A War Dawning Ch. 07

His boots touched the concrete and turned to see the open metal door at the other end of the hall. As if on cue a strong, but gravelly male voice beckoned to him playfully. "Come in, mage. No one will harm you without cause."

Deres' stride was casual even though his overall posture was guarded. "I suppose I'll just have to give you cause." He pushed his senses into the room to find one mage and one not.

The other was indifferent. "That would be a mistake, but it's your life."

Deres entered the room to find a young woman slightly behind the mage, not exactly using him for protection, but ready to do so should the need arise. The other eyed him critically and with some empathy. "You're not well."

"I'm fine enough."

He appraised carefully. "You are...when you should be dead."

"Just like the queen?"

"And here I just assumed that my own information was inaccurate and the blade didn't actually find her." He eyed the writhing coil of magic that infused itself into Deres like veins into his body. He shook his head. "Very nice. Tsk, but it's not enough, is it? My alchemy is something I always tweak, and I always thrill at learning skills. Show me how you countered the initial poison and I will help you now by showing you the changes I made. Looks like you won't have time to study them yourself. Your own magic looks gloriously complex."

"Drax." Deres smiled a genuine smile. The universe finally let something turn my way. "You have no idea how long and how far I have traveled to find you." He raised his hand to look at the ring. "I can't take credit for the spell entirely, but thank you." He sighed. "I'd rather have the actual cure. This palliative is fine, but it's going to become somewhat tedious to have to live one's life around it."

"I am Drax, yes. And you are?"

"Deres. The queen of Erette sent me to find you."

He was almost amiable."Here I am. I'm sorry though, it's a trade secret. If I gave you the base, I really never could use it again and it promises to be useful. I do like my projects, but I'm very selective about who I share them with."

Deres walked the width of the room in measured steps, watching the girl track him as he examined the consoles and monitors, "Projects like this?"

Drax surveyed the room himself. "Not mine per se, though I did all but upend my life in order to see it through. Letters to my friends were my only real luxury. I put years into this." He grinned at Lystra, "We put years into this.. Look around you. This place is, for the likes of us at least, older than time, but you don't seem to be the least bit impressed. One would think things like this were mundane to you."

"I've seen similar elsewhere."

Drax was intrigued by the tease, "May I ask where?"

Deres gave his head a little shake as he surmised from the information scrolling over the glass, that he didn't know enough to do anything but make a mistake. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." He resigned himself to what had to be. "Anyway, I know what this controls and what that something does. I suppose I can't convince you to just end this whole thing, can I? Millions of lives snuffed out, mass carnage, despotism...None of this bothers you?"

Lystra could not contain her loathing and spat him, "It doesn't bother the likes of you? Raping. Burning. Killing. The Draleth were no threat to anyone, but you attack without mercy."

Drax touched his hand to hers as Deres was at a loss for words, "It's all right, dear."

"It's not." Years of anguish and frustration would not be denied as there was finally a face for it all. "All the misery and now, when your army faces annihilation, you don't go to Father and beg for mercy, you come here to destroy the only hope the Draleth have of saving themselves."

His eyes bored into her and, while he tried to keep his tone that of trusted friend, his words carried an edge of coldness. "I will handle this, Lystra."

"You deserve to die for what you've done, all of you."

"Enough, Lystra!" A forced smile appeared, "Now is not the time to get yourself all excited."

Deres had no idea what was happening, but at that moment it didn't begin to matter. The people of Erette, himself included, were burning in fire of time so he acted. His hand outstretched, a chair followed his will and slammed into Drax, twisting and splintering. Lystra cried out from that and then of shock at seeing a section of the table fly towards him. Disoriented, but not enough to be lost, Drax displayed his own power, flinging the table left into the wall, causing two monitors to shatter. Pieces of text scrolled for a moment more before there were pops of blue light and the screens became transparent.

By that time, the men were grappling. Drax, the side of his face bloodied from the chair seemed untroubled by it. In fact, he seemed exhilarated by the experience. Energy crackled between them, body to body and Drax asked, his voice strained from the exertion, "Are you sure you want to do this? If you kill me there will be no helping you."

"Since you're not looking to help me I'm dead anyway, so I can say I don't care."

He grabbed Deres by the neck. "How will you solve your other little problem?"

"I'm a smart man, I'll figure something out." Deres felt the force build between them an instant before it pushed into him, giving him enough time to inhumanely strengthen his grip so the two went together through the air towards the opposite wall. In the weightlessness, Deres twisted his body, sending Drax into the concrete. A wave of dizziness threatened to overwhelm. That and the sudden movement created a follow-up wave of nausea for Deres.

He channeled more magic to quell the dying of his body and Drax took note. "How long can you keep that up?"

"Long enough."

Deres heard the wild scream of frustration just before he felt the chair crash into his back taking the wind from him in a rush. The next build of force from Drax, Deres felt, but couldn't repel it. He tumbled away and the nausea wracked him again and he coughed it out a dry heave. The fire hit him and he was thankful that his instructors so drilled him lessons of a shield's creation and maintenance that it was nearly instinctual.

What he did not know was how long he could resist. He only knew he had to.

The blaze around him ended almost as soon as it began. Deres slammed his eyes shut to put down the dizziness. There was mayhem around him. Drax was pained and angry and Lystra seemed hysterical. Things were falling to the floor and some were breaking into pieces large and small. Mage fire sizzled and he braced for it, wondering for a moment if he'd live. More movement around him, then the sound of exertion with a voice that tickled his hind brain, so he opened his eyes to see a mane of white hair and luminous eyes an icy blue.

He reacted with the reserves he had left, letting magic lift Drax from the ground and drive him like a projectile into the wall once again. There was no thought, only instinct to protect Elan, and the universe smiled on him one more time by leaving Drax limp and unconscious but alive after the impact. Deres let the man pile himself into a heap on the floor. He then noted, with more than a little satisfaction, an arrow firmly embedded in the mage's thigh. "Sloppy?"

She looked at him, put off by the suggestion, "I thought you might want him alive. Thank you for not making me have to try to outlast him without killing him."

"Murderer!" Lystra lunged at him, but before she could put her hands to him, his arm stiffened before her and she rose from the ground, dangling in the air like a butchered animal. "Elan," his voice weary, "could you keep this one out of trouble, please?"

Lystra struggled against the invisible bonds, raging obscenities as Elan used the leather straps that she normally used to keep herself from losing her daggers to bind the other's wrists and ankles, knotting so that she would just constrict herself if she squirmed too much. Deres floated her to the corner and she grunted when she fell to the floor.

"Sorry...about that." Deres felt as if he were slowly drowning, the world slipping away. Leaning against the control terminal, Elan came to him, tearing at his cloaks to see the dried blood.

"Poison," he told her. "It seems that clever murder is a hobby of his. I can't clear it without him."

Dread and terror rushed through her at the thought of what might happen. "Then I'm doubly glad I didn't kill him."

They heard Drax's broken voice. "You just...left it to me."

Reaching him just as a small blade now streaked with his blood hit the floor with two rapid taps, she took the hand roughly, examining the one inch cut down his palm. Deres saw the unchecked poison consuming him quickly and looked at him with more annoyance than anything else, "And what was the point of that?"

Drax, resigned to his fate, was surprisingly nonchalant about it. "As I said, I don't like to share, and this is essentially over for me anyway. Mareth has what he wants. I'm far more likely to stay in your hands than be returned to his or go free. Even if he did make an effort to get me back, the work is done. No more puzzles to solve or jobs to take. There's no sense in lingering in that case."

"It is a shame. We could have learned much from each other in other circumstances."

"We still will." Deres looked upon him with disdain and a hint of relief as he fumbled with the tie of his pocket and retrieved the crystal. "In fact, I should thank you. I don't...really have time to fight with you over your own mind. Thanks to you, I won't have to."

Drax forced his drooping lids to lift and looked curiously at the crystal in the other's hand, "What is that?"

"I'm going to place everything you are within it, peruse it at my will to get everything I need from you, then destroy it. Then, of course, you'll actually die."

"Impossible," he said with labored breath. But what if it's not? How? What will it be like?

"Very possible. And in those moments between unconsciousness and death you have no defense. You are mine to take." As sickly as he felt now, he managed a satisfied look. "All I have to do is wait you out and I'm willing to bet I won't have to wait long."

That much was true. Drax's vision was already dulling at the edges, and color draining from everything else. "Seems you've...won after all. The world hasn't though. Still...they were all interesting puzzles to work."

His eyes were now too heavy to fight and they drifted closed. He could feel his heart slow and a weight descend on his chest making each breath harder to take. It wasn't painful at least as he waited for what would come next. In the distance, his eyes perceived a light that they, by all rights they shouldn't have been able to. It's in my mind, he realized. He was being pulled closer to it. He could think the thought to resist, but it translated to nothing as it continued to draw him closer. He felt the tells of magic like nothing he understood and it intrigued him.

He knew this was going to happen and he could not fight it. Knowing he was dead either way, he rushed to it, for, as long as he lasted until he simply ended, it would be a new puzzle to savor. It's a better end than expected. he declared as the light consumed and a road of near infinite paths opened to him.

Focused on the task at hand and employing magic needed to take Drax and then peruse every bit of his life allowed Deres to ignore his body for a time. Every day, every memory...even things that Drax himself never would have remembered. It was all there to be watched and listened to and lived with him. He saw it all. He rushed to find that which he sought and he did so. The formula was there; every chemical combination and every twist of magic used to enhance its lethal nature and its resistance to being undone. Pieces of it had come from still another friend of his that also enjoyed 'theoretical exercises.' He saw the changes made and knew exactly which knots to undo and how to clear it from the body.

He saw everything that Drax had done.

Yet there was no real malice in any of it. Each act was just necessary to solve the puzzle and explore the mystery at hand. His greatest failing was simply a lack of empathy. If something aroused his curiosity, it really didn't matter who or what stood in the way of sating it.

The real world returned as he wheezed and coughed through a breath even as Elan guided him to the floor. She touched his face and ached. He looked to Lystra who watched with satisfaction as he fought to breathe. "You killed a man who helped raise me. You killed my second father. Die."

"You may get your wish." So tired now and every breath was becoming a struggle. He looked to Elan. "Bryana?"

Elan caressed his cheeks. "She sent me for you almost as soon as the fight started."

"It's complicated and it's getting hard to focus. I don't think I can... I can show you what needs doing, but I don't have time to...show you how to do it. "

"Shhhhh...it's all right."

"It's not." He wept, which made his chest rattle a bit louder. "You're not like Cassea. You're bound completely to my will. If I..."

"I know. If not to you, then to Drexa and I would have been dead years ago." She wept with him, but more for his pain than anything she might have felt for herself. "I had years of life that I would not have had otherwise. And I had you. I am happy to be yours and, if I die with you, I can ask for no better end. More than that, I die with you for a noble cause."

"I love you, Elan."

She nodded, kissing his cheeks, running her hand through his hair, just trying to extend her time with him. "I wish I loved you. That was something I could understand and articulate, but it is nothing compared to this. I breathe because of you. I am the person I always was only because you willed it. I would be lost without you, yet I have peace and happiness. Thank you for your kindness and your love. All I can truly say is that I am yours and I thank you for it."

"Did you get yourself in trouble, love?"

The feminine voice carried through the air that was now wavering at the doorway an instant before Bryana appeared, clothes scorched and hair matted. She knelt before him as he turned to look upon her, his breath ragged. "I have the spell, but I don't...I can't..."

She looked around the room, piecing together what likely happened before dismissing it and focusing upon him. "Let's get to it then before you finish dying." She put her hand over his as it still loosely clenched the crystal while his other closed around Elan's. "Open your mind."

He did and her steadfast, caring presence was there, looking through his already familiar mind rather than try to sort through a stranger's using a device that she wasn't nearly as familiar with as he. He could take her to the knots and layers and she could see how they fit and how to undo them. She tuned out his weakness and anything that would distract her from the task at hand. She saw the chemical bonds break apart as the magic that bound them was itself undone. She could see his body grow stronger as the poison began to die, the magic from the talisman Deres had created tearing at it too.

Elan squeezed his hand, her expression bright as the sun at the knowledge that he who owned her was well and growing stronger.

He looked at Bryana and her disheveled state. "Are you all right?"

"Things got warm, but I am well enough." She kissed him, relishing the feel of his lips because that was life, too. Whatever would you do without me?" She rose and reached down to help him to his unsteady feet.

"May I never have to know." He gripped her hands tightly, still feeling like he'd been awake for two days straight. He hoped that would pass in short order because there was no time for that. Bryana glanced over her shoulder. "Who is this and what's to be done with her?"

Lystra had struggled with the bindings, her hands now a bright red. The anger in her eyes turned to fear as the mages approached her and she tried to mold herself to the corner in a futile effort to avoid them. "Don't touch me. Don't you dare touch me."

"She's the only one that can help us."

"I will never help you," she hissed, uncaring for anything other than her own rage at the horrors inflicted upon her people.

He dropped to one knee and looked upon her sympathetically. There were really no words to offer to give her solace, but his tone was as soothing as he could make it. "You will once you remember."

She shook her head violently to try to get away from his fingers as his first two fingers drew the runes on her skin to open her to him. "Remember what? The pillaging? The slaughter of innocents as they have begged for mercy? Remember your people..."

Her voice died and her pupils widened as Lystra remembered.

She remembered the parents who loved her and the raucous discussions at the dinner table with them and her brother with topics that ranged from gossip to politics, knowing that on the loftier topics she couldn't leave the table until her parents felt that they'd exhausted every avenue of discussion. Even at a young age Lystra knew her parents were trying to teach them how to think and reason, but it was always fun.

She remembered sports with her friends under the perpetually gray skies of Adar, city forged where nothing human was meant to live by a people who embraced both technology and magic and were driven to those wastes by a world that feared and misunderstood the power of both.

She remembered embracing the technological aspects of the world around her. Machines, whether enhanced by magic or not, always intrigued her. Put these pieces together this way or that and you could extract the energy of the sun. Put pieces together another way, and you could create energy that could keep a city free of the lethal air and weather of the wastes.

Lystra remembered wanting to explore the world outside home, as some, hoping to learn about how the outlanders did things and perhaps lend some help where she could, whether a town with a well or just a family putting their home right after a disaster. She wanted to explore and work simply for the experience, and perhaps to bring some knowledge of value home.

She remembered running afoul of the authorities in Draleth, still not really knowing why. Perhaps just being unfamiliar was cause enough. She remembered them going through her belongings and finding the well hidden items from home that outlanders were never meant to find. While they had no hope of understanding them, the lesser officials knew enough to send them up the chain of command where they caught the attention of Mareth. Lystra would tell them nothing, even after enthusiastic interrogation.

Mareth, however, knew a mystery-loving mage with skill.

It didn't take long to knew what she knew. Even if Drax couldn't fathom most of it, it was enough to suggest to Mareth that she might be able to understand the Draleth's greatest secret: a ruin from the old world. And when they finally knew what it was about and what they might be able to do with it, Mareth's tools finally matched his ambition. The king of the smallest of the kingdoms could take the world and create a legacy for himself that would last millennia.

If only their captive had the skill and could be convinced to cooperate.

The latter had to come first, or course. Humans are simply the sum of their experience. Change one's experiences and one fundamentally changes the being. Hide a memory here and suggest pieces of a new one there, and a magic-addled mind that abhors gaps will fill in details to create a new life. It was Drax's delicate, yet personally entertaining solution to the problem that was least likely to damage the knowledge she possessed and still allow her to think, innovate, and problem-solve when no one else could do what they needed her to. Time and skill was all it took to turn a technomage from beyond the known world to a devoted daughter using her unique skills in a last-ditch effort to save her people from a marauding horde bent on their destruction. Years lost. Life lost. Now the truth of Lystra of Adar clashed with the lie of Lystra, daughter of Mareth and she began to sob, body wracking as her sadness came out in heaves.