The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (41 page)

Cray scowls and eyes Hawke, seemingly having a conversation without words.

Hawke nods and wheels around the back of a mechanical buggy and to Tor’s side of the road. Cray hunches over and follows him.

Pard’s eyes dance from right to left as the action unfolds.
 

Alexa and Eeva, attention now back on Pard, they pass by the alley where Tor is hiding and ready to attack.

“Look out!” a big bellied constable says, pointing toward a silo on Deet’s and Miles’s side of the road.

Pard’s motorized carriage chugs and rolls forward at full speed.

Deet dives out of the driver’s side door, and he does a somersault as the vehicle heads straight for Alexa’s and the others’ buggies.

In the front, sticking out of the fuel tank, a flame burning wadded cloth.

Kaboom
—

The carriage explodes into a ball of shrapnel and fire, crashing into the other buggies and setting them ablaze.

All the constables and Dregs hug the snow and wiggle on their stomachs, covering the backs of their heads for protection and woozy from the blast.

Alexa and Eeva both hit the ground hard and glance back at the carriages succumbing to a raging inferno.

Alexa clinches her teeth and springs off the ground, she flings open her duster coat and draws a pistol.

The men by the carriages regain their senses and get to their feet.

Deet and Miles fire their weapons, raining a hail of bullets toward the men and Alexa.

Eeva unslings her pack and tosses Alexa a silver canister as the bullets pelt the surrounding snow.

“You dare attack the great tena and his esen’er!” Tor says, in full on menacing tikba form, only a few feet away from Eeva, his glistening battle-axe raised above his head, and her not ready for his attack.

Eeva’s eyes widen in panic, and she tries to get her whip around.
 

Tor swings with might, and Eeva dives to the right to avoid the deadly blow.

The axe crashes through the snow and strikes cobblestone with a deafening ping and crack.
 

With one revolution, Eeva rolls away from Tor; then with grace, she pops back up to her feet only to meet Tor’s backhand connecting and breaking her jaw with a loud crack. Blood sprays out of Eeva’s mouth, and her whip flies out of her hand as she crumples to the ground, unconscious.

“No, Eeva!” Alexa says, reaching her hand out toward her partner.

Tor looks back at Pard and gives him a smirk, then he eyes Alexa and scowls and growls.

Alexa eyes Tor with hate and fury, forgetting Pard and wanting revenge.

Tor gives her the same look back, winks at her, and then turns and runs toward the billowing, thick, black smoke and fire and debris of the carriages and Alexa’s other men still taking cover from Miles raining bullets down on them.

Alexa eyes Eeva and moves toward her to protect her.

Deet sprints across the road, kneels in the center, and unleashes a flurry of bullets toward Alexa and Eeva.

Surprised, Alexa slips on the ice, and bullets pelt the snow all around her and Eeva. Panic washes over Alexa’s face. She scurries on her knees and whirls her body around and faces Pard.
 

Here it comes,
and Pard stands tall and squares his body to Alexa’s, ready for her to connect to him and cast the light.
 

Alexa’s orange light shoots out of her hands and lassos around his neck.

“You attack me and my partner?” Alexa says inside of Pard’s head. “When all we wanted from you is to give you a better life and make you safe and transform you into something better. Now watch your friends parish by your own hands.”

Pard ignores her, playing up the guise the best he can. “Please, please, don’t hurt them.”

“I will not only hurt them, I will steal their breath and shatter their bodies.
Blizzard-Drazzilb
!”

A surge of energy flows through Pard’s body and his arms and hands rise above his head. His arms thrust toward Tor and Deet and the other men.
 

Deet’s eyes widen, and he sprints out of the road. He bulls through a wooden door of a building, breaking the hinges, and he tumbles inside. The door slams shut, and he disappears.

“Blizzard-Drazzilb!” Pard says, and a whitish-crystalline orb with a faint hint of blue bursts out of his hands, lingers for a second, then explodes into a puff of dark-blue snow over top of him which descends to the ground. Pard collapses to his knees and his eyes watch on as the blue snow touches the white. The white transitions to dark-blue and appears as if wet black ink soaking into paper, then the blue webs away from the blots like thin vines. They trace through the snow and street towards Tor and the others.

Alexa races over to Eeva and pulls her out of the road as the vines barely snake by her. Halfway between Pard and the flaming carriages, whirlwinds of snow the size of a man’s body rise from the dark vines and swirl in the air, hovering like mini blizzards, then they congeal and shoot toward Tor and the Dregs and constables like giant snowballs.

Pard waves his arms. “Tor!”

Tor spins around and faces the oncoming onslaught of snow. He gives the doom barreling towards him a mocking grin, opens his arms wide, holds his head high, and lets out a thunderous roar.

The other men’s eyes widen with fear, either between Tor roaring with battle-axe in hand or the snowballs spitting dark-blue electricity, all unsure of what to make of what is coming at them.

Alexa stares on, eager to see the result of her handiwork.

Tor laughs in deep bellowing bursts which shake Pard in his bones.
 

The first snowball strikes Tor in the chest, then another and another. The snow melts, and strings of blue electricity arc around his body and enter his skin. He puffs out his chest, and his eyes transition into a solid blue.

Alexa leans forward, her mouth turns up into a devious grin. “For Eeva.”

Tor’s head lowers. He eyes Alexa. The left corner of his mouth rises. He smirks.

Alexa’s grin transitions into a frown. “
Impossible
.”

Tor spins away from her, raises his ax, and charges the Dregs and constables.
 

More of Alexa’s snowballs shoot past Tor and head toward Alexa’s own men. One hits a carriage on fire and splatters on the bumper. The impact, half-snow and half-light, melts and webs over the wood and black iron frame, freezing the carriage into an ice block and extinguishing the flames.

Tor continues forward, unleashing another barbaric howl.

The men flinch and cower at the sight. They back away from their cover, slipping and sliding.

A snowball hits the potbellied constable in his chest, another snowball hits another constable in the leg, and another ball hits a Dreg in his cheek.

Their faces shift blue and then pure white. They make a final wheezing gasp as their lungs empty and collapse and freeze.
 

White lines web around the men’s bodies as if frost spreading over the glass of a window. They freeze in place, translucent, solid ice.
 

Tor reaches the potbellied man and swings his axe at the man’s frozen body. The glistening steel kisses icy flesh, and the potbellied man’s body explodes into a million crystalline pieces of twinkling dust. Tor tethers his axe and lifts the frozen carriage, hoisting it over his head for all to see.

A Dreg, squat and bloody and frantic, aims his pistol and fires over and over, hitting Tor multiple times in his chest, but the bullets bounce of the tikba’s seeros-hardened skin. He faces Alexa and hurls the carriage toward her. The buggy slams on the ground and explodes into a million crystalline pieces and the whirl of dusty ice covers Alexa’s body.

Another snowball plows into the side of another Dreg’s head, knocks him over, and his body freezes.

“No, no, no!” Alexa says, blinking from the ice lodged in her lashes and gripping her pistol in one hand and Eeva’s silver canister in the other. She raises her pistol toward’s Pard’s head, grimace on her face. “I should have done this days—no—weeks ago.”

Pard’s eyes widen, and he shuffles backward.
 

Bang
—

Pard flinches then drops to the ground flat on his stomach.

“No!” Alexa’s pistol flies out of her bloody hand.

Pard peeks up at Alexa on her knees covering a bullet hole through her palm.

Bang
—

Bang
—

More of Deet’s bullets pelt the snow around Alexa. She grimaces and peeks back at all of her men, dead or frozen or worthless or fleeing as Tor destroys them with his battle-axe and fist. She scrambles on the ice back to Eeva and clutches her tight.

Pard gets to his feet, draws his pistol, and races past a broken Alexa and Eeva and toward Tor to help him.

The dark vines of snow created by Pard’s light seep back into the ground and the snow transitions back to white.

Tor growls and raises his arms above his head as the last of Alexa’s snowballs hits him to no affect. All their foes vanquished or fleeing, his body vibrates and shrinks back into human form.

Pard smiles as he reaches him. “We did it!”

“Glory, young seeros, glory is ours! But we still have business to attend. Where are your two women foes? We must slay them on this battlefield so they will hunt you no more.”

Pard glances back to where he last saw Alexa and Eeva and they are nowhere to be seen. “They must have fled.”

“Cowards!” Tor growls. “What of Cray and Hawke?”

Pard scans the buildings. “I forgot about them in the action—maybe Alexa’s ice blizzard?”

“Cray is right next to you,” Cray says, rising from his cover, buried in the snow, the back of his duster coat white which masked him from view. “And Hawke has you in his sights from a vantage point, tena.”

Pard extends his hand. “Please, Major Cray, we didn’t mean to attack you, but you kept coming after us.”

Cray rolls his eyes with his head. “I don’t take it personally, kid, who do you think I am? I’m not stupid. I can tell you’re just defending yourself from these bloody Iinian trollops and nitwits. I don’t care about them or you.” He points at Tor’s chest. “
I came for him
. Now if you please, move out of the way. It’s time for payday, and the tena and I have business to attend.”

Tor rises tall and snarls. He raises his axe.

“That a boy,” Cray says with a gleam in his eye, smelling the sport and kill within his grasp, “let’s get it on.” He grins ear to ear and tosses his rifle to the ground. Cray unsheathes the golden daggers fixed to his chest and grips the handles tight. “Let’s do this right.”

Pard jumps between Cray and Tor and frantically waves his arms. “Stop!”

Cray half-stands from his fighting stance. “Kid, move, or you’ll get hurt.”

“We are esen’er,” Pard says, pressing his palm on Tor’s chest. Aqua-blue light arcs out of Pard’s fingers and enters Tor’s skin.

Cray stands. “
Shit
. You’re a seeros, kid? And you somehow got the tena’s golden spikes?”

“Yes. And we are now esen’er.”

Cray shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

“That is what I said,” Tor says. “But the gods’ joke once again proves their wisdom.”

Cray nods. “Impressive, kid, I got to hand it too you, didn’t see that coming.” Cray jams his golden blades back into their holsters, and he raises his finger high in the air and yells, “Stand down, Hawke.”

Hawke pops out of his sniper perch from the second-story window and opens his arms. “What are you doing! He’s right in front of you.”

“Kid and the tena are esen’er—he got the spikes.”

“
What
?”

“You heard me, come on, get down here.”

Hawk leaps out of the window and lands in a powdery explosion of snow. He slings his rifle and sneers at Pard and Tor as he strolls forward.

Pard taps Tor on his chest again with the palm of his hand and more blue energy arcs out of his fingers and enters Tor’s skin. “It’s all good, we’re good, you’re safe.”

Tor rests his massive hand on Pard’s shoulder. “Courage, my esen’er, I chose wisely.”

“You really got the spikes, kid?” Hawke says to Pard, not believing him.

“You told me what I needed to do, Hawke, and I thank you for that, we would’ve been dead if you didn’t tell us such an elaborate story.”

Cray snorts. “See! I told you you should keep that big mouth of yours shut. Now it cost us the tena and four months.”

Hawke turns away from Pard and Tor and follows Cray moving toward the horses huddled in a far off field. Hawke opens his arms. “Come on now, how was I supposed to know the kid could take out the tena? That was just dumb luck.”

Cray half turns around and points at him. “Don’t you tell me about dumb luck, oh no, not this time, not again. I told you we should’ve gone after the ramfinns or the golocks.”

“Hey guys!” Miles says, jogging and sliding on the ice toward Pard.

Pard opens his arms and walks toward him with victory written all over his face. “We did it.”

Miles wraps his arm around Pard’s shoulder and pulls him in for a tight embrace. “Professor, all that studying paid off, I told you you were a badass.” Miles cranes his head to the side and his eyes narrow as something shiny catches his eye. He lets go of Pard and steps away.

Deet steps out of the building and onto the road. “Good job, kid.”

Overwhelmed with relief and joy that all his friends, now his family, made it out alive, Pard smiles ear to ear at Deet and Tor and Miles.

“Check out what I got!” Miles raises Eeva’s silver whip. “Lord Star has a new toy to learn how to use.”

“Nice find, Lord Star!” Pard says. He turns and faces Tor.

Tor grins with a proud smile. “Glory is ours, esen’er.”

“And we rule the day, brother.”

They walk tall through the center of the road, shoulder to shoulder, four abreast with victory in their strides.
 

Pard leaves the carnage of destruction behind them, his Ruens of Fairstone in his past, and he gazes straight up at the noonday sun shining down on him.
 

They reach a small hill and stop at the crest.