Dragon Aster Trilogy (32 page)

“I’m not a Custos anymore. Not since your mother was taken by Simera. Neither is Urio or Feryl,” Hain continued, as they walked the hallways of the Sanctus.

“Just how many of you kidnapped my mother?” Sybl asked.

Hain looked to the side of the corridor, then shook his head. “Ah, the good old days. Where you could steal and accomplish just about anything with some gold.”

“Who sent you to Earth to get her?”

“Vanir did, much to Tenu’s prophecy. I didn’t know she had been pulling his strings back then as Nyx. But instead of delivering Serena to him, he had an Awl try and cut us out of the deal. That’s when we stopped working as mercs and became Custos for Kira.”

“Which Awl?”

“The one who found you on the Suzerain Beach.”

“Delare,” Sybl said.

“You might remember him as the cat who had his hide stolen by Tenu, so she could conceal Damek. Xires,” Hain explained.

“And he became an Awl. I’m surprised he didn’t kill me.”

“Why would he? You didn’t drown him. Awls are very specific when it comes to vengeance.”

Sybl stopped in the hallway as she tried to absorb it all.

“Sentry can possess a human when they need to. Sometimes for a random miracle. Sometimes, a random tragedy. But ultimately we’re just spirits, too.”

“I’ve never seen one in their energy form on Earth.”

“Yes you have, you just don’t remember. Come, I’ll show you.”

Sybl followed Hain through the Sanctus, and into the tunnels dug into the cliff overlooking it. A long climb upward finally showed an exit to outside. She heaved and panted on emerging from the stairs, to find that they were now standing over the Sanctus. “You had…best hope this is…impressive.”

Hain only shook his head at his weaker stair-climbing counterpart, before searching the skies. Then he looked towards the impressive mountains that backed the Sanctus’ cliff in the distance.

Sybl looked with him, and saw a few streaks of white lightning. “Lightning? Seriously? So what’s the Aur storms then? A daily convention of Sentry?”

“No, the Aur storms are a result of Aragmoth’s clashing energies. Up there,” Hain said nodding in the direction of the mountain peaks, “are Sentry from Earth, likely looking for willing hosts. We can’t just take whoever we feel like on Aster. Somnus have Ancients or eminor to protect them from before birth.”

Sybl remembered back to the Casus Beli fields, when the Regals would raise their wings like antennae to catch a storm.

“Now you got it. And yeah, it does reign a lot of cats.”

She smiled as it felt like more of her memory had been healed.

Hain sat down with his knees raised, and she did the same. They watched the will of a god from another world dance on the summits of theirs’.

“Damek would be able to use my energy against Earth, wouldn’t he?”

“Likely. But you only remember Damek as Daath. Our Eminor selves are darker and easier to avoid. He has erased much of what he doesn’t want you to remember of him.”

“What can I do? You know Damek better than I do,” Sybl said.

“I know that he has always gotten what he wanted. He has always been perfectly unstoppable. Now with Solar back as well, I’m sure he will show up.”

“What happened after I died?”

“Which time? You forget you were supposed to be Kira’s daughter.”

“When the Last War ended,” Sybl clarified.

“Well, from what I know, Moon was able to hold onto your soul within him. He went back to the Sylvan City and confronted the High Feharin to help bring you back to life. But that didn’t go well with Solar, and she labelled Moon a murderer and tried to throw him out. When he didn’t budge, she sent her Phoenix after him, and then Hell rained on everything.

“Erebus died in the Sylvan City, and Damek set out to find your soul. Gei beat him to it. When you and Kira were killed by Vanir, Gei quickly caught your soul again, and later set it in Serena. Damek abandoned his Eminor, and was reborn with you.

“Your mother didn’t even know you existed, until Nafury found his Eminor during his Trial of Somn and saw you. I think that’s what killed Serena in grief; learning she had a daughter that she didn’t even know about, and then Simera never returning after he went to Earth to retrieve you.”

Sybl went quiet for a while. “What happened to Simera?”

“I honestly don’t know. But there are only two things that can happen to a dragon on Earth.”

“Which are?”

“Be destroyed by the Sentry, or be captured by the humans.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Simera was no pushover. Only so many Sentry would have attacked him before giving up. If I had to bet on it, I’d say he tripped over too many humans.”

Sybl took in a deep breath of air, as too many thoughts and emotions overtook her mind at once. “So what do I do?”

“I’d start by trying to figure out how to contain a small sun, and go from there.”

Sybl sighed at that.

“Not bad for a dumb pigeon,” a teenage phelan somnus laughed with two of his friends. Sybl stopped down the hall that led to Gwa’s workshop, trying to get a fix on what was going on.

Something was thrown to the ground with a crunch from within. Sybl looked into the room to find Gwa and Loki. They were cornered by three teenage phelan somnus of Helios’ Pack. On the floor before them looked to be a broken panel. When the leader of the group grabbed Gwa by the cuff of his shirt, she stepped in and grabbed the phelan by his other arm.

“Hey! Just what do you think you’re doin—?” the leader of the group shouted and spun around at her touch, striking her in the nose. He turned red in embarrassment on realizing it was the Caelestis.

“Ow! You creep!” She retaliated by punching him in the face, and it sent him scattering back and finally falling to his butt.

Loki jumped in then, and swung his fist at the first phelan somnus who tried to help the other, landing it across his jaw. The somnus retreated at that.

Sybl looked then at Gwa who looked frozen in shock. “You alright?”

“Nice right hook.”

“Clearly they never studied high school 101.” She started picking up the pieces to his broken panel.

“Just for the record, I consider you my hero,” Gwa said as he took the broken pieces from her hands.

“What are you both doing?” Sybl asked.

“Oh, nothing really. Just building a device to take over the world. Loki has a useful talent of turning my sketches into a reality.”

“You have interesting Tech,” Loki spoke on having calmed down, and looked at the old computer on the worktable.

Sybl looked at the screen of it too. “How do you have electricity—let alone a computer?”

“It just takes combining aeri and estus energy to make it. The trick is keeping it contained, as it does make for a nasty explosion,” Gwa explained. “The computer is a long story.”

Sybl looked to the wall to see that it wasn’t a bomb or the sorts that they were building, but what looked like metal wings. “What are those?”

Gwa went to them and picked them up. It was wing armor. He held it before him like an oversized shield, with his eyes peering over it as if braced for an incoming battle.

Loki was not impressed.

“Okay, so it’s more for my wings,” Gwa said, standing back up straight. “But we did get it to fold rather nicely. I’ve been trying to make it do that for months.” Gwa folded the armor like a giant accordion then to demonstrate.

Loki picked up a sheet of metal from the worktable and melted it with his fire in his hands to show off.

Sybl crossed her arms at the metal figure of what she could only guess was her. “I can see why that Pack was angry—you guys are dangerous.”

“Loki, what the hell? She’s skinnier than that.”

Loki looked at the statue, then at Sybl, then back at the statue. “It’s in perfect proportions.”

“Dumbass,” Gwa grumbled. “It’s not what you think it should look like, but what she does.”

Loki blinked, and then hastily made the statue a bit skinnier.

Sybl only shook her head in futility. “If you guys start building a bomb or anything, do give me the heads up so I can evacuate, okay?”

Loki melted the statue and formed a metal crown of it. Then he set it on her head with a smile. “As you wish, Princess.”

“Well, that won’t do for a birthday present.” Gwa went to a shelf and pulled out what looked like a stuffed toy. “You need something softer, or Kenshe will be bald before he loses his baby fluff. For your belated birthday present, I give you my somn.”

Sybl lifted an eyebrow at the stuffed white owl he handed her. “Seriously? Do I look like I’m four?”

“I’ve been trying to find his somn since I came down here. He’s rather good at hiding it,” Loki added.

Sybl stretched the wings of the stuffed owl, just in case. “I see that. Well, wouldn’t his somn be like a birdcat walking around here?”

“That’s the thing; their somns don’t look like what they change into,” Loki replied.

“What do they look like then?”

“It’s like a wispy, spirity thing.”

“Oh that tells me a lot,” Sybl replied.

Gwa tried to keep his giggles quiet as he listened to them debate over him. “Ah that’s right. The all-powerful, and incredibly beautiful Caelestis is not familiar with the griffin species. We came after the Last War.”

Sybl sat down on a high stool, resting one arm on his workbench. “Enlighten me.”

“I’m telling you, it’s right there in your hand,” Gwa insisted.

Sybl sighed. “Okay…”

Then the stuffed animal moved its wings, and startled her right off of the stool.

Loki caught her before she could collide with the ground, shaking with an equal fright while trying to console her.

“I’m so sorry!” Gwa panicked, and came running to her rescue. “I thought you would have sensed it in there.”

Sybl wanted to kill him at first, before giving into laughter when the spirit left the stuffed animal it had possessed. But it wasn’t an owl or even a bird, as the wispy creature flew before her like a ribbon of wind. She reached out to try and physically touch it, but her energy had no effect of making the spirit solid.

Gwa double checked to make sure she was unhurt, then watched as she tried to catch his somn in her hands.

“That is so weird,” Sybl said.

“It sucks,” Gwa said as he picked up his own somn and set it afloat over his worktable. “But I have achieved the impossible by frightening the Caelestis with a stuffed toy. I should have totally dropped some bets around for that one.”

“Oh spare me,” Sybl replied, straightening out her dress.

Gwa sat down across from her when she sat back in the stool she had been moments before, and studied the piece of himself with her. “Can it be fixed?”

“You’re not broken, Gwa,” Sybl insisted.

Loki tried to poke at his somn as if it were.

“As long as my somn is the size of a spirit snack, I’d like to think something is wrong with me. And that tickles, stop it.”

Loki brought his hands back to himself at that.

“Do all griffin somns look like this?” Sybl asked.

“Yes, but those from the Falls have bigger ones.”

“Why’s that?” Loki asked.

“I think it’s because they can recreate the radiation that exists on Earth. All chimeras are essentially from Earth, and the bird-like ones even more so. Theory there being we’re still dinosaurs in the chain of evolution, and that doesn’t change just because we’re on Aster. Well, that’s the argument, anyway.”

Loki looked around the workshop, until coming to a stop by his thoughts. “What is a dinosaur?”

Sybl caught Gwa’s hands, then shook her head to stop there.

“Sybl…” Loki whined on being robbed a story. “Fine. So what’s your story, Gwa? You just a random griffin to come across this place?”

“Avian, who goes by Exoir now, is my grandfather,” Gwa said, as he started to reassemble his broken panel with some spare parts, and those that weren’t shattered.

“Seriously?” Loki asked in disbelief. Then he looked at Sybl to further explain. “Exoir is the leader of the Falls.”

“My father, Mersael, is the one currently occupying the Atrum with the Fall’s forces. He is his only son as well. From what I know, Exoir wasn’t able to have children of his own, so he used science and Tech to create Mersael. Something like cloning.”

“Wow,” Sybl replied in disbelief.