False Skies (Challenger's Call Book 5), page 51
“Um,” I said, taken off guard by the question.
The Umbra scared the hell out of me, even after all the other monsters I’ve encountered. He gave me chills just thinking about him, and I couldn’t understand how my father had managed to talk to him so many times without shitting himself. Even Dalfrey and Barnes trembled whenever the thing was around.
I didn’t want to know any more about the thing, and Wes showing any interest about him was perhaps the most insane thing he’d ever done.
“I don’t know much about him, and I don’t want to,” I admitted bluntly.
“Not what I asked,” Wes answered with casual ruthlessness, refusing to let me off.
“Okay,” I began, “you already know that he’s fucking terrifying. He’s the only thing Dad really answers to, the only thing I’ve seen Dad show any deference to—with one possible exception, but I’ll get to that later. He’s also the most powerful creature I’ve seen, Dark Icons included, and the most powerful creature I’ve ever heard about—again, with one possible exception. I’ve seen him change the very landscape around himself, as if reality warped to accommodate the Umbra’s own will. I don’t think anything can beat him. Not the heroes of your worlds, not the Icons of your worlds, unless all of them got together at once, from every single planet. Then, maybe. But one on one, impossible. Even now that he’s supposedly split himself, he can take on any one of them in a fight and still win.”
“Except for that one exception you mentioned,” Wes replied calmly. “Is that exception Malus or Aegrim?”
“No, neither,” I replied, frustrated. “Those two don’t count. Aegrim is still locked away at the core of the Earth somehow, according to our teachings, and Malus isn’t anything but our patron deity, a distant, vague, uncaring figure that supposedly gives us strength if we do his will. Like your Christian god, I guess, assuming you still believe in that guy.”
Wes shrugged apathetically.
“Possibly,” he said, in a cryptic tone. “So who’s the other guy you’re expecting to be on Cavus’ level?”
“I don’t know his name,” I replied, “but he’s our other partner.”
“One second,” Wes replied, waving his hand over the rim of the tub and chanting softly under his breath. When he was finished, he gave the whole thing a satisfied look. “That’s as good as I can get it, at least right now. Okay, go on,” he said to me. “Explain this partnership.” His eyes narrowed at me. “But I’m assuming it’s the Horde asshole who took over the Lost Deeps.”
“You’d be right,” I answered, “from what I know, and that isn’t much. But he’s in control of all the Horde, and he hates you more than anyone else I know—myself and Dad included,” I admitted, because honesty was still safer than caution right now. “You threaten him, somehow. Something about your connection with Aegrim. And the fact that you fucked things up for him royally, by encountering that first Horde Pit when you weren’t supposed to way back in the very beginning.”
“My heart weeps,” the red-headed prick said sarcastically. “What level of dragon is he? Is he a Wyrm yet? What’s the deal with his heads?”
“I don’t know anything about dragons or their heads,” I retorted irritably, “and again, I’m not high in the decision-making process here. The most I’ve really done is pretend to be Dad’s muscle while he handles certain talks, and helping teams take down Horde that get too wild about looking for you. That’s actually starting to get worse, now that they know you’re back on Avalon, but at least they’re hyper-fixating on you instead of randomly destroying shit because they weren’t allowed to touch you before.”
“Should we expect another attack?” he asked me, ignoring my protests about insufficient security clearance. “Even though we’ve blocked off the Pathways pretty well?”
“Yes,” I answered, because I still knew this much. “Everybody’s pissed about you retaking Avalon, let alone what you’ve done on the other two worlds. They have to hit you back. You’ve taken two worlds, killed at least one Dark Icon, sent the Horde into a new kind of frenzy with whatever the hell you’ve started doing to their Pits, and, worst of all, made everyone in charge look bad. They’ll find a way to force themselves back through. Probably with another Dark Icon or something. The dragon on that sealed world seems to be able to make them fairly quickly. He was actually the fastest to react to your breakout, so he made killing you a priority before anyone else.”
“Why hasn’t he come to me himself?” Wes asked. “It stands to reason that he’s stronger than any of the Dark Icons under his control.”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug, “but if he could have left the Lost Deeps or whatever it’s called, he probably would have taken Avalon before the rest of us ever had a chance. Despite being confined to one planet, his forces seem to be absolutely massive.” I looked at Wes, figuring this was important. “Our problem with his commitment hasn’t been him sending us too few troops. It’s the dragon sending more Horde, more Dark Icons than we can work with or control. If it wasn’t for Cavus, Dad said we’d be forced to submit to this other guy instead. In fact, given this guy’s connection to Aegrim, it would have made more sense anyway. It’s just that the Umbra got to us first. I don’t know why. Dad won’t share that info yet.”
“Fair enough,” Wes said with a shrug of his own. He turned around and reached for the carved wooden stick on the table next to him. I tried to figure out what it was, and then suddenly remembered all the fairies I saw flying around with them.
“What the hell are you doing with a fairy wand?” I asked. “And how did you get it away from the fairy who owned it?”
“A polite request, preceded by a lot of sugary treats,” he answered, not looking back at me yet. “What can you tell me about the Malus Order itself?”
I flinched at his question, and his eyebrow raised.
“That… it’s hard to talk about,” I said, looking away.
“Magical vow of silence?” my old nemesis guessed, as he took out more fulgurite dust and sprinkled it over the runes I saw inscribed on the edges.
“No.” I shook my head. “Those are tied to our rituals. And I haven’t been initiated into any of the rituals, partly because Dad didn’t want me to gain the power from completing them. It’s just conditioning. The Order drills secrecy into you so well that you don’t even realize that it’s hard to talk about. My entire life has been a balance between living the way I want without getting killed by my environment.”
“Fair enough,” he said, looking up at me in an unnerving display of empathy. “Same here, for the past two years.”
You fucker, I thought but didn’t say.
It wasn’t the same thing, but I remembered that look in Wes’ eye every time he had gotten in my way in the past.
For all his righteous bullshit, he had known there were going to be consequences every time he had stood up to me. He knew he was making a trade every time he didn’t just give up and lay low, which had been every day back on Earth.
I don’t care, I growled inside my head, we are not the same. None of this is my fault.
“Whatever,” I said, brushing him off. I didn’t need his fucking empathy or forgiveness. “Okay. I don't know the exact number of our operatives. We’ve been making allies galore among all the forces wanting to succeed with their Tumults or game-overs or whatever, but among our actual people there’s been some… turnover. Shepherd’s still in the hospital, for instance. The guy in charge of… training the prisoners,” I said with a swallow. I didn’t like thinking about all that. It was one of the biggest reasons I had finally cracked and sided with Wes.
“I remember him,” Wes said calmly, looking back up from his project for a moment. “We had a good talk.”
God damn it, prick, I thought, you’re the one that’s supposed to be the fucking church boy here. Stop making my skin crawl.
“At any rate, Dad’s been drafting some more people, because their deaths are starting to get to them.”
“That’s really good news,” the red-headed teenage king said, looking up from his magic project again. “Glad it’s been working.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“What’s been working?” I asked, watching his face carefully.
“Just the new usual,” he replied, with dead eyes. “How many new recruits do you think are coming in? And who remains in leadership?”
“He’s trying to keep those numbers small,” I answered. “Even the navy, which you apparently sunk a good chunk of, is mostly crewed by Horde slaves and a handful of normal personnel. The leadership is still Barnes, Dalfrey, and the senior members of the research team—I can’t remember their names at the moment. But they aren’t expanding that circle for the same reasons that they’re being so careful about getting new rank-and-file recruits. One: they don’t like sharing power, even with someone that’s family, like me, and two: they don’t want the rest of the Malus Order to catch on, and come swooping down on them.”
“I thought your dad was the one in charge of everything?” Wes asked me, pausing completely on polishing his magic wand to focus on me instead.
I grimaced at the mental image I had just given myself, then went on to answer his question.
“Dad was in charge of our region of the United States,” I answered, “specifically, he was in charge of watching you. Specifically your bloodline. And he hated it.”
“Why?” Wes asked me, still staring attentively.
“Because it required our family to move and follow your family,” I said bitterly, “and because the Malus Order had sort of given up on resurrecting Aegrim over a century ago. Its main goals were just amassing power at the expense of everyone else. And it succeeded, on a level you wouldn’t believe if I had tried to describe. I’m serious,” I told him as I saw the challenge of his stare. “Infiltrating every government, every sector of business. Those the most under their thumb don’t even know they exist. They think they’re taking bribes from a cult like the Illuminati, or a foreign government or something. Dad was climbing up the ranks, though, and it made the other higher-ups nervous. So they outmaneuvered him by assigning him to babysitting Aegrim’s dormant line, where he wouldn’t be able to exert the same level of influence. Then John Malcolm got summoned to Avalon and had his magical adventures, and then my father saw another path to power. So here we are now.”
“So that means that he’s probably more worried about his rivals from Earth than he was with me,” Wes said, nodding in comprehension, apparently taking the whole thing about his bloodline in stride. I wondered why he was able to do that.
“Yeah,” I replied, glad he was keeping up at least, “until very recently anyway. There are two reasons for that. First, as we’ve already said, you’ve become too much of a threat, and he has to not only stop you, but figure out how that happened. Secondly, now that our bodies have all gotten stronger from leaving Earth, he’s no longer worried about the Malus Order’s own signature magic. Descending so much has actually helped him with that, along with all the other powers his people have gained. I think he’s ready for a confrontation back home, as well. Or at least he’s ready to keep his projected body at Earth.”
“Can you do the same?” he asked next.
My stomach knotted.
I was wondering when he was going to ask that.
“Theoretically, yes,” I answered, trying not to sweat. “But if they suspect anything, they’ll kill me on the spot, and my cover will be blown.”
“Do they already suspect you for bringing people here?” Wes asked next, picking up the wand he was working on. He held it in his hands, but still looked at me.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “But hardly any time has passed, since we just left Earth. If I can get back fast enough, I can make it look like I was attacked, too, since you arranged for all of our local teams to start attacking each other.”
“All of them?” The wannabe mastermind raised his eyebrow in confusion. “I only did that for like three teams total.”
“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion.
I had actually received an update from Dad that day. A text saying that we were under attack on Earth from unknown forces, and that I should hole up on Avalon with my original body for a bit.
He wouldn’t have done that over just three teams. He would have sent me a text saying to just stay low and don’t ask questions.
“Okay,” I said, after inhaling a deep breath, “in that case, I probably have a very good cover story. And I probably need to get back soon, to learn just what the hell is going on.”
“Can you do that with just a projected body?” Wes asked, repeating his earlier question. “You know, in case you die and stuff?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I can get away with that, as long as they don’t make me describe which world my primary body is on. Then I guess I can be your eyes and ears within the Malus Order, and give you another front to strike back at. That’s where you were going with this, right?”
He nodded. We had discussed that much earlier.
But Wes’ gaze softened in that moment.
“I’m not going to pretend that you and I are ever going to be friends,” he told me quietly, “and I’m not interested in changing you. You wouldn’t appreciate it, anyway. But you helped save my friends and family, so I’m going to honor our bargain. I don’t want you to die. Disappear, maybe. Go somewhere far away when all this is over. But getting my vengeance against you would require spending more time with you, and that just makes us both suffer more.”
“Agreed,” I said flatly. “Cutting you out of my life sounds like the ultimate reward.”
I wanted to go back to Earth, frankly. I had a life there, along with adoration and scholarships and girls that would be happy to be in a relationship with me if Dad would just let me do things the normal way for once.
Wes could keep his magical fairyland. I had seen too much war, conquest, and genocide here to ever appreciate it.
CHAPTER 25: BREAKING LAST NIGHT’S CLOUDS
Davelon’s Perspective
It was the best week of my life.
I had been taken to a fantasy land, been reunited with my best friend, found out for a fact that his dad was innocent all this time, been given superpowers by that girl in the funny t-shirt that kept pretending she didn’t like him, and, best of all, got to see my mother get up and walk for the first time in over three years.
Forget however I felt over being stuck on a magical alien planet. There had just been too many miracles for me to not feel thankful.
Especially when Mama was running around trying to cook for everybody, and begging that Guineve lady to help her do it. They spent most of their time together swapping recipes.
Wes had been overjoyed to find out that Mama was better. He had always taken her injury as a failure on his part. He tried not to talk about it, but I could tell he felt that if he and his dad had done just a little more on that night, maybe her legs would have been fine. It was a stupid thing to blame himself over, and I had told him as much time and time again. Now that she was fully back to normal, I hoped that he had completely let it go.
In the meantime, I got to eat all the casseroles and fried chicken I wanted.
Especially after Wes came back from the underground bearing treasure.
Because apparently, spice was as big a deal in the ancient world here as it was in Magellan and Columbus’ time.
And, like everything else here, it was magically awesome.
Guineve and my mother had gone to work cooking, and this time, they had dragged Mrs. Malcolm along with them. Wes had talked with me and Rachel a little, disappeared to go work on something, and had another meeting with Chris that had left them both scowling afterwards, as far as I could tell.
When I went to go check on Wes to make sure he was okay, I found him walking through the nearby woods. I didn’t know where he was headed, but he seemed pleasantly surprised when a swirling portal opened up and that Stell girl stumbled out of it.
Her appearance had changed again. She was now very short, very pale, with very dark hair and a slight build. This time she wore a black shirt that said ‘I’m not short, I’m concentrated awesome.’
Wes caught her, brightening immediately at the sight of her. She thanked him, quickly let go of him, and began speaking rapidly.
I turned around to walk away, not wanting to eavesdrop.
That wasn’t actually true. I did want to eavesdrop.
I wanted to know how they were doing together.
Because Wes was my boy, and I was rooting for him.
He had already told me that he liked her, and that she seemed to like him, but was having trouble coming around to it. He said she had her reasons for being shy around him, but he was confident that she would work them out.
That was good enough for me. And since my boy didn’t need an audience right now, I tried to make myself scarce.
So naturally, when I was trying hard not to listen, or look, I caught every single detail.
She had come back in a rush, clearly worried about something. She had been surprised to see Wes so suddenly, and her face had brightened with relief as soon as she recognized him.
But she immediately looked away and tried to hide it, as if literally everyone in Avalon didn’t already know her secret. But this was the same girl that had supposedly been in charge of multiple worlds all this time.
There was something more to this than just teenage drama. But again, I had to make myself scarce if I wanted to help my boy.
My ears still caught a good bit of what they were saying, however.
The first word I caught was ‘emergency.’ That was followed by ‘Air Master,’ and ‘what do you mean, you already knew?’
