Kastori Devastations (The Kastori Chronicles Book 2) (26 page)

“Listen up,” Crystil said, interrupting Erda. “We’re wasting a ton of time out here. If we didn’t start talking as we have, we’d be on the second floor by now. I’m taking charge of this mission, unless someone wants to argue otherwise.”

No one flinched, let alone spoke.
That’s my girl
, Cyrus thought.
I love it when others are getting the tough Crystil.

“I need the four soldiers to stand outside the temple entrance with their rifles and shoot anything that approaches the opening of the wall. All of the allies you will get are here right now, so if it comes, it’s an enemy. Understood?”

Everyone nodded.

“Cyrus and Erda, join me inside. We’ll go and get Celeste. Emperor Orthran…”

She feels weird giving a command to him.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Inside. I need to see my daughter. And our contact will help us.”

Crystil and Cyrus looked at the Emperor askance.

“Contact?”

“One of the guardians wants to overthrow Typhos and claim the throne for himself. He will make sure our path to Celeste is clear in return for helping him.”

Crystil grimaced.
She doesn’t want to help the enemy. But her emperor already made a deal with him.
Crystil crossed her arms.

“Can we trust him not to hurt us?”

“Yes,” his father said without hesitation.

You’ve never failed us, Pops. Don’t disappoint now.

“How does he expect us to help him?”

“He wants to use Celeste’s powers to defeat Typhos,” the Emperor said with reservation. “Gaius believes Celeste, with us, can kill Typhos.”

“Celeste needs rest,” Erda said. “She needs to come home to Anatolus.”

“Home? Anatolus?” Emperor Orthran said. “Erda, Celeste’s home is Monda. Not wherever you’ve disappeared to.”

“I’m sorry, Caius, but you knew my loyalties were split.”

We’re wasting time. Again. Come on.

“Come with us to Anatolus, Pops,” Cyrus said. “We’ll regroup. We can bring Gaius or whoever for all I care. Then we launch an attack on Typhos.”

“And leave us behind like last time,” the shorter female soldier said.

More arguing broke out over where Celeste would wind up.

“Stop!” Cyrus said. “Let’s make this simple. Crystil, Erda and I have the leverage here with the power. You’re not going to shoot your commander or the son of the emperor. So here’s what happens. We rescue Celeste. Erda makes a portal for us. Everyone goes through it. Everyone here, and Gaius too. If someone doesn’t want to come, then that’s their choice. But everyone here can go. We recover, we rest, we prepare, and we launch an attack on Typhos.”

“But the people—”

“There’s no use in rescuing the people as long as Typhos lives,” Cyrus interrupted. “This is the deal. Whatever discussion you had with Gaius beforehand, whatever thoughts you had about Celeste or Typhos, that doesn’t matter. This is the plan. Do we understand?”

Everyone nodded. He turned to Crystil, who said with a hint of a grin, “You’re learning from me.”

Cyrus snorted in appreciation, and turned his attention to the four soldiers, Erda, and his father.

“Let’s go get Celeste.”

55

Cyrus led the humans toward the entrance of the palace, using the darkness as protection. His hand never ventured far from his sword, and he remained suspicious every step of the way that a great ambush lay in wait for them.

When they got inside the wall, Cyrus had the soldiers and Crystil scan the perimeter with their Nakar 17s. Everyone gave the all clear signal, and they dashed to the base of the steps.
Time for a different type of weapon.

“Erda, can you sense inside and see what kind of danger awaits?” Cyrus asked.

“It’s going to be Gaius, and that should be it,” Emperor Orthran said.

“I don’t think I trust ‘should be’ anymore,” Cyrus said, trading a knowing glance with Crystil.

Erda crouched down, her mask on her face, producing a few ragged breaths from the soldiers. No one drew their gun, but Cyrus made a special note to watch for Morian in case he returned. Erda remained still for several tense moments, leading Crystil to request everyone to train their guns on the wall entrance.

“It will take me some time,” she said, her voice muffled. “The temple is thick with magic like Mount Ardor. It is not as heavy, so it will be possible, but—”

“That’s fine, Mo—Erda,” Cyrus said.

The men, recalling their training, provided a perfect fortress of sniper rifles. Crystil joined them, though her vision switched between the gun and the temple in case she needed her sword. Cyrus kept one hand on the handle of his blade.
Gaius set this up. Hope he’s cool with going back to Anatolus after this.

“How did things go early on in Anatolus, Cyrus?” his father asked.

Cyrus turned to his father, who had a curious and touching smile on his face. Cyrus dropped his stoic expression and smiled with a snort.

“A little rough early. I learned what it meant to upset Crystil,” he said as she winked and switched to viewing the temple entrance. “And to be frank, I missed you and Monda. I didn’t really admit it, and it drove me literally insane. I just figured I’d lost everyone and didn’t want to face it, so I left the ship angry at Crystil and Celeste.”

“We honestly didn’t think we’d ever see him again,” Crystil added.

“But Celeste… she almost died. Obviously she’s here, so she’s fine—relatively, of course—but poison once got to her. Rescued her by fortuitous coincidence.”

“And me,” Crystil said, tapping her foot and producing the sound of titanium.

“Yeah. Once that happened… things got better. But I always thought you were gone and hated that fact.”

His father looked away, and Cyrus knew the emotion had gotten to his father.
Never seen Pops cry. It’s… it’s hard.

Cyrus himself felt emotional as his eyes moistened. He looked straight ahead, hoping that a potential battle might dry his irises. His mind, though, raced back to the grief he felt from losing his father and, for a period, his sister and commander. The thoughts never got easier.

“It was so painful seeing you two go,” he said. “I knew of Anatolus from your mother, but it was all a risk. I didn’t know what challenges you’d face. I didn’t know of a Calypsius monster. I could’ve told Crystil of the Kastori, but Crystil, I knew the hatred you had for them and didn’t even know if there were any alive there. The uncertainty killed me, that I didn’t know if I was sending my children to paradise or a devastating nightmare worse than Typhos.”

“Nothing’s worse than this, Pops,” Cyrus said with a warm smile.

“No,” his father said. “Nothing’s worse than not knowing how your children are.”

That hit Cyrus like a rock on the top of the head.
Celeste. She’s…

He embraced his father tightly, and after a few sniffles, tears ebbed out of his eyes. He had to let emotion out.
Celeste. Pops. Crystil. This is why I fight for you. To protect you, and truly know you’re safe.

He pulled back, quickly bringing himself together.

“In some ways, telling you your mother died when she gave birth to Celeste helped you two live in certainty as children, albeit false certainty,” his father said. “I regret not telling you sooner. Perhaps you knowing now has made you angrier at me than before—”

“Pops, we all have secrets,” Cyrus said. “I’ve had to learn that the hard way, both in finding them out and in keeping them. This girl, right here,” he said, motioning at Crystil. “Has every right to hate me. We kept it a secret that we were Kastori for six months.”

“All in the past,” Crystil said.

“Well, let’s keep the peace then,” Emperor Orthran said.

The storm continued to fade, the rain becoming a misty drizzle. The lightning struck with diminished frequency and looked like a stuttering light. Thunder came many seconds later, not milliseconds later.
The effects of Typhos are fading. Hopefully whatever’s inside has too.

“Tell me about Gaius,” Cyrus said.

“He’s a just guardian,” his father said. “He has his own selfish desires to rule the throne, but I have my own selfish desire to return to the throne, so I cannot disparage him. He would rule if we defeated Typhos, mainly because he has the power and because I promised it to him. I know it sounds unfortunate, and not everyone here agrees, but he would rule fairly and give us our lives back.”

Cyrus nodded and smiled as he cracked a joke.

“Between us on Anatolus and Gaius here, almost makes you wonder if we should just assume Monda is for Kastori and Anatolus is for humans.”

He laughed at his own joke, but stopped, surprised, when he saw his father seriously pondering the statement.

“Kastori have long come here anyways, so—”

“I have finished,” Erda said. “There’s only one guardian at the top, standing at a door. I assume it’s Celeste’s room, but it is so full of dark magic not even I can see inside.”

He’s not going to guard a trap door if Pops is right.

Cyrus offered his hand to his father, who accepted it with a tight grip. Cyrus lifted him and walked to the demarcation line between the interior and exterior of the palace, and looked at his crew.

Crystil, with both her gun and her sword, ready to handle any type of enemy.

Erda, with her powerful magic, able to counter anyone’s magic.

His father, with his rifle and gritty determination to rescue Celeste.

And himself, willing to die to save his sister’s life.

“Let’s go,” he said, clutching his sword. “And stay alert.”

56

Even with Erda’s assurance that she had sensed everything except the room Gaius guarded, Cyrus still could not shake the ominous feeling when he entered the palace. It was worse than what he’d experienced on Mount Ardor.

The hair on his body pricked up and goosebumps spread across his skin. He shivered repeatedly. He wanted to feel nostalgia, seeing home once more, but instead felt fear he could not pinpoint. He tried to sense where the coldness came from, but to his horror, the magic in the room quashed his power.
Only the strong can cast magic in here.

He closed his eyes, told himself, “
Focus
,” and opened his eyes. He saw familiar steps leading to the second and, a bit in the distance, the third floor. He flashed back to the games he and Celeste would play as children, chasing each other up and down the stairs, the guards having to gently remove them whenever dignitaries came through. In those days, the stairs had majestic decorations along the rails, and a bright red carpet from the entrance of the palace ran up through the throne room.

Now, nothing remained on the dark, black rails, and the carpet lay in tatters, soaked with different colors Cyrus didn’t want to know about.

He looked left and saw the guest rooms, places where he had invited his friends to play. He thought about the games of tag he, Celeste and their friends would play, hiding in the guest rooms and under the beds. He remembered sneaking girls over on dates in his mid-to-late teen years, one time getting caught by a guard who promised to keep quiet.

But now those rooms contained nothing more than a cracked foundation, torn up furniture and a sense of loneliness, for they surely had not been occupied for months, if not years.

“Cyrus,” Erda said. Cyrus realized Crystil and Emperor Orthran had gone ahead. “Now is not the time to reminisce. The magic here feeds on your fears, and though it cannot manifest them, it will paralyze you.”

Cyrus jogged to the group at the base of the stairs. He carefully withdrew his blade, keeping the sound of steel scraping on its sheath to a minimum.

Cyrus.

Cyrus.

He heard two distinct voices, both female—one his sister, one Crystil. He turned to his commander, who was not even looking at him.

Cyrus!

A scream echoed in his head, his sister’s, and he bowed his head in frustration.

“Remember, the magic feeds on your fears,” Erda said. “I cannot help you, Cyrus. You have to focus.”

The cries continued, ones that would come as if Celeste were tortured in horrible, unspeakable fashion by Typhos. He could picture her face crying in agony, begging for him to—

Stop!

“Erda,” he said, speaking to quiet his mind. “Where is the one guardian you spoke of?”

“Third floor to the left of the throne room.”

Cyrus guided the team up the last flight of stairs. The doors to the throne room were open. Unlike the other places, which Cyrus could peer into, absolute blackness consumed this room. He could not see a floor, nor a wall, nor any defining features. He pointed to it and turned to Erda, curious.

“A void spell,” she whispered. “All sensations of space and time disappear when you go inside. The only way out is to be either as powerful as the one who cast it, or to have the one who cast it undo it. Don’t you dare go in there.”