Niala 95

Revik had me by my arm and jerked. Coarse light surrounded us as I lost my bearings.

“Where the hell are you taking m—?” Early morning darkness surrounded us in a blink. It had been the heat of summer afternoon when we left and wherever we arrived had a chill in the wind and rain in the skies. Revik’s hand clutched tighter.

“Don’t say a word until I tell you to,” Revik said, suddenly sharp and anxious. He turned me about and tugged at the back of my shirt to tie some of the rips up. “Keep your ikris covered.” I wasn’t sure where we were, but I felt certain that there was danger here. The scent of ault carried on the breeze for miles, thousands of different scents. I’d never smelled this many scents in my entire life.

Cloves, spices, cinnamon, sharp smells, and acrid ones all attacked me, and I could barely get my bearings as I looked at blazing torches full of, not fire, but mana.

Great stone buttresses and flagstones rose high from a misty landscape. Black marble stairs led up a winding way to great red doors. Despite all the strange magnificence, the scent of the place was so familiar, and I found myself walking of my own will.

Revik kept his hold on me and kissed his fingers full of green flame before letting the light of it travel off in the shape of a moth. Nothing around me processed. The shock had me numb and shaking.

What… What was that? What is any of this!?

Home.

“Cerrai, home,” I said, and my breath raced in my chest, hyperventilating. Revik just tugged me closer to him and gave me what I guess he could best call reassurance. I wanted to shove him away from me because I still wasn’t sure what he’d done. Revik wasn’t much for affection. Kiromir said he was colder now.

Finally, we approached great doors that opened to reveal a massive palace within. I remembered the sweeping stairs, the motif of black and red. Everything about it shaped into a wonderland of a distant long-lost memory.

“That’s right, now quiet.” He shushed me as he led me past a stooped older man with hair going a steel grey. He had eyes like me, ault, and he smelled of cinnamon.

“You’re here early this morning,” he commented in coarse Anil and silenced as he looked at me, face going pale in fear.

“Master Kael is out with the young master for morning sparring.” With his gesture, Revik moved towards a hallway, giving a nod of thanks before we set off through a series of ornate halls.

Revik marched left of the stairs, a familiar hall, but only vaguely so; things hadn’t changed much. We swept past doors and hallways over stone walls and hung portraits.

A slew of faces looked back at me with varying degrees of cruelty, all with sleek black hair and almond-shaped blue eyes. I stumbled as Revik kept leading me, and when I reached the end of that hall, where an empty frame stared back at me. I knew that frame.

I reached for it to say something, but Revik quieted me and pushed my back towards two gilded black enamel sculpted doors. I looked through its lead glass windows, watching rippled shapes outside.

When we pushed out, we stood in the courtyard. Everything feature had been sculpted to be sharp and balanced—the complementary plants lush for the season. Though the flowers were different, and things had changed so much, I knew this place too.

I looked around, fighting tears as memories came back to me. “I think I used to live here.”

“Maybe.” Revik’s voice went low. “Shh.”

We exited the courtyards and swept through gardens and outbuildings where topiaries and hedges blocked off the view from a terraced landscape below.

Revik jerked on my arm, making me stumble, but I couldn’t stop staring. His eyes trained on two figures far below—one small, one large. We moved in closer, and I saw something that made my heart soar.

They were like me! One was massive, his eyes the striking almond shape of my own, the same blue, too. He wore not shirt, but wrapped his waist in a strange, cleaved skirt over what looked to be wound bandages. I remember them ‘haltir.’ The other was just a boy.

He turned towards us and every muscle on this man stood in rigid peaks. His sharp and fierce grin matched well to his tattooed arms, writhing from wrist to shoulder in sweeping solid black.

“Ada’re?” I caught myself asking in a soft breath as I tugged on Revik’s sleeve. Revik gave me a warning glance. ‘Father?’

No. This isn’t my father. He’s so familiar…

“This is a delicate situation. Your silence is appreciated because you don’t know what’s on the balance here,” Revik whispered down to me as his hands tightened on my shoulders.

Revik shouted down to the two figures in Acir. “Eya! Kael. You received my message, yes?” His voice sounded sharper and so much cleaner in Acir.

I knew that name! It sounded familiar, though I didn’t know where. My heart started singing—full of hope. I’d never been so happy that my aura flicked before, and at the lift of it, the two in the circle stopped.

Two men looked over at me; one stood so much bigger than me, taller than Thanus even. The other, even slouching, loomed a bit over my height, despite his young age. He stared at me with aquamarine eyes from beneath auburn hair so dark it passed for black at a distance.

He couldn’t have been older than me, maybe fourteen, but he stretched up so tall, in that lanky and ‘just starting to fill out’ stage. Revik pushed me forward, and we approached.

Kael’s attention pulled away and squinted to Revik. “Eya, I heard you. I figured you’d find us.”

The boy at his side took a cheap shot, and Kael snatched out to grab the boy’s wrist and twisted—faster than anything I’d seen in a while. The boy wrenched his hand back and grumbled as the man smirked playfully.

As the younger one turned, his Ikris made my stomach sink in my gut. I’d never seen something so strange in my entire life.

“Not a word,” Revik whispered from the corner of his mouth in acid English upon my reaction. The boy had the spear, like me, but his ikris—not one set of wings, but two. Atop his shoulder blades, his ikris spread like wildling ones, and below were drawn in like mine. I couldn’t process what I saw. He might have been from another race, but my instinct told me to fear him.

His face wasn’t quite like Kael’s or mine, maybe some lilting features in the nose, but his eyes had heavy lids, and his lips drew into a cruel grin.

“And that we did, Kael. How are you this fine morning?” Revik started putting on face, but the growing fear within me kept trying to antagonize my aura. The two strangers glanced at me curiously, either because of my strange hair or strange clothes. I felt suddenly very self-conscious, especially as both of their expressions masked in a shadow of anger.

“Kiel, would you like to spar with her while Kael and I talk?” Revik’s suggestion made Kael bristle.

“She’s chosen already,” Revik said quickly, distracting me.

Chosen?

The boy, Kiel, grabbed at my arm and tugged me back excitedly, the mote of anger in his expression gone, replaced by unbridled joy.

“I haven’t sparred with a girl before,” he said to me. It took me a moment to understand, and I gave him a hesitant grin. The words weren’t coming to me to speak.

“Why are your teeth like that? Doesn’t it bother you?” The boy grimaced, then grinned and flashed his teeth at me—short sharp things. Suddenly so much more self-conscious, I licked my canines. Mine were so much longer than his.

“Maybe I like my teeth this way?” I retorted, almost proud of myself, despite my words being clumsy and slow. It took me too long to say it, and he stared at me, head canted.

“Fists?” I asked. He nodded in understanding, and I took the stance I had been taught, narrowing myself as a target and posing my arms to block.

His arm swung like a fucking freight train. His fists had so much power behind them, whistling as they missed me. I felt like something out of the Matrix as I turned my head just in time and stumbled away from his heavy strikes. He didn’t take my size into consideration and threw his weight into his fist. Suddenly, my footwork became imperative. A quick sweep of my leg threw his balance and floored him. He had no guard for his legs and relied too much on strength alone.

This is going to be interesting.