Chapter Forty-Six

This doesn’t seem right. I grimaced as I strode through the area surrounding the weapon’s compound. There was human blood everywhere, signs of fighting with various forms of weaponry, yet no bodies anywhere. Instead, there were drag marks and occasional scorches on the ground from craft coming and going recently. I doubt they took prisoners. In which case…who moved the bodies?

I sniffed the air hesitantly. From what I’d read, burning humans smelled akin to pork. However, all I smelled was burning buildings, chemicals, and something vaguely rubber-like. Nothing like meat or hair.

“We have a problem,” Zafir spoke quickly in my ear. “Our bosses are having me route the feed from your visor to all major news outlets. They’re saying something about the possibility of you doling out a public execution. Elara… I think…I think they may still be in there. You need to be careful. This is the last time during the mission I will be able to speak freely —I’ m about to go set up the feed now.”

“Fuck. Seriously?” I hissed. “Do what you have to do. I’ll figure something out.”

Of fucking course the humans were hoping for bloodshed. I felt anger writhe inside my chest like a caged animal, clawing at me. Steadying my breath, I stuffed it back down and honed my senses. This was the worst possible time for me to go feral—to enter the state of kuhir-dal? Whatever the proper term was.

Upon entering the main building, I scanned for signs of movement and stepped quietly across the bloodied floor. While there were no corpses yet, the blood spray on the walls and the smears on the floor made it obvious the Syldrari weren’t wasting time. If someone fought them, they died.

I swept two floors before I came across signs of recent conflict. Several human corpses littered the floor, blood slowly leaking out of wounds to their throats or heads. Simple, lethal elegance. One or two strikes at most. Efficient.

In one of the last rooms, I found a human man who wasn’t a soldier sitting in the corner, huddled in a ball. His eyes were wide, and he had blood covering his arms and hands. He squeaked out a pathetic whimper upon spotting me.

“Are they still here?” I asked pointedly. “Soldiers will be coming to extract you soon.”

“H-here, yes…up…up…” he raised a shaking hand and pointed at the ceiling, unable to say anything else but ‘up.’

“Sit tight.” I moved out of the room, stowing any form of emotion such as sympathy away for once the mission was over. Until then, I needed to focus. Still here…? Then, the attack wasn’t ‘overnight.’ What happened to the corpses outside? Is it Jysel’s group, or…

I forced my mind into silence for the moment. If it wasn’t Jysel’s group, I didn’t need some unknown Syldrari hearing my conscious thoughts. Until I knew what I was dealing with, mind and body needed to be silent.

The next several floors were littered with the corpses of both guards and other staff who had been efficiently executed. A severed artery here, a shot through the skull there, a few decapitated heads… Rather than the brutal, emotion-filled killings I’d half-expected, these were cold and businesslike. The people clearly weren’t the targets—but they had gotten in the way.

It wasn’t until I was three floors from the roof that I heard sounds of life. Syldrari life. By now, I understood enough of Syldran tones to determine that orders were being given to a smaller force. Orders that came, undoubtedly, from Jysel. My heart sunk—I knew I wasn’t a match for him, and he’d likely be furious over my slip up with my powers. Then, compounded with my visor being hooked up to news…

I decided reaching out first was the smartest thing I could do. Walking in would have been stupid, but I didn’t have much time before the humans began ordering me to move in either. Jysel, I need you to listen carefully. I have orders to stop your group and rescue any survivors. The fucking imbeciles at HQ forced Zafir to route my visor’s feed to all news channels on the planet.

I can’t back down, and you need to finish this job. We’re going to have to give them a believable show .

There was no response at first, but I heard him continuing to give his men orders. When he finally answered, he said, I understand. My men have been briefed. I recommend you play good little imperial soldier if we are going to make this believable.

I steadied myself before kicking down the door and calling lightning around my fists, taking an offensive stance. “By order of the Imperator, you are to stand down and cease hostilities at once!”

Jysel paused mid-speech to his men and half-turned to look at me, a downright evil smile on his face. He held up a hand when one of his men raised a rifle, and said something in Syldran before addressing me. “The humans would stop us from saving their planet from this patchwork toy they call a weapon?”

“Sir, there’s reinforcements on the way. We should hurry,” Casair reported in the human language, taking a step forward and narrowing his eyes at me. “Let me take care of the human.”

“No…no, you take the men. Finish the mission. I will have my rematch.” Jysel let his suit disappear, and began tugging off the pair of gloves he wore. As he did so, he took graceful, predatory strides toward me.

“Lethe, stop his men!” Crowe barked in my ear.

In response, I launched forward, prepared to summon a wall to block them with. Jysel was beside me in a blink of an eye, and caught me arm, spinning me right out of the room. I landed back-first into a wall, but he hadn’t thrown me hard. I recovered quickly, but his men had already disappeared.

“Now then, with you to myself…” Jysel rubbed his chin as he examined me. He made a show of running his long, glowing blue tongue over his lips in a suggestive manner. “Why don’t you tell me why the humans want to destroy themselves so badly?”

“What is he talking about? That weapon is our strongest defense! We can’t let them disable it.” voices I didn’t recognize started arguing in my ear.

Then, Citomy’s voice cut through them, “Someone get me the blueprints for this weapon. My son is foolish but he isn’t an imbecile.”

“Still, we can’t let this villain get away with attacking—”

“You want a villain?” Jysel inquired, a devious sparkle in his eyes. “ Fine. I will show you a villain. Killing your so-called vigilante ‘protector of the peace’ should suffice, right? But first… I think I’ll have some fun with her. ”

“Lethe, get out of— What in the heavens is that noise ?”

I narrowed my eyes within my visor and raised my fists, sensing Jysel coiling to attack. His first strike missed, flying straight past my face. I twisted into a kick, but he caught my ankle in one hand and grabbed me around the throat with the other.

“Say goodbye to your precious heroine,” Jysel stated in a calm, powerful tone, his voice causing the air to shake. “Uppercut me with your right hand. When I try to take your visor again, try to dodge—but fail. We need to remove that annoyance and let their imaginations run wild. …and, I apologize, but this little sparring will hurt.”

F ine. I did as he asked, and he feigned being taken off guard.

I pursed him with kicks and electrically-charged handstrikes, all of which he easily dodged. Distressed murmuring filled my ears as whatever superiors were watching realized that Jysel was wearing what amounted to a dress uniform, while they believed me to be fully armored.

“We should have her pull out, Imperator. Without better weapons—”

Jysel blurred, appearing inches away from my chest. His fingers grasped my visor and pulled it off, throwing it straight out of the window, breaking the glass. He pinned me back against the wall, a devious smile spreading across his lips as he studied my face.

“Was that ‘convincing’ enough for you, Salaith-daiyr?”

“You know that won’t be enou—” I went silent when Jysel gripped me firmly by the jaw, his gaze blazing with some emotion I couldn’t identify. His glow swirled with black, garnet, and navy.

“Are Zafir and Rel fine?” Jysel asked, calmly, his voice a stark contrast to the intensity of emotions that appeared to be running through him.

“They are. Zafir helped me regain control of myself this morning,” I answered calmly, bringing a hand up and lightly gripping his wrist. “My nightmares are getting out of hand, but this isn’t the time or place to discuss that. Do you really think you can just let me go like this, and not draw suspicion from the government?”

Jysel sighed, tilting his head to the side as he studied me. “What, you don’t want to kill me for all the humans we executed here today? I was expecting some degree of righteous fury from you.”

“They got in the way of your mission, so they had to die. If your mission is stopped, billions will die instead of a few hundred. Its logical.” I gave him a puzzled look. “Sacrifice the few for the many and all that. But, you and I—”

“—need to fight?” Jysel finished, his eyes drifting to my lips, my throat, and then studying my body. “Fine. You want to be convincing? Then show me what you’ve learned from Rel. There is something I’ve wanted to test, anyway.”

“What’s that?” I asked warily as Jysel strode into the more open room I had originally found him in.

“I want to know how much it takes to make you fall into Kuhir-dal.”

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