Masters of Fate Read online

  Before anyone could stop her, she bent down to touch the shield.

  I braced for an explosion or Darkness tendril to lash out at us. Instead, Maris simply picked it up.

  “It’s light,” she commented, holding it in both hands.

  I didn’t let my guard down. “You’re insane.”

  “No, just really sick of the three of you getting to do everything cool.” She started to loop her arm through the strap at the back of the shield. “It fits—”

  She cut off with a yelp of surprise as a shimmering silver forcefield appeared around her.

  I jumped back from it. “Whoa…” The silver-hued bubble extended from the edges of the shield to make a protective barrier around her, moving as she moved.

  “This is amazing!” she exclaimed. “See, told you!”

  “You are so frickin’ lucky,” Kaiden muttered.

  “I think you’re envious.” Maris grinned.

  He only shook his head with exasperation in response.

  “There’s no telling what this thing does, Maris,” Toran cautioned.

  “I can sense it,” she replied. Her fingers traced along the jewels with a contemplative expression. “It wants me to have it.”

  I sighed. “If you say so.”

  I couldn’t explain how the shield came to be in that place, but I knew what she meant about the artifact feeling ‘right’ in her possession. I’d felt the same way when I first received my Valor artifact sword, and I felt like a part of me was missing whenever it wasn’t at my side. As bizarre as it was, maybe Maris was supposed to find this shield here.

  Or, it would slowly drive us all mad until we killed each other through some horrible curse. Despite us not instantly dying, I wasn’t ready to take ‘trap’ off the table until I learned more about the artifact.

  Either way, I didn’t want to linger. The shadows continued to shift in the dark edges of the room, almost like they knew we were talking about them. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but some of them seemed to be moving independently from the vines.

  “You have your thing now. Let’s keep going,” I suggested, returning my hand to the hilt of my sword.

  Kaiden, likewise, tightened the grip on his staff. “This chamber is even more unnerving than the last.”

  “Speak for yourselves!” Maris practically skipped forward, the glimmering silver forcefield still around her.

  I had to admit, a portable magic shield was a spectacular find.

  I feigned confidence as I followed her deeper into the cavern, sweeping my gaze around the walls and ceiling every few seconds. I was certain there was something following us, even though I hadn’t been able to get a clear look. Any kind of creature that had been locked in a dark cavern for stars-knew-how-long wasn’t something I wanted to meet—especially not while I felt like I was losing my mind.

  We continued forward at a steady pace. Halfway into the two-hundred-meter-long chamber, a breeze rustled my hair; I hadn’t sensed any air currents since we descended the ramp. I spun around to check for signs of movement behind me. Before I’d pivoted a quarter of the way, a solid form bashed into my left side, knocking me to the ground.

  Grunts of surprise sounded from my friends, and they collapsed next to me.

  My combat instinct took over, and drew my sword in one swift movement while leaping to my feet. Kaiden’s light orb still illuminated my surroundings, but there was nothing there.

  “What hit us?” Maris asked, raising protective shields around each of us.

  I felt a touch safer with the purple shell around me, though I was still on edge. “I don’t see anything.”

  Kaiden jumped to his feet, hefting his staff. “It’s like it came out of nowhere.”

  “I thought I saw something in the shadows, but I wasn’t sure,” Toran said.

  “Same.” I shifted my position so my friends were facing away from my back.

  “Okay, so it wasn’t just me.” Maris gulped.

  A dark mass passed across the corner of my vision. Without thinking, I sent a telekinetic disintegrating pulse from my focusing glove toward the movement. As if in slow motion, even without one of Maris’ time-bending haste spells active, the creature dodged the attack and then disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

  “What?” I tensed, looking around for it. “Where did it go?”

  “You saw it?” Kaiden asked.

  “Yeah, it was right—”

  I cut off when Maris yelped. Her shield clattered to the ground and she lurched sideways with a cry of agony, falling—three bleeding claw marks raked the left side of her abdomen. She gasped in pain.

  “Over here!” Toran ran to stand over her, his fists armored by their magical gauntlets, raised in defense.

  Kaiden and I pivoted so the three of us formed a protective triangle around Maris.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I’ll live,” she replied, pressing her right palm over the wound. Green healing light spread from her fingertips to the gashes, and the wounds began to close. “New rule: don’t drop your shield when something unexpectedly slams into it.”

  “Also, I thought these clothes were supposed to be slash-proof!” Kaiden exclaimed.

  “Yeah. They have been for everything else,” I said.

  “Shit, it was moving faster than I could see,” Kaiden murmured, a quaver in his voice. He picked up Maris’ shield where she’d dropped it and handed it to her.

  “Thanks.” She looped her arm through the shield’s back strap again, so it re-formed a forcefield around her.

  “The creature is still out there, and there might be more.” I scanned the shadows, looking for any sign of where it may have gone. I’d never seen anything move like it—lightning-quick attacks and then vanishing completely.

  “We need a haste augmentation,” Kaiden urged Maris.

  Her wounds had healed, leaving bright pink scrapes down her side, but she still looked pale. “I’ll try,” she replied weakly. When she raised her hand, I didn’t see the characteristic orange cast to my surroundings to indicate that the haste spell had activated. “I’m not…”

  “Finish healing, and hold onto that shield,” I told her. “We’ll handle this.” How, exactly, I had no idea. At the moment, I didn’t even know what we were fighting.

  My wonder didn’t last for long—a sleek, black creature materialized in front of me, swiping a three-clawed limb toward my head.

  I leaned backward just in time for the razor-sharp tips to miss my neck, simultaneously attempting to drive my sword into its belly. The creature arched its midsection to avoid my counterattack, then partially dissolved as it spiraled sideways toward Kaiden. He was ready with an electrical attack, sending a lightning bolt at the alien creature.

  It froze in place, allowing me to get a proper look at it for the first time. The creature had elements of the other beings we’d encountered that were products of the Darkness. Its body was similar to the shadowcats from Windau, though it had a more elongated head and fanged jaw like the first creatures we’d fought on the Valor world. Its four, powerful limbs ended in what looked like a dexterous cross between a paw and a talon, with three retractable claws on the front and a shorter one facing backward; pads on the palm would allow for silent movement when it walked on either two or four limbs. A tail extended from its hindquarters—not entirely organic in appearance, but rather transitioning from apparently solid flesh to shifting, black smoke. Perhaps the most distinctive feature, though, was its red eyes positioned at the front center of its face, which sparkled with the depth of staring into the cosmos, mesmerizing me.

  I’d seen those eyes before on the alien ship. And those limbs, the movements… it was exactly the kind of form I’d expect to occupy the modified city on the surface above us.

  “Elle, get—” Kaiden had barely spoken before the creature disappeared again.

  “Where—” The wind was knocked out of
me as I flew forward, my back on fire where a paw had thwacked me. Next to me, Kaiden was toppling toward the ground.

  As I fell, I glimpsed the creature lunging at Toran while he tried to protect Maris.

  I realized the attack on me and Kaiden had been a distraction all along. The creature was going after Maris, our healer—who was also the weakest member of our team—and Toran—the physically strongest combatant—aiming to take both of them out of the equation first and minimize our chances to fight back. This wasn’t a mindless assault like the shadowcreatures from the other world, it was demonstrating a smart, careful strategy to disable, not kill. It wanted us.

  We’d finally come face-to-face with our real enemy.

  5

  Toran’s eyes locked with the creature’s as it pinned his shoulders to the ground. It leaned in closer, eyes flashing.

  “N-no,” Toran stammered, trying to pull away.

  The creature tilted its head while digging its front claws into his shoulders.

  I wanted to yell at him to fight back, but I couldn’t bring myself to move or react. It was as though I was frozen, somehow at peace with what I was seeing. The impulse to break free surged in my mind, yet I could do nothing.

  Maris and Kaiden appeared to be equally frozen. Their gazes were fixed on the creature.

  A series of percussive clicks sounded next to me and from behind. My pulse spiked, fearing another of the creatures had appeared to finish us off. However, I detected no physical presence, despite the sound seeming to come from multiple directions at once. It was then I realized that I’d only heard the sound in my mind.

  The clicks repeated, morphing into a low trill, almost like a cat’s purr. The sound sent a shiver through my body, pulsing in my head. I was transfixed.

  Without stepping from where it had Toran pinned, the alien creature came to examine the rest of us while we were immobilized. Ghostly copies of the creature separated from its physical form, one gliding over to inspect each of us. I could see through the beast as it approached me, yet I sensed heat radiating from it. Dazzling red eyes bore into mine as the ghostly figure leaned in until it was only centimeters from my face.

  Dark, nimble tendrils unfurled from where they had been folded against the creature’s sleek torso. The dozens of tentacle-like tendrils attached to its lean chest and shoulders traced their way over my face and down my body, seeming to search for something. When they reached my sword, the tendrils recoiled, and a new series of clicks filled my mind.

  My heart pounded in my chest. I could sense the creature was angry, but I didn’t know why. I willed my mouth to work so I could yell at it to get away, yet I was still unable to move any more than was necessary to draw breath. It could kill me right now and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

  “Leave me alone!” I shouted in my mind. It took all the energy I could muster to articulate the words. Even then, I wasn’t sure they would come through or if the creature would understand.

  Another flurry of clicks sounded and the purr intensified. The tentacles quivered and swirled in what may have been nonverbal communication outside my frame of reference.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” I tried to ask it telepathically, hoping that it could glean some meaning from my thoughts. The Hegemony had hoped to communicate with this race and find a peaceable solution without war; while I still didn’t believe that was possible, maybe we could at least learn their motivations and use that information to minimize loss of life on both sides.

  The creature tilted its head, and a new chittering sound filled my mind. The clicks and tonal purr began to morph, turning into whispering voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it sounded like it could be a language produced by my tongue, if only I knew what to say.

  “I don’t understand,” I told it.

  The whispers rose again. “Steal.” The single word stood out from the din.

  “Steal? Steal what?” I asked.

  “Never enough.”

  I couldn’t tell what the creature was saying. Did it want to steal something, or was it accusing us of being thieves? Everything we possessed we’d come by honestly, and I certainly wasn’t about to let the alien take something from me, regardless of the reason.

  “You can’t control us.” I tried to put force behind the words, but my present situation of being pinned in its presence hadn’t given me a lot of confidence in myself.

  The creature’s expression changed into what I interpreted to be a sneer. “So weak, so limited. Doesn’t even know what it is.”

  The last part of the statement caught me by surprise. Was that a comment about me, specifically? Did it know why I had a combination of abilities? “What do you know?” I asked it.

  Its red eyes flared, and the whispers in my mind fell quiet. The creature pressed its face toward mine. “Kill.”

  Messages didn’t get much clearer than that. I needed to break free—immediately.

  The telepathic hold still had me pinned in place. I told my legs and arms to move, but the commands could never fully form in my head. I tried to scream, to cry out. Try as I might, no more than the faintest whimper escaped my lips.

  I’d been a warrior only minutes before, able to leap and fight. Now, I was helpless, even though there was nothing physically holding me.

  My friends still seemed unable to move. But, if we didn’t do something, this creature seemed intent on killing us.

  “You can’t control us,” I told the creature again, believing it more this time. If the being was so strong, it could have ended us already. Either it was waiting to play with us more, or it knew we couldn’t be taken out as easily as it wanted us to think. I chose to believe the latter.

  “Kill.”

  “No!” I shouted back in my mind. “You can’t stop us.” More than anything, I wanted to break free. I willed myself, trying to believe it was possible. The only thing holding me in place was my own mind.

  I still couldn’t do it. I was trapped.

  The creature extended its strange tentacles to surround me. “Death.”

  Toran’s fists shot upward from where he had been splayed on the ground, driving his metal gauntlets into either side of the creature’s head. It reared, and the echoed versions of itself were sucked back into its body.

  The paralyzing hold was broken.

  Kaiden hurled a fireball at the creature from where he was lying on the ground, engulfing it in blue flames.

  The creature leaped off Toran, unfazed by the flames, and rounded on Kaiden. Most of its tentacles smoothed back to form a protective armor over its body, but four remained at its side, which morphed into spearheads angled forward on the flexible tendrils.

  While it was focused on Kaiden, I took the opportunity to jump to my feet and run toward it, sword in hand. It seemed to sense me coming, disappearing in a blink only to reappear behind me a moment later.

  “Some haste magic would be great!” I shouted to Maris.

  This time, my vision tinted orange in response to her magic. I rounded on the alien creature and found that my faster movements were now a match for the creature’s abilities. It was trying to disappear again, but I could see the transparency beginning to form a moment before it transitioned. I could maybe reach it in time.

  I lunged at it with my sword, going for speed over precision. The blade barely missed the top of its shoulders.

  The creature disappeared and I paused, waiting to see where it would reemerge.

  An electrical bolt cast by Kaiden clued me in that the creature was manifesting to my right. It was only halfway solid, the electrical assault apparently interfering with its ability to fully materialize in our spacetime. But, we needed to kill it, or at least wound it enough so it wouldn’t want to come back. I assumed it would have to fully materialize for any physical damage to be effective.

  “Hold it there,” I told Kaiden, running into position.

  I approached on its ri
ght and Toran ran over to the left while Kaiden continued to cast a continuous electrical bolt.

  “I can’t keep this up!” Kaiden warned.

  “Let go!” I told him.

  The moment he released the bolt, Toran pummeled it from one side while I sent a telekinetic blast from my glove. The creature bucked and undulated, its skin shimmering as the tentacles folded around its torso absorbed the blows. I sent another telekinetic blast, but the creature compressed and rose onto two legs, then bent over itself to turn the other direction.

  “No you don’t.” Maris lobbed an electrical orb at it—weak compared to Kaiden’s, but enough to get the creature’s attention.

  Clicks and trills filled my mind again, and the creature took a step toward Maris. Her face went blank, falling back into a telepathic trance.

  “Maris, stay focused!” I ran after the creature in an attempt to distract it. I’d gone no more than two steps when the coloration of my vision returned to normal; the haste spell had been broken.

  At the edge of my perception, the creature’s body started to become semi-transparent, allowing me to see the world behind it. It was about to slip away.

  I lunged forward and drove my sword through the broadest part of its torso. As the flaming blade passed through, the creature’s body re-solidified. Its flesh disintegrated as the corpse dropped. Before it reached the ground, the entire body had turned to dust, leaving no trace behind.

  I stood in shocked silence, working my mouth until I could form coherent words. “What in the stars just happened?”

  “That was… an alien, I guess?” Kaiden replied. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Why did it disintegrate like that?” I checked my sword for blood, but there was nothing to clean. “Some of the other creatures we’ve fought did when they died, but this was instant—and it didn’t bleed.”

  “It may have to do with it being a higher-dimension creature,” Toran replied. “We’ve fought hybrids before, but a true higher-dimensional being… that’s a different matter.”

  “It was in my mind. I couldn’t move,” Maris murmured.