Goddess of the Moon (Young Ancients: Tiera)

Young Ancients:
Tiera Book Three

Goddess

of the

Moon

P.S. Power

Orange Cat
Publishing

Tiera
looked up at the dragon, and just stared for a while. It was beautiful. The
head was a good two or three stories above her, and the large green eyes looked
almost like those of a cat. They had slits in them, instead of round pupils. The
scales weren't
all
huge, but many of them were the size of her hand or
better, all in an iridescent purple color. That part, the color, was a dead
giveaway as to who had made it, of course. Only one Builder in the whole world
was all that married to that particular shade.

Her
brother. Tor.

The
thing wasn't really looking at her, even as it moved toward her position, which
really, wasn't hard to find. She was standing out in the open, just looking at
the thing. There was jungle to the left of her, and she stood on a sandy beach,
with a crystal clear ocean to her other side. The creature, which she
understood not to be real at all, moved on her anyway. It didn't scrabble on
the white sand however, moving toward her smoothly, as if designed for
uncertain footing. The black claws looked sharp and like they'd lend toward
that end, at any rate.

Kolb,
her Weapons Master from school, pointed a copper tube at it, but naturally,
nothing happened. It was made out of shield material. That basically meant,
even though it was visible and solid, it really wasn't there at all. It also
didn't have a brain.

That
meant, she
realized after half a second, that she needed to look for the real threat,
which would be the mind behind the thing. It wasn't Tor, she knew. Or at least
hoped, since that would be bad right now. She didn't have time for a long drawn
out discussion, or half an hour to find him. Her brother was a Master Builder
and possibly one of the best Wizards in the whole world. That meant he could
hide his thoughts from her, if he tried, she didn't doubt. She could hide hers
from
him
, after all, and she really doubted he was less capable of that
than she was.

Pulling
herself up, a dragon closing with her and the muscular bald man next to her,
she let it all go, and simply focused, as if she had all the time in the world.
In that dark bit of clarity she reached out with her mind and felt the line
that ran from the mythical beast to the left, into the brush, about two hundred
feet. That was what she had to hit then.

Without
opening her eyes she pointed with a bit of white glassy looking stone that had
the rough shape of a pen. It was a weapon of her own making and a thing of true
magic, but it was a bit different than what everyone else had. It didn't have a
sigil on it at all, and it was activated by simply thinking what you wanted it
to do. Well, as long as it was one of the four things it
could
. It had a
nice explosive weapon on it however, which is what she chose to strafe the tree
line with. It made the world shake and roar, like lighting striking for nearly
twenty seconds.

Then
she opened her eyes.

The
line of mental connection to the dragon was gone, and in a way that she thought
might mean that the person controlling the things was dead. That was, if it
wasn't being faked, in order to catch them off guard. They were dealing with
people that might be clever enough to have figured out how to get that done,
after all.

She
no sooner thought the words when a person stepped out of the Jungle about half
a mile away, and fired something at them. A missile, she thought. It moved at
them rapidly enough, and both she and Sir Kolbrin waved at it with their
weapons, causing it to explode. Then, being the better fighter by far and
having so much more life experience than she did that it wasn't even worth
joking about, Kolb immediately picked out the others in the group of cloned
Ancients and started trying to kill them, before they could escape.

Tiera
did the same thing, but focused on the forest behind the two men and the woman
that suddenly decided that the jungle was a nice place to visit. She nearly
hated to do it, but she burnt the trees behind them with a line of fire. Not
really behind them now, she corrected, since they turned to face it.

The
goal wasn't particularly to take prisoners this time. They knew what this was,
which was a small group of clones that all looked like Gray or Cordes, that had
been trying to infiltrate Noram as a group. Probably to lay waste to a city
with that dragon and some of their other old tech devices.

It
was, she knew, disturbing.

At
least she thought so, on a deep level. It took a bit, but Kolb killed them all,
even at a distance. They were all fast, but the two women were faster than the
man by far. It didn't help at all. When they moved toward the water to flee,
they died. Blowing up into thousands of chunks and turning the air into a red
mist. That was hard to look at too.

Regina
had died like that, and seeing these people go that way... well, it hit her so
hard she nearly cried. It was only the fact that she lived in a pretty deep
trance state most of the time now that stopped that from happening. It still
wasn't perfect, but she was doing a lot better than she ever had before. Her
concentration was tighter and she could keep herself from thinking about
things, if she tried hard enough. For the most part.

Kolb
didn't move, so she held her position too.

"Wait.
Neither Gray, or Cordes, habitually works in groups of four. You may have taken
one already, but we can't tell that for certain, and I don't want to trigger
any traps. Let's give this some time, and see if anything moves in the brush."
The man watched it all closely, not concerned about the dragon in front of them
at all. It hadn't shut down, which could mean anything from it simply not doing
that, by design, to its owner being dead already.

That
last one was what she was hoping for, to tell the honest truth. It was horrid
of her to hope for death, normally, she knew, but right now there was just a
glassy emptiness in her head, and that let her think things like that without
judging herself too harshly. Her job right now, their job, was to hunt down all
the Ancients that were trying to kill them,
and
their clones, and stop
them. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen by inviting them all out for a
nice dinner, and hashing things out over the brandy.

No,
they had to kill them all. There were just so many of them, and they'd spread
out a lot. Probably to make killing them harder, which was inconsiderate of
them. If they would have just gathered together in one place and put out a nice
sign or something, she could have handled the whole situation already.

She
waited, standing in the open with her Fast Craft, which was a Timon built
model, shrunk to nearly its smallest size, with the doors opening up like
wings, so that they could jump in at any moment. Being exposed like they were
wasn't on accident, since Kolb
wanted
the enemy to try shooting them. He
had good intelligence that said they didn't have anything that could go through
the new shields yet. That wasn't perfectly true though, she knew.

Their
faces were too familiar, and
that
went right through the shields, didn't
it? Gray literally looked like her own mother,
and
grandmother. Each one
of them she killed, or saw die, sent a pang through her middle, worried that
she'd just accidentally got the wrong one.

Cordes
was easier, but not that much.

At
school, in her morning combat classes, there had been a boy... the whole time
she'd been at school. Longer than she'd been there, in fact. Mitchell. He'd
turned out to be a Cordes clone with a copy of the first five hundred years of
the man's life in his head. Tiera and he hadn't been dating or anything, but
they'd worked together and she'd thought they were growing slightly closer over
time. Almost like friends.

It
was the same mind that was in her older brother too. The
exact
same one,
which meant that, if Cordes, the Mitchell version, was a bad guy, then the Tor
version probably was too. Not that there was a lot of doubt of that. She
blocked that errant thread out of her thoughts, and tried to concentrate on her
surroundings. It was a good thing that she did, because it gave her a chance to
fire at the very fast silver vehicle that moved from the forest, shooting
through the air without hesitation.

Her
weapon caused it to glow a bit, as it moved off. It was like a shield, except
it gave off a flash of blue as the thing flew away with a deep roar. It wasn't
as loud or powerful as the explosive weapons had been, being so far away after
even a few seconds, but it was enough to signal that, whoever it was that
piloted the craft, they'd sort of won. If living while all your fellows on the
battlefield died counted that way.

Even
better, the man in the craft, who didn't actually feel like anyone she knew,
managed to fire off a single pulse to the dragon before getting too far away
for that to work. If there was a limit to that kind of thing at all. Tiera kind
of thought there might not be. Tor had made the purple giant of a monster, and
also
the communications devices. Ones that would work from space even. There was no
reason he couldn't have added that kind of thing in. Really, he should have, if
he wasn't on their side still.

The
beast moved, shaking its head a little, the large glistening scales shifting
color ever so slightly in the bright sunlight. Then, it started to move the
powerful back legs, and went for them, rearing up just a little. It closed the
distance between them with decent speed too. Not faster than, say, a man in
good shape could run, but it was so large it was still impressive. Heavy too,
for all that it wasn't really there. Each single step made the whole world
shake under her feet.

Kolb
made a small sound that nearly seemed like a laugh.

"Back
to the craft." Then he started to move, which should have been what Tiera
did too.

Instead
she left her mind in a deep trance state, not feeling much of anything at all.
Not even awe, though that was a thing that was within what she could manage,
emotionally. The Dragon was certainly worthy of that kind of response, being so
pretty, but she took a deep breath, pointed her slim white weapon and thought
at the thing instead.

At
first, for about three steps, nothing happened at all. That was a thing that
she'd worried about. Not that the device she was using wasn't working, or
didn't function right, but that her brother, a man that many simply called
The
Builder, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, might have realized that making a
large weapon like that without an off switch would get around new devices like
the one she was using, pretty well. After all,
she'd
thought of it, and
Tiera was at best an amateur when it came to magic. Even her school work had
all focused on math, economics and fighting. Well, that and meditation.

Which
was why she didn't move, just using her mind to cause a stream of information
to organize toward the thing that came at her. It took another two steps before
the man behind her called out.

"We
need to not be in front of that thing when it gets here." There wasn't a
lot of tension in his voice, but then, he'd probably seen something like this before.
He was three thousand years old after all. A bit older than that, if she had it
right.

Really,
he probably thought that she was freezing up, standing there like that, just
pointing her little new, stylus looking, weapon at the thing, with nothing
visible happening. Right up until it suddenly blinked out of existence.

She
grinned, trance state or not.

"That's
the Tor I know and love." She said it without a hint of anger or anything,
which might have been a bad idea, even a week before. They could be observed
from space, or had been, until her other brother, Timon, had finally gotten
their Aunt Orange to start a full on program to take down the enemy satellites.
She'd actually refused for a while, which wasn't like her normally, being that
she was, biologically, a warrior by nature. She didn't want to lose the
resource, even if it was in enemy hands at the moment.

Tim
had to get his own network up first and prove to everyone that it worked before
she was willing, in fact. Their new system wasn't as good at things as the old
one was. Even her brother, who'd made the new one, assured them all of that.
They could get pictures of the planet, or of space, and the things had the
ability to move around, like tiny space craft, but that was it. The old network
had computers on each one that could do amazing calculations, and had twenty or
more different kinds of sensors each. It wasn't really the same thing at all.
It was, however, kind of neat anyway. Tiera had a little handheld in her hip
pocket that would, with only a bit of time and effort, let her look at anyplace
on the planet.

As
long as there were no clouds in the way.

Orange
hadn't been pleased at all with the new system, but had agreed that it was a
good sign that the original one could be replaced soon. Not that she trusted
Tim to do it. She was, by nature, very untrusting of good looking men. She
tended to think they were lying to her, or trying to trick her. Normally into
bed, which she didn't seem to mind that much, but it was a thing she had no
hold over, and couldn't fight.