Of Gaea (39 page)

When Ari reached her side, she saw what made her
nervous.
The
body was flaking into pieces like a burnt log would. The area
around the arrow was completely black. Ari yanked it out and put it
back in the quiver.

Ari walked a
few paces away, for Nasya’s sake, and then huddled in
conference.

“How did you know it was Tainted?”
Sasha asked, “And can you tell if
there are anymore?”

Ari thought about his question. Thought about what had
caught her attention and made her fire. Her actions had been
automatic but something had to have triggered them.

“It didn’t belong.”
She said slowly as she dissected the memory.
“Everything that is part of Gaea or Faithful to her is connected to
a single source, but it wasn’t. It was… void, for lack of a better
term.”

Nasya dipped
her head in agreement.

“You knew he was up there?” Sasha hissed at
Nasya.

An equivalent to a shrug passed over her. She apparently
thought Ari could handle it. Or Sasha would see it
eventually.

“We’re about a hundred yards away from the edge of the
trees.
It’s
only logically they have sentries.” Ari stated in a hushed calm she
didn’t really feel. “I don’t sense anything else nearby so we can
assume they’re spread thin.”

“I’m not sure
if that’s a good thing or not.”

“Let’s just go take a look. We’ll have to make a game plan
from there.”

“Stay close.
And the minute I tell you to get back, you do
it.”

“Alright, Mr.
Bossy.”

They crept slowly to the edge of the trees.
Sasha took the
front and Nasya stayed next to her. As they got close enough to
see, Ari felt something that had her reach out to grab Sasha’s arm
and stop him.

He looked at her with his head tilted in question but he
didn’t say anything. Ari sidled up next to him and looked around
for what had disturbed her. When she found it she
pointed.

On the ground just outside the trees was blocky, ugly
script. It was burned into the soil. And followed the tree line and
disappeared in both directions.

Sasha nodded
that he saw it.

Ari pondered what would happen if she crossed into
it.
It was
at that moment she realized she still didn’t hear anything. Being
this close to the clearing, she should have heard sounds of
fighting.

She looked at
Sasha and cupped her ears.

He shook his
head and pointed back to the script.

It’s a
containment.

Nasya’s sudden voice in her head nearly jolted her into the
clearing.
Ari looked at her and tapped her chest
exaggeratedly.

Nasya rolled a single shoulder nonchalantly.
She brushed up
against Ari.
Sasha has no gift to hear. But you can. It’s not just her
you can hear if you choose. But you know this already. The writing
is holding everything that happens inside the clearing in the
clearing, for now. If it’s broken by a Pure, everything will revert
to the object’s closest state of peace. If the Tainted break it
whatever happens in the clearing becomes reality.

And if I break it?
Ari wondered but wasn’t sure if she wanted the
answer.

Either Nasya
didn’t hear the thought, or she decided not to answer.

Sasha tapped
her arm then pointed when she looked at him.

The meadow slightly inclined towards the center.
It wasn’t steep
enough to even call a hill. A single stair was higher than the
incline. They had come here often enough that she already knew
that. It wasn’t what Sasha was pointing at. What was at the crest
of the incline was what he wanted her to see.

Besides the variety of silently battling warriors, and men
dressed in suits, women dressed in club wear, and the outfits
varied as widely as their owners; a pillar that hadn’t been there
before overlooked it all.
Chained to the pillar, his arms stretched above
his head, was Leonidas.

He looked ill was her first thought. He was paler than she
remembered and the blood that dripped down his temple was new. His
eyes were closed, and the space between breaths was long and
labored as if the next one may not come. He didn’t struggle against
the bonds that held him, but rather slumped letting them bear all
his weight. His wrists bled where the chain contacted with
skin.

Ari’s heart skipped a beat and she thought for a second
everything went black before clearing up again.
“Leonidas.”

It had been spoken in a hushed voice.
So hushed that Sasha hadn’t
moved, so she knew he hadn’t heard her slip.

Leonidas’s eyes opened and though his head didn’t move, she
watched him scan the area then lock eyes with her.
His eyes were dead.
He had no hope left.

He glanced down at his feet then directly across from
him.
Then he
looked back at her. When he did it again she followed his
eyes.

At his feet something else was burned into the
ground.
From
outside the ring she couldn’t tell what it was, but she nodded to
him letting him know she saw it. Across from him was a boulder but
it wasn’t the boulder that caught her eye. Rather it was the fact
that whatever protected the meadow went around the boulder on the
inside of the meadow rather than dipping into the trees.

“I will get you out.”
Ari murmured. Then stepped back and tapped Sasha’s
arm. She made the follow her gesture and silently jogged back the
way they had come.

When they could no longer see the clearing through the
trees Ari stopped and crouched. Sasha mimicked her and Nasya stood
close enough for her to lean against Ari.

“Do you know what they were doing to him?
There’s something
wrong with him.” Ari asked mutedly.

Sasha looked away a moment and sighed.
She felt his tension and
anxiety in that one action.

“It looked like they’re…well… like your mother.
Like
Damia.”

She shook her head in confusion. “Like my
mother?”

He nodded slowly. “They’re poisoning him. So they can use
him, the way they use your mother. Ari, do you really think you’re
the only Goddess? Who do you think the Tainted and Pure follow? Why
do you think they’re not here yet?”

Anxiety and fear gripped their cold, stony fingers around
her throat. Ari couldn’t speak. She could barely
breathe.

Her mother’s letter came to mind.
She had spoken of having fewer and
fewer lucid moments. Ari remember her in the institution, the only
time she had gotten to see her; Lyris hadn’t been lucid, but still
a part of her had remained. Though Ari imagined it was only a
fraction of the woman she had been before.

“Then we have no time to waste.
I have an idea. Follow me. Be the
forest.” Ari turned and moved in the direction that Leonidas had
pointed her to. There was a reason he wanted her to see it, and she
was going to find out why.

Every so many yards Ari stopped and had to breathe
slowly.
Anxiety filled her, but she didn’t think it was just the
anxiety over Leonidas’s fate that stole her breath. She felt like
she was in Erelah’s shop again. She felt it pulling at her,
draining her.

Ari didn’t see or hear the men that ran towards the
clearing, but Sasha did.
He grabbed her arm, and before she could protest,
she was face down in the dirt with him right beside her and Nasya
in front of them.

When the forest was silent again Sasha turned and looked at
her.
“You
don’t look any better than Leonidas. And there’s something wrong
with your senses. This isn’t good. We should turn back.”

Ari shook her head. “I’m,” the lie died on her lips. She
couldn’t lie to him. “I’ll be fine. I want to get this over with.”
Ari stood slowly and waited for her swaying head to readjust before
returning to their objective.

The longer they tarried near the protective barrier the
more Ari felt disconnected.
Like she was short circuiting or something. The
barrier had to go, before anything could be done. Before something
irreversible happened.

The boulder was just a stone.
A stone, that she didn’t remember
ever being there. When Ari placed her hands on it she knew it
hadn’t. Leonidas may not be able to be the elements literally, but
he could manipulate them to his will when he chose.

She slid down
its face and studied the script that came up to it then around the
front of it.

“What are you thinking?”
Sasha put his back to the rock and watched
the trees carefully.

“I’m thinking it looks a lot like Gaea’s script.”
Ari murmured as the
patterns swirled in and out of focus on her. It was the swirl that
brought on the thought and the reactive thought.

“So?” Sasha hissed.

She stepped back far enough that she could write in the
dirt.
Ari
tapped Sasha to move when she reached where he stood and he did
without comment.

“Write faster.”
He muttered.

Ari would have loved to comply but she couldn’t. When she
reached the Demon’s Tongue the ground flared angrily as she dragged
the cane over the existing script. She had to alter three words to
finish her command but the cane dragged through it like she was
trying to write in dried cement.

Ari felt it fight her as she changed the lettering.
The dark sickness
that she recognized as Tainted beat at her mercilessly. Nausea and
dizziness swamped her senses.

Ari blocked it out.
She forced it not to matter. She could hear Sasha
curse and metal on metal sounds, but they were distant and out of
focus. Nothing mattered but her three alterations. She dropped to
her knees as she neared completion. She would finish. Tainted be
damned.

Ari collapsed on the finished stroke.
Her eyes were out of focus;
shadows and blurred colors moved in front of her. She wasn’t sure
if they would clear, but she could hear. One ear pointed to the sky
and the other pressed against the soil.

She listened to the heart beat of the earth. Her heart
timed with it and she closed her eyes. Her heart wasn’t the only
heart that matched her rhythm. Sasha’s did. Nasya’s did. Hundreds
of others nearby all beat to Gaea’s rhythm. Thousands across the
mountain range. Hundreds of thousand across the earth.

It wasn’t the only thing she could hear.
Ari heard the
prayers of the weak. The pleas of the sick. The hopes for the
future.

All asked for through Gaea’s grace and blessing.
Through her. The
world needed her. Ari was Gaea. She was her, and then the
realization of everything she had been looking for came into brutal
clarity. She came back to herself with a jolt.

Sasha crouched
near her, as human Nasya shook her gently.

“I’m alright.”
Ari stood slowly, surprised that her words were
more than a little under par. She was more than alright. She felt
fully charged. “What happened?”

“The circle broke. It was like watching glass shatter.”
Sasha muttered. “You collapsed; we were attacked, I defeated
them.”

Nasya cut him
a look.

“With Nasya’s help.” He amended quickly.

“Well then, let’s get in there.”
Ari bent and retrieved the
cane.

“You’re insane.
A group of Spartans just moved in. We’re not
needed.”

“Leonidas needs us. Let’s go.” Ari stuffed the cane in her
quiver and pulled the bow off her shoulder. “Are you leading or
following.”

Sasha sighed,
“I’ve got your back.”

The clearing was chaos. If Ari hadn’t been so in tune with
the earth she wouldn’t have been able to tell the sides apart. She
didn’t know how they did either.

Ari fired all arrows but one in the course of three
feet.
They
were at a standstill and losing ground rather than gaining
it.

“Nasya, this isn’t working.”
Sasha shouted to her.

She nodded
apparently understanding and transformed back to her original
self.

Sasha dumped Ari onto Nasya’s back without preamble.
“Go!” He slapped
her flank and she reared and took off.

“Sasha!”

He gave Ari a
brief salute then he was swallowed in the mass.

You will see him again.
Nasya informed.
He’s too stubborn to
die
.

Ari had never ridden on horseback and she doubted the
frantic weaving and jumping Nasya did was actually how it
felt.
She
clung like a bur to her mane of hair, and hoped she didn’t fall off
and get trampled. Death by trampling was not her ideal way to
go.

Nasya ignored her discomfort.
She jumped, dodged, twisted, and even
kicked out at foolish mortals that thought they could stand in her
way. She was something that hadn’t been seen in millennia, short of
a catastrophic astronomical event, Ari didn’t think anything could
stand in Nasya’s way.