Eve of Destruction (58 page)

Soon they were crouched behind chunks of rubble next to the Hall itself. It was different than her last visit: the circular stone wall still surrounded the entire building except for the front steps, but the attacking magi had blasted a hole in the southern side. The defenders had somehow managed to hold the breach, though, and she glanced down to see the corpses of two Enclave magi next to them. They probably hadn’t expected Chaval to have some magi of his own, and their arrogance had cost them their lives.

“Looks like the Enclave forces are focusing their attention on the front entrance,” Zach observed.

Shaedra nodded. “There are only four defenders behind this wall; I should be able to take them out, and then we can slip inside.”

Zach frowned. “You sure you can sense them all?”

“Unless one is a mage strong enough to hide his presence from me, and I doubt that very much. Now stay here and keep down—I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

“And what if they have cellium bullets?” he asked sharply, grabbing her arm. “What if they just gun you down?”

Shaedra eyed him sharply. “Then run.”

With that she was gone, lunging across piles of rubble towards the opening in the wall. When she approached within ten meters a pair of soldiers leaned around either corner of the hole and fired. The impact from the bullets nearly flattened her to the ground as they tore through her flesh, but she braced herself against a chunk of rubble and growled defiantly before continuing forward.

She reached the wall before they could fire again and grabbed onto the first man’s gun.

With a guttural roar she wrenched it from his grip and then smashed him hard enough with the rifle butt to crush his skull. His partner fired a last desperate shot that struck her in the shoulder, but it barely even slowed her down. She lunged towards him and used the rifle like a club again, first smacking his weapon aside and then pounding him into the ground like a stake.

Only two defenders remained, and one was too terrified to move. He had dropped his gun and fallen to his knees, his pants already soaked through at the crotch. The last man, however, was far more disciplined, and Fane energy danced at his fingertips as he wove a spell. The smoky air hanging over the battlefield took on a green twinge and abruptly puffed towards her.

On instinct she raised her hands protectively in front of her but it was so much wasted effort; he’d transformed the air to an acidic vapor, and it was already eating away at her jacket and skin.

Normally the spell would be little more than a nuisance for a Vakari, a slight extension of the man’s life as it slowed her down. But as she squinted through the stinging mist, she caught a glimpse of the mage leaping backwards and drawing a revolver. No mage would resort to a firearm unless he had a damn good reason, and she knew exactly what that reason was.

Shaedra rushed forward, but he was already raising the weapon. She was four steps away, then three, and then the hammer was cocking back—

The mage lurched over as a bullet tore through his chest. Shaedra continued her pounce anyway, flattening him to the ground and clutching him about the throat. Before his life ebbed away completely, she sucked the last few strands out of him, draining his body into a shriveled husk and regenerating her most recent wounds.

She dropped the empty corpse and turned towards her savior. Zach was crouched by the wall, his gun now pointed at the urine-soaked soldier. Both men gaped at her in horror, and she couldn’t really blame them. By now her eyes had surely gone pure white, and fresh blood still dripped from her face. She wondered distantly if Zach was considering picking up the mage’s cellium-filled pistol and finishing her off himself.

“Next time you better listen,” Shaedra admonished. “There will be a lot more of them inside.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied dryly.

“I don’t matter, Zach, but you do,” she told him firmly, glancing to the acidic cloud still hanging in the air and quickly dispersing it with her own spell. “No one would shed a tear if I died here.”

“Maybe not, but I can’t reach Eve without you,” he reminded her stiffly. “So yeah, you do matter. Now shut up and let’s get inside.”

She watched as he knelt down and grabbed the pistol filled with cellium bullets. He was calm and collected, a professional despite his age.

Yes, she did understand why Eve loved him. And now more than ever, she was determined to keep him alive.

Shaedra brought herself to her feet. “Then follow me.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Simon Chaval was insane.

Outside the Hall of Innovation, Cadotheia, the “City of the Future,” was being reduced to rubble. The Steamworks factories burned, and all the grand inventions of the last decade would soon be little more than ash. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of his own loyal followers were dying, and Chaval didn’t care about them in the slightest. Perhaps he never had.

Bolts of electricity arced outwards from Chaval’s hand and scorched the tile floor in his arboretum. Eve dropped to a crouch and wove a barrier to shield herself from the blast, but she didn’t think Chaval had any intention of harming her. Yet

He lowered his hands, and the thunderstorm vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He stood stiffly inside his shimmering sphere of energy, his laughter still echoing off the glass dome and iron walls.

Eve slowly stood and forced herself to relax. A minute ago, she’d felt more confident, more in control, than she ever had in her life. She’d stood face-to-face with the most dangerous man in the country and driven him into a blind rage.

But this had completely blind-sided her. In hindsight, she probably should have known better. Chaval had been a krata once, just like all of the Valmeri Seven. He had never taken the Oath Rituals, which meant that no sanctioned mage should have taught him anything—but then, he wasn’t the type of man who ever played by the rules. He’d been a rebel then, and he was still a rebel now.

The problem, however, wasn’t the magic in and of itself. Many wealthy people who hadn’t gone to the university still had the resources—and often the time—to dabble with weaving. But Chaval’s power was not that of a first or second year apprentice, and it wasn’t the rag-tag magic of a university exile that had picked up a few tricks over the years. This was the masterful manipulation of a full-blown magister.

And Avenshal or not, she couldn’t defeat someone with that kind of power—not without sundering the Fane. He knew that; he was counting on it. But she refused to indulge him. She had come here to kill Chaval before he could harm anyone else she cared about…and before that pain, that loss, could drive her to Defile. If she couldn’t do that, then she would die. Perhaps that was simply for the best.

“I am here, Evelyn,” Chaval goaded, raising his hands to his side. “You said you came here to kill me. You said you wanted to bring justice to your mother’s killer. Well, now is your chance.”

“I won’t Defile,” she said flatly, swallowing to steel herself and calm her quivering muscles. “If that means you kill me, then so be it.”

He chuckled. “Your mother believed that once, too. I can still remember her face as she sat there in front of me, so proud, so righteous. She was taking a stand, and she’d spent days convincing herself it was the right decision.”

Chaval stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. “Pain eventually showed her the way. Now it will do the same to you.”

His hand flashed to the side, and a whip comprised of solid flame materialized out of thin air. It sizzled as he dragged it across the floor, and he let it twirl idly in his hand for a few seconds just to let her take a good, long look at it.

Chaval twitched, and the whip lashed out towards her. Eve held her ground, and the energy barrier she’d woven about herself flickered as it absorbed the blow. The whip cracked again as he dragged it back towards him, and he smiled.

“The subtle but limited defenses of a first-year student,” he sneered. “Certainly you can do better than that. Have you ever been burned, I wonder? Do you understand what it feels like to endure a pain so suffocating you can’t think of anything else? Even the Exarch herself would have trouble removing the scar I could draw across your skin. Would your man still want you after that, I wonder?”

He struck again without waiting for a response. Eve bolstered her defenses as best she could, but this time the flaming whip encircled her like a constrictor snake and assaulted the entire barrier at once. The shield dissolved with a hiss, and the whip lashed again and wrapped around her left hand before he finally retracted it.

Eve screamed and fell to her knees. She tried to weave a healing spell into the wound, but her mind refused to cooperate. Her flesh bubbled and blistered, and it felt like her entire body was trembling. Her face streaked with a flood of uncontrollable tears.

“You see what I mean,” he taunted. “Pain is such a bitter mistress. Now I wonder, will the Dark Messiah pass out before she draws upon her power? Perhaps Abalor enjoys submissive thralls.”

Eve tried to blink away the tears and stand. Through the watery haze she saw Chaval’s smug grin and all she could think about was tearing it from his face. Behind him, his Talami servant remained motionless, but her expression betrayed her horror. Had any of his inner circle even known he was a mage? Had Polard? Perhaps he’d been the one to teach Chaval his tricks in the first place…

A barrage of gunfire thundered from the bottom floor of the building, and the shrieks of dying soldiers carried all the way up through the door. Eve found herself hoping the Enclave had finally broken through. At least they would take Chaval down with her.

“The mages have broken through,” the Talami woman said as she leapt towards the door.

“Doubtful,” Chaval replied calmly. “It’s more likely that Gregori and the others have come to try and save her. Either way, it’s of no consequence.”

The woman blinked as she crouched to the side of the arboretum, pistol leveled at the door. “Sir, they—”

“They don’t matter,” Chaval interrupted, his eyes darting back to Eve. “But you, my dear, should probably get out of their way.”

He lifted a hand, and suddenly Eve was falling towards him. She tumbled as if she were sliding down a cliff, but a meter before she reached him she lurched to the side in a stomach-wrenching change of direction. She skittered towards the railing on the western side of the room and smacked into it.

She clutched at her head and felt a trickle of blood working its way down her face. The fall was far enough that she should have been dead, but he’d obviously slowed her momentum just enough to prevent any serious injury. She’d seen gravity manipulation before, but never with that degree of control.

Eve clenched her teeth and finally managed to focus enough to weave healing magic into her burned palm. It would undoubtedly scar, but the worst of the pain had already subsided. At least it would let her concentrate enough to mount a real offensive. Perhaps he would underestimate the power she could muster without having to Defile—perhaps it would even be enough to kill him.

Even if not, she had to do something. If the others were downstairs, then they were walking right into a trap. She doubted Gregori’s illusions would work on Chaval, and she wasn’t sure if even Shaedra could stand against him. And Zach…

She prayed to the Goddess he wasn’t here. Hopefully he’d gone to the train to meet Maltus. Hopefully he was somewhere safe, somewhere far from here where Chaval couldn’t hurt him.

Eve spun on a heel and unleashed a spell. She didn’t think about it; she simply acted on instinct, and a surge of violet energy streamed from her fingertips and smashed into Chaval’s protective sphere. She had to close her eyes against the brilliance of the coronal discharge, and she half-expected him to cry out in pain a second later.

Instead he stood there, smiling, as the energy dissipated harmlessly away.

“Abalor has graced you with his power, and yet still you deny yourself,” Chaval said. “I am just a man, and no match for the fury of the Avenshal. Surely you can do better.”