“They’re all good people!” Vikkal replied, his eyes beaming with pride and affection. “Gentle and patient, peaceful characters. Most of them are, surprisingly, quite young. In their early hundreds, to be precise.”
Shayla smiled, then gave Draven and me a quick glance. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “I suppose it means the young ones are open to worshipping the Hermessi?”
“Yes, milady. Of course, we do have the elders here,” Vikkal explained. “They organize the weekly and monthly sermons, where they bring out the old folklore manuscripts and do live readings. That’s pretty much it. They come from the city, the nearby village. Even the palace!”
Upon mentioning the palace, Taeral raised both eyebrows in surprise. “That’s interesting.”
“What about the elderly fae? Who would be your oldest worshippers here?” Shayla asked.
Vikkal blinked several times, finally realizing that the line of questioning had a specific target, though he’d yet to figure out who we were looking for. He narrowed his eyes at Shayla, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.
“I’m sorry, but I must ask. Are you looking for someone in particular?” he replied.
Taeral sighed, then nodded. “Yes, Grand Priest. We’re hoping to find Bogdana,” the young prince said.
At the sound of her name, Vikkal’s eyes grew wide, and he pursed his thin lips. His defenses went up, albeit temporarily. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a couple of steps back.
“Bogdana… I didn’t know you were aware of her existence,” he muttered, his voice low.
“The oldest fae alive? Of course we know of her existence,” Taeral replied.
“We don’t mean any harm, Vikkal,” Shayla added. “We need her help. It’s important. The lives of many hang in the balance.”
Vikkal took a deep breath, his slim brows gathering above the blade of his nose with a dark crease. “Am I privy to any details regarding this issue?”
“I’m afraid not,” Taeral said. “It’s best for everyone if we keep it secret, for the time being. But we do need to find Bogdana. Judging by your reaction, I think it’s fair to assume you know more about her than we do.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Vikkal sighed. “She comes to the temple to worship once a week. In fact, I think hers is the strongest connection to the Hermessi, out of all of us. Her fire abilities have truly blossomed since she’s come here.”
That was interesting, to say the least. I wondered if that had anything to do with her impressive age, or just faith. Since we knew very few solid facts about the Hermessi, it was difficult to draw any accurate conclusions about worshippers, their abilities, and the natural elements. Personally, I was inclined to believe it was because of her age. After all, Bogdana had been born and raised in a time when the Hermessi were worshipped on a wider scale than what we were seeing here.
“Do you know where she lives? It’s imperative that we speak to her,” Taeral said.
Vikkal took his time to answer, as if carefully choosing his words. “Your Highness, she’ll be here in four days for the weekly sermon. Wouldn’t you prefer to come back then? I promise, I will introduce you myself,” he said. “She’s quite reclusive and barely speaks to anyone. Between you and me, I don’t think she likes the fae much.”
“I’m afraid it will be too late then,” Draven said. “We need to see her as soon as possible. Four days isn’t good enough.”
“All right,” the Grand Priest conceded. “I will tell you where you can find her. But be advised: Bogdana really doesn’t like guests, especially the unexpected kind,” he added, then chuckled nervously. “Believe me, I learned that the hard way when I went to her home to deliver fresh fruits from our orchard. I nearly lost my head in that place!”
Taeral, Shayla, Draven, and I looked at each other, before shifting our full attention back to Vikkal. I had a feeling our journey was about to get more perilous.
“What do you mean?” Shayla replied.
“Bogdana has a small house in the middle of the deepest woods, twenty miles west of here, by the Red Canyon,” Vikkal explained. “There’s a desert before that riddled with fiery lava rivers, as there is an underground volcano in the area. The woods are filled with traps and riddles, too. Like I said, Bogdana is not a fan of company.”
“She’s starting to sound more and more like a psychopath, if you ask me,” Taeral muttered.
Vikkal cocked his head to the side, as if taking that remark in and validating it. “Could be,” he said. “But what can we do? The old fae likes her privacy more than anything. I suppose she’s seen and experienced so much in her life, that she’s found peace in solitude, and she’ll do anything to preserve that.”
“Thank you, Grand Priest,” Taeral replied, then put his hand out.
Vikkal smiled, then shook Taeral’s hand, briefly lowering his head, too, in a reverent gesture. “You are most welcome, Your Highness. Be careful as you tread through the woods, please. I would hate to be responsible if you get yourself hurt… or worse.”
“Worry not, you will not be held responsible in any way,” Taeral said, then looked at us. “Okay. So, who’s ready to go looking for the psycho old fae, then?”
None of us, really. But we didn’t have much of a choice. We needed Bogdana to tell us everything she knew about Strava and the Draenir, and as soon as possible. That meant that we had to go to her, since we couldn’t afford to lose a single day waiting for her to visit the temple—not to mention four!
The entire universe was relying on us. We couldn’t let a few traps and riddles devised by an antisocial old fae get between us and literal salvation. Through wind and fire, through sickness and whatever other dreadful thing would cross our path, we had to keep going. I was determined to get us an audience with Bogdana.
Elonora
We searched the waters and small islands for hours. I used my True Sight to scour the patches of woods, looking for Ridan, as we made our way farther to the west. The diamond colosseum where we’d fought the Perfects was three miles to the east. There were occasional bangs thundering across the sky, but they were still quite far away.
Nevertheless, we moved carefully and as quietly as possible, as we traveled from one patch of dry land to another. The local animals watched us from between the trees, hidden in the shadows. I thrived in the bluish moonlight, feeling a bit more comfortable at night with the Perfects at large. Darkness gave me a strange, maybe unwarranted sense of security. Technically speaking, I wasn’t safer—none of us were, but it helped my frayed psyche.
We were all still reeling from the devastation we’d witnessed in the sky earlier. Our GASP fleet had been practically obliterated by thousands of Perfects. We hadn’t even thought there were that many. Until we saw them with our own eyes. Some of our allies had died, but most had been captured. It gave us some sense of what Ta’Zan could do—the more genes he had to work with, the more powerful he became. We weren’t sure for how long he’d keep them alive, though. Hell, we weren’t sure of much, at this point.
“How are you feeling?” Nevis asked me, as we left one of his frosty pathways behind and crossed a narrow beach.
I looked at him, surprised to see the expression of concern on his face. “As good as one can feel, given the circumstances,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him, or anyone, for that matter, that I was worried sick. My parents might’ve been on one of those ships. I drew comfort from the thought that my brother was stationed on Neraka. I held on to the hope that he didn’t travel back to Calliope to join the fleet, though I knew he would’ve, if he had the chance. Varga put family above all else. It was in his nature.
Ugh. The thought alone is making me queasy.
“I suppose this was the first time you witnessed such devastation?” Nevis replied.
He seemed genuinely curious, having left his usual condescending tone behind. I nodded in response.
“GASP has always benefitted from strength in numbers,” I said. “I suppose
that’s no longer the case.”
“When volume fails, one must focus on the details.” Nevis sighed. “The weaknesses, the back doors and tiny cracks in our enemy.”
Rose and Ben were several feet ahead. Kailani, Vesta, and Zeriel were behind us. Hunter and Dmitri flanked our group on both sides, sniffing the air as we headed for the woods. It was close to midnight, now, and the moon shone boldly above us.
The white sand looked like powdered sapphires. The water was almost phosphorescent, glowing softly against the starry sky. Had this world not been home to killers such as the Perfects, I would’ve called it an alien paradise. It wasn’t, though. Strava had lost its appeal, and I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy its beauty anymore, even for just a minute or two.
“We’ve been at this for, what, four hours? Five?” Kailani complained, frowning as she looked around. “We should’ve found him by now. We’re pretty far out to the west of the colosseum now.”
“We all saw Ridan shoot through the sky when Araquiel hit him,” Dmitri replied. “The dragon went out for miles, based on his speed. Inertia can be a pain when a Perfect is involved.”
“So, what, we’re still not close enough?” Kailani asked. “For how long could Ridan fly with his injuries? Do you think maybe he managed to fly farther out before crashing somewhere?”
Dmitri shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know how badly he was hurt, though. I saw what you saw. Him and Araquiel up in the air, fighting, then Araquiel hitting him so hard that Ridan literally flew away like a friggin’ rocket, without the use of his wings. That was considerable force the Perfect used on him, to say the least.”
“Either way, we keep looking,” Rose interjected. “He’s here somewhere. If not on this island, maybe on the next. We’re not giving up on him.”
“I didn’t say that,” Kailani replied, slightly annoyed. “It would really help if we could catch his trail at some point, that’s all. We’ve been going blind for hours, and I don’t like being too close to that damn colosseum.”
Using my True Sight, I froze when I recognized a similar diamond structure, less than two miles away to the north, on a neighboring island. “Um… Kale… You’re not going to like this, but we’re close to more than one colosseum.”
Kailani stilled, her mouth gaping as she stared at me. “Say what, now?”
“There’s another colosseum nearby,” I replied. “Maybe 1.7 or 1.8 miles to the north,” I added, then looked to our right. My blood ran cold. “Oh, and a third one, four miles out to the west. Jeez, they’re identical, too. We could easily lose track of which is which, if we’re not careful.”
“They built more,” Zeriel concluded. “It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, though. If Ta’Zan can make thousands of them in days, clearly they’re capable of building these structures just as fast.”
“Oh. Okay, so, basically, what you’re saying is that we’re surrounded by the enemy, no matter where we turn, right?” Kailani retorted, visibly annoyed. She put her hands on her hips and took deep breaths, in an attempt to regain her composure.
She’d been holding it together surprisingly well, given the changes the swamp witch magic had put her through. She hadn’t talked about it, but I could see the effects nonetheless, particularly in her irritability and the more intense glow of her aura. Kailani was going through something, on top of the mission to find her grandparents and the fleet’s destruction. She was quite close to unraveling, though, and I knew I needed to be there for her.
I walked over to her, then put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.
“Kale, we’re in a hot mess here. You know that,” I murmured. “But we can’t succumb to anger or panic. We stick together, and we figure it out. Ridan needs us. Corrine, Ibrahim, my grandparents, and the others need us. Hell, everyone who survived that attack in the sky needs us.”
Kailani exhaled, then briefly looked at Hunter before shifting her focus back to me. He’d been watching her, quietly. I could see the discreet gold glow in his aura, but I couldn’t make much of it. He was fond of all of us, after all. I’d yet to train myself to differentiate between various degrees of affection, as well as other emotions—which was why I hadn’t been able to tell that Kallisto had lied to us when we’d first met her, and when she’d said she didn’t know what the Perfects were. Reading emotions was the one thing that a sentry had to learn without any help from the outside. Serena, Phoenix and Harper had done it before me, and I wasn’t excluded from the process either.
“You’re right,” Kailani breathed. “We keep moving until—”
“Hey, I think I got something,” Dmitri cut in.
He was on the edge of the small forest, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the cool air.
“Dragon?” Hunter replied, then rushed to his side to help him track the scent. He then nodded and looked at us. “Dragon. Ridan was here, not too long ago.”
I made my way over to them and scanned the strip of beach between us and the ocean. Its waves lapped gently at the shore, giving the sand a darker shade. Only then did I spot the faint drag marks. I ran to the shore and followed the traces back to Hunter and Dmitri.
“I think he was dragged out of the water,” I said. “Up to here…”
I walked ahead, passing the first line of palm trees and entering the small, dark forest. Hunter and Dmitri followed, continuously sniffing the air around us. Rose, Ben, Kailani, Nevis, Vesta, and Zeriel were right behind us as we ventured deeper into the woods.
“The scent’s getting a little stronger,” Hunter said. “It’s definitely Ridan.”
“Notice the drag marks,” Vesta replied, pointing at the disturbed dirt on the ground.
“Someone definitely dragged him through here,” Dmitri added, then growled slowly. “I’m getting that lemony whiff again.”
“Crap. Perfects?” I croaked.
He shook his head. “Nah. It’s identical to that scent we caught in the pod cave. A Faulty, most likely.”
“So, a Faulty got Ridan out of the water and dragged him into the woods?” Rose asked, tucking a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. Despite her nocturnal nature as a vampire, she seemed tired. Upon a second glance at our group, we were all exhausted, running mostly on fumes. But we couldn’t stop. Not yet.
Hunter took a deep breath. His forehead smoothed. His jaw clenched.
“We’re not alone,” he whispered.
A split second later, five Faulties slipped down from the trees and landed around us with muffled thumps. My instincts immediately kicked in, and I drew my sword and prepared for a battle. Blades screeched as they left their sheaths—my team was ready.
These Faulties were slightly different from the ones we’d met before. Four of them were huge, approximately the size of an adult daemon, the tallest of them measuring about seven feet. Their skin was ashen and hard-shelled, reminding me of the rhinos back on Earth. A single horn grew from each of their foreheads—long, thick, and arched slightly upward. The fifth was a skinny-looking fellow with black scales covering his upper body and a loincloth wrapped around his narrow waist. None looked happy to see us.
On the contrary, they were out for blood. Ours, to be precise.
“We mean you no harm,” Rose said, trying the diplomatic way first, despite having already drawn her sword.
“We do,” the snaky one replied, sneering and revealing his viper-like fangs. His yellow eyes glistened in the darkness, sending shivers down my spine.
Hunter growled. “That’s a poor choice you’ve made tonight,” he said, then lunged at one of the rhino-Faulties.
They didn’t waste a second. They darted around us at incredible speeds, despite their considerable size. They didn’t have swords or knives, but their claws and horns were poisonous and sharp enough to do serious damage. In addition, they could be carrying poisoned darts, like the others we’d encountered before.
Nevis was quick to retaliate, though, and raised a thick wall of frost around us—enough to separate us from the Faul
ties. Left on the outside, they snarled and scratched at the ice. They were furious and eager to get to us. However, this batch of Faulties wasn’t able to immediately break Nevis’s Dhaxanian frost.
“Okay, what now?” I breathed, eager to take the bastards out.
Rose nodded at me. “Think we can try that blood thing again? It might work with the Faulties, too.”
“Whatever your plan of attack is, be quick,” Nevis said. “They will break the ice soon.”
He was right. Long cracks were already appearing as the horned Faulties continued to ram their heads into the ice wall. Rose pointed at Hunter and Dmitri first.
“You two take one of the horns,” she said, then shifted her focus to the others. “Nevis, Ben, take the second. Kale, you’re capable of handling the third. Zeriel, Vesta, take the fourth. Lenny and I will tackle the snake. He looks good for the blood.”
We all nodded, just as the frost wall came down, crumbling. We spread out and focused our efforts as Rose had assigned us. I caught a glimpse of Nevis and Ben defending themselves against one of the horned Faulties—until Nevis raised another wall of ice, and Ben quickly ran around and set the creature on fire.
They were fast and deadly, sure, but we were aching for revenge, and we’d learned a few lessons from our previous confrontations. We’d survived a bunch of Perfects, making the Faulties less scary than before, in a way.
Rose and I moved toward the snaky fiend, who darted around us and kept trying to claw at my sides. Every time, I blocked him with my sword. At one point I was a millisecond faster as I raised the blade, and managed to cut off one of his clawed fingers.
He hissed from the pain, then stepped back, cursing under his breath. He narrowed his yellow eyes at me, ready to attack again—but he forgot about Rose for a moment. It was all she needed to rush behind him, grab him by the head, and sink her fangs into the side of his neck.