Chapter 22
The storm had congealed beneath the sky wall and descended on Sarai within minutes. Gales buffeted her from several directions, as if ghostly hands from the Veil were trying to disorient her.
Sarai pulled a flimsy hood closer to her face as snow and ice stung her exposed skin. Fractal flakes the size of her palm were accumulating on the ground, snapping with every step she took.
“Don’t judge me. He doesn’t deserve to be here. He didn’t earn this. He didn’t earn any of this!” The cold leached feeling from her arms and face. “I’m going to reach the Pinnacle on my own if I have to. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone!”
The storm washed out the horizon. Sarai couldn’t see the sky wall either. She stopped and tried to calm her mind to sense the Pinnacle, but her thoughts were as scattered as the sudden gusts of winds.
“Damn it!” She kept walking. “This isn’t going to stop me!”
Cold bit her ears and lips. Every breath stung her nose and throat as the temperature dropped. She kept moving as the snowdrifts grew deeper, almost to her knees. A gust pushed her from behind and she stumbled forward. The oversized flakes crumbled beneath her hands and knees. Her bones ached from the cold, and she trudged forward, unsure if she was even going the right direction.
“You can’t stop me!” she yelled at the storm.
She dragged a foot through the growing snowdrifts when the movement suddenly became unhindered. She lost her balance and rolled into a field with boulders strewn all about. The crystalline rocks ranged in size from cargo trunks to small homes. The sky wall was clear overhead.
She looked behind her at a wall of snow and ice sweeping across an invisible barrier. Sarai brushed icy crystals off her clothes.
“Well . . . how about that?” She scrunched her face as feeling returned to her skin.
Pebbles clattered down a nearby boulder. Sarai drew her hilt and ignited the saber. The blade pulsed in time with beats of faint light from the rocks.
A pair of wide eyes peeked over the top of the boulder, then ducked down again.
“You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone, fair?” Sarai carried her weapon at high guard and kept her distance from the creature as she walked around.
“Friends friends we are,” came from behind her.
Sarai spun around and cut across her body, leaving the blade pointed down and behind her.
A Docent—what looked like a Docent—crept over a boulder. Its skin was mottled white, with yellow-ringed splotches of black. Its face looked diseased, with lips curled hard over pointy teeth and a rotted-out eye in one socket.
“Such a strong one yes yes.” The Docent crawled closer; its wing flaps were torn and decayed in several places. “This one will surely make it to the Pinnacle.”
“That where you’re heading?” she asked.
The scratch of claws against rock sounded from several more boulders and more eyes peeked out at her.
“If it’s a way way out,” the Docent said. “You have one? Yes, smell your anchor stone.” The alien sniffed at the air. “You got it from one of us. Very kind. Too kind.”
“Why waste so much food?” A Docent leaned over a boulder and spoke down at her.
Sarai raised her saber.
“I don’t have anything for you,” she said. “I’ll be on my way. You go about yours.”
“How long has this human skin skin been here, clan?” the dead-eyed one asked. “Felt the tears from the lower world we just did. Not greedy this one . . . has one morsel on her she does. Tastes old. So old.”
Sarai brushed her finger against the edge of the Veil stone set into the cross guard of her hilt.
“We’re so hungry.” A sickly Docent tugged at her sleeve from the side of a boulder. She slapped the hand away and hurried on.
The dead-eyed alien leapt from boulder to boulder, then got ahead of Sarai. Dozens of the small creatures showed themselves. Diseased and rotting Docents surrounded her, all clinging to rocks.
“We are in need. So so much need,” the dead-eyed one said. “Haven’t had a stone in year years. Look what’s happened to us. All of us.”
“Abandoned by the matriarch! Cheated by creditors! Food stolen back by the Veil!”
New excuses and pleas came from the pack of Docents. Their needly teeth chattered and snapped, all eyes on the stone in her hilt.
“As you can see,” Sarai raised the blade to high guard, “I have a need for this.”
“What ‘need’?” Dead Eye snarled. “Your flesh glows with health. You don’t need the stone. We we do or the hunger will eat us!”
“Pain! Pain!” came from the pack.
“Just a taste.” Dead Eye put a paw onto the grass and crept toward her. “Just give us your food. One of us gave you an anchor, yes yes? Only fair!”
“Fair is fair!” hissed the Docents as they closed in on her.
“Stop!” she swept her blade across her body, but the Docents didn’t flinch back. “Stop! I—I can lead you to other stones. I’m Attuned and can sense them.”
Dead Eye’s face twitched.
“Only two left this far from the gates, you think we haven’t tried to reach them? We are hungry hungry now!” Dead Eye scratched out a quick signal on a rock and the Docents attacked.
One landed on her shoulder and bit into her harness. Sarai cried out and grabbed it by the neck. She threw the weak creature to the ground and kicked it away. More jumped on her, their claws scratching and ripping at her.
Sarai cut one in half with a quick swipe, then slapped the flat of the blade against one on her hip. A pulse of thought sent a searing light down the saber and the Docent cried out as it ignited. The alien ran off, yipping as it sprang from stone to stone, trying to outrun the fire on its back.
Dead Eye clutched Sarai’s sword arm and dragged it down. More and more Docents piled onto her, but she kept her grip on the hilt. Dead Eye swiped his foot at her, and claws raked across her face.
Sarai cried out and let go of the weapon. Some of the Docents jumped off to mob Dead Eye and the hilt. They formed a swirling mass of wings and claws all fighting for the saber. The ones still clinging to her began biting and chewing her clothes.
Sarai couldn’t throw any off and she fell to the ground.
A flash of light sent a wave of heat and pain across her arms. The Docents panicked into squawking. Meaty thumps sounded around her, and Sarai grabbed a Docent on her chest by the neck and slammed its face into a nearby boulder.
The chaos died away as the Docents fled.
Sarai put a hand to her cheek as blood seeped through her fingers. Dead and burnt Docents were everywhere; a sizzling hole through a rock over a pair of smoking feet were all that remained of Dead Eye.
“Sarai? Sarai!” Dastin came around a boulder. He froze, his face just like her mother’s the time she fell down a set of stairs and broke her arm. Sarai choked back tears and held out a hand to him.
He scooped her up and hugged her, rubbing blood across his armor. He looked her over, his eyes full of worry and fear. “How bad are you hurt? Just your face?”
“Find my hilt.” She spat blood and tamped down emotions that shouldn’t have troubled a Paragon like her.
“How is she?” Eabani stomped the life out of an injured Docent, his crossbow in hand. “I think the rest are gone.”
“Banged up.” Dastin pulled her hand from her face and winced at the damage. He took out his med pack and inserted a medicine cap into an injector. “They’re from our realm. Infection is a risk.” He stung her neck with the injector, then took out a pair of large tweezers with tiny inward-facing needles at the top.
“Sarai?” Maru squatted next to her, his glaive in one hand and the base planted firmly in the ground. The blade glowed from the blast he’d just channeled through it. Neff peeked over his shoulder, then slunk behind him.
“Sarai, where is Jayce?” the Paragon asked.
“We got separated.” She pointed to the blizzard behind him. “Can’t you scry him?”
Maru’s hand twisted his glaive haft from side to side.
“I cannot,” he said. “I felt you together for a time, then there was a darkness before it faded away. Now we’re too close to the Pinnacle for me to reach out to him . . . too much interference in the air.”
“My hilt! Someone find my hilt!” She turned away just as Dastin was about to pinch her lacerated face with the tweezers.
“Gone gone, it is,” Neff said. “So sorry.”
“Nope! Found it.” Eabani scooped up the hilt and tossed it to Maru. Held it where Sarai could see it, then flipped it around. The stone inlay was empty. Bits of Veil fragments glittered in the recession.
“Oh no.” Sarai’s shoulders fell. “Oh no, what do I do now?”
“You hold still so I can stop the bleeding, little miss.” Dastin snapped the tweezers together and pain pinched her cheek.
“Ow!”
“Stop squirming or you’ll end up with a bad scar,” he said. “Nothing that can’t be fixed, but I want your mother to be able to recognize you when she sees you again.”
“That doesn’t matter!” She slapped Dastin’s wrist away. “I came here to become a Paragon and how am I supposed to do that if I don’t have a Paragon’s weapon? The symbol!”
Maru put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Sarai, does Shipmaster Uusanar have a hilt?” he asked calmly.
“Well . . . no,” she pouted.
“Yet he was able to claim a stone when I led him through the Veil. Do you think you are the first Attuned—or even the first Paragon—to lose a hilt?” he asked.
“I-I should be better than that,” she said. “How can I fight without a hilt? How can I be a Paragon?”
“Another hilt will choose you,” Maru said. “This is my third.” He shook his glaive. “The Sodality cares so much about the hilts because they are very difficult to replace. You lost yours in the course of . . . something awful. Not negligence. Another will choose you.”
“Sodality won’t even make you buy it.” Dastin stung her face again with the tweezers. “Big Marine Corps would take the price of Eabani or my crossbow out of our pay if we lost ours.”
“That’s why these ugly things could pry mine out of my cold dead claws.” Eabani punted a dead Docent over a boulder.
“There . . . not quite like new.” Dastin swiped blood off Sarai’s cheek. “Don’t scare me like that again, little miss.” He gave her a long hug.
“Hasn’t been intentional.” She hugged him back. “Where’s your packs? What happened back at the river?”
“Eabani, get the gear,” Dastin said. He stood and helped her up. “Maru and me had to kill that hydra thing on our own as someone got a little bit scared during the fight.”
“I don’t like tentacles!” Eabani shouted from behind a distant boulder. “You know that!”
“He doesn’t,” Sarai said. “Remember that time he ran from that seafood restaurant on Cardin VII?”
“Being scared’s one thing.” Eabani stomped over, two packs on his back. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t help. Who shot the hydra in the head? Was that you or me, Gunny?”
“And then I hit it four more times while Maru finished it off,” Dastin snapped. “Then I had to drag you out from under a rock. I’m still pissed about that.”
“It’s instinctual.” Eabani lifted his snub nose and his goatee swayed from side to side. “I can’t change my evolution.”
“Onward.” Maru disassembled his glaive with a twist of the haft and snapped the two halves to his belt. “Dastin . . . I need a moment with Sarai, if you please.”
Sarai’s jaw tightened and she walked faster to keep pace beside the Paragon.
“I am worried about Jayce,” Maru said. “How was he when you last saw him?”
“Safe. Safe as he could be in that storm. I’ve never seen anything like that.” She waved a hand behind her. “Will there be more?”
“Manifestations,” Neff said. “This far in and home knows us better than we know ourselves. Too much emotion and that will resonate resonate through the ether. Why storms for you and the other Attuned, hmm?”
“He was scared,” Sarai said. “He tried to be a big strong man around me and when I didn’t need him, his ego must have—”
“Jayce dove into the river and saved you,” Maru said. “You were unconscious. His split-second decision saved you and put himself in great danger at the same time. I do not believe Jayce had much to prove to you. Or anyone.”
“I hope he’s as smart as he is brave. Maybe he’s already cracked his anchor and we’ll all see each other again soon.”
“Neff?” Maru scratched the Docent’s ear. “Can you sense his anchor?”
The Docent worked his claws into Maru’s harness and lifted his snout to sniff the air.
“I cannot not tell. There’s patch of night out there . . . distant. Could be there,” Neff said. “If we get closer then—”
“What were those things?” Sarai snapped. “Aren’t Docents supposed to be guides? Why did an entire pack of your kind attack me?”
“Bad bad blood.” Neff cowered against Maru. “Long long time since the kin entered the Veil as a clan to feed. Eat too much. No stones for the Pilgrims. No stones for the Sodality. Too many attacks on us inside and outside the Veil. Jealousy! That kindred . . . no idea how long they’ve been in—Fleck!”
Neff hopped off Maru and scrambled up a boulder. He stuck a paw into a crevice and fished out a handful of glowing shards. He gobbled them down without chewing and jumped back onto Maru. The shards clinked in his stomach.
“Been in the Veil,” Neff continued. “My kin are proper Docents, only send scouts scouts who return with flecks for the egg time. Earn our keep like everyone else. Keeps customers from eating us. Poison!” He pointed at his chest. “Poison!”
“You encountered the first feral population of Docents in nearly a century,” Maru said. “The Sodality will be interested in your report.”
“Some warning would have been nice,” she said.
“Shall I tell you of every potential threat here?” Maru asked.
“I’ll settle for knowing about the Pinnacle and why it’s so important for us to reach it.” She grabbed Maru by the arm. “We came here for Veil stones—ones strong enough for me to build my own hilt and become a full Paragon. How many stones matching that description have we passed, Neff?”
The Docent counted on his fingers, then slunk away from Maru’s gaze.
“Enough, yes yes,” Neff muttered.
“If we can reach the Pinnacle . . . I will tell you. If you carry the answer in your mind, it can attract more manifestation. Please, let me concentrate on the Pinnacle so we don’t walk in circles. I will tell you everything when the time is right. But the Tyrant’s blades are here and . . .” He held up two fingers pressed together.
In the distance, the Pinnacle wavered in and out of existence.
“No more for now . . . please.” Maru kept walking and the Pinnacle solidified.
Sarai fell back to Dastin. The Marine offered her a nutrient tube.
“White fish and noodles, your favorite,” the Marine said.
“Thanks.” She slipped it into a shoulder pocket. “Not a lot of appetite right now.”
“Adrenaline does that. Soon as it wears off, you’ll be hungry. Don’t go swimming anymore, OK?”
“That worried about me?” she smirked.
“Always, little miss. When your father saved me from the Tyrant’s prisoner camp, I swore I’d return the favor to him one day. I was on the team that planted the bomb aboard that monster’s ship while you shiny types dealt with the Tyrant. I wasn’t there when he needed me . . .”
“How much of a difference would you have made against the Tyrant?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter. I should have been there. When you were swept away, I had that same . . . there was this pit in my stomach. Felt the same way when your father, Maru, and Marshall Tulkan split off from the rest of us knobs aboard the Tyrant’s barque. I’m so glad we found you.”
“I’m a big girl, Dastin. I can take care of myself.”
“You had everything under control back there?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“It was like being bitten by butterflies. I had it under control,” she said.
Maru looked back at her for a moment.
“Eaten by Docents isn’t how I want to go,” Eabani said. “Too embarrassing. No one would believe it.”
“But hiding under a rock because of some wacky waving arms is acceptable?” Dastin sneered.
“Everyone back home would understand.” Eabani snorted.
“There’s going to come a time when I don’t need you, Dastin. Mom assigned you to me to keep me safe until I’m a Paragon. I’m almost there,” Sarai said.
Dastin’s bottom lip quivered for a heartbeat, then his face went to stone.
“I know . . . you won’t always need me, little miss. Just been with you since you were five years standard. I’ll just go back to the line and—”
“No.” Sarai squeezed his arm with both hands. “No, don’t talk like that. Just because I won’t need you doesn’t mean I don’t want you around, Das-das.” She set her head against his shoulder.
The Marine’s eyes moistened, and he leaned his head over to touch hers.
“Eabani too,” she said.
“Someone has to scare the boys away,” the Lirsu said.
Neff sniffed Maru’s ear, then snorted off to one side.
“Problem?” the Paragon asked.
“I lied because you lied lied,” the Docent whispered. “Why aren’t we telling the truth?”
Maru scratched Neff under his chin.
“Because we must. There’s too much at stake. Now keep your senses open for anything coming for us. We’re close now.” Maru pointed in the distance. A gleaming peak shined through the gloom.