gion and all that he stood for.
Who Gion was four hundred years and a million lifetimes older than.
…And who was his entire world.
This tiny, stubborn, inscrutable woman was the only thing that Gion gave a damn about and her own people had tried to decapitate her. Gion couldn’t lose Ty. Everything in him howled at the thought. Without Ty, he’d have nothing, at all.
Gion’s powers detonated like an atom bomb. For the first time since boyhood, the Air energy slipped past his control.
Cyclones of power exploded outward, spinning Ty’s attackers into the sky and dropping them who-the-hell-knew where. People cried out in terror as they were tossed aside like kindling. A few tried to strike back at him, but none of them had even a fraction of Gion’s power. The mob might have been able to attack a small girl, barely out of childhood, but they were helpless against Gion’s wrath.
Bones snapped. Bodies fell. Phases screamed.
It was all white noise to Gion.
He was already moving towards Ty, his heart pounding in his throat. Gion collapsed to his knees next to her. His cape floated out, covering Ty’s body as he leaned over her. “Oh Gaia, please.” Terror became a living thing inside of him.
Ty’s blood filled the cracks between the cobblestones, her breath coming in irregular gasps. The gash in her neck was fatal. Not even a Phase could survive it. Especially not one who was just ninety-three years old. That was the year that Elementals came of age. Ty’s life had barely begun. She didn’t have her full powers, yet.
“Ty!” He tried not to call her by the nickname. “Tritone” was more formal. It kept a safer distance between them, but Gion was beyond giving a shit about that, now. “Angel, open your eyes. Ty! Stay with me. Open your eyes and stay with me.”
To Gion’s shock, she actually obeyed. Turquoise eyes fluttered open and dazedly focused on him.
Ty was gorgeous.
Granted, Gion’s opinion tipped towards biased-ness, but he truly thought that it would’ve been impossible for anyone to deny her appeal. Where most Elementals were tall and slim, Ty was an exotic mix of softness and curves. Her red hair was a wild tangle of curls around a pixie face, her eyes framed by blue cat’s eye glasses. She was always so beautiful.
But, right now, Ty looked like a battered, bloody mess. Her clothes were ripped, her body a mass of lacerations and bruises. Gion felt tears burning the back of his eyes.
This was a blasphemy.
At this point in his life, nothing affected Gion. Nothing, but this gentle, little creature in front of him. Why the fuck would anyone harm this girl? Ty was a baby. So young and innocent that it was wrong for Gion to even want her so much. She was sweet, shy, bookish and as lovely as her kingdom.
The Water Kingdom was the center of culture and art in the Elemental world. Its perfect, fairytale castle overlooked a shining azure sea. Gion could hear the roar of the magnificent fountain at the courtyard’s center. It seemed impossible that so many bodies could litter the ground of this serene haven. Or that one of them was Ty.
She couldn’t die. Not here. Not now. Gion wouldn’t allow it.
He kept his gaze locked on hers. “Ty, stay with me. Don’t you leave me here alone.” He folded one of his palms around hers. God, her hands were small. How could someone so small possibly survive this? Gion didn’t even notice when tears started falling down his face. Without Ty, the world was empty.