Blood Betrayal Read online

  Cor’El nodded in only partial understanding as Zheng continued, “What you have is such selective control of the death you cause. You can kill both entire cities and individuals, but you can easily choose who it happens to.”

  “The people in that city, what did they do to deserve such?” Cor’El asked, more out of curiosity than any hint of humanity.

  “They were… unwilling to live peacefully under those who should rule. You of all people understand. Are you ready?”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “The city you came from, the one you call Byrverus – destroy it, utterly.”

  Cor’El paused for a moment before replying, “Why? There’s no need. I rule Byrverus.”

  “Do you really? Doc told me you’re like a caged animal. Actually ruling and supplanting the rulers are not the same, but it doesn’t matter. Those people, that place, they’re nothing to you. You’ve seen what I can do, I need to see what you’re capable of. I need to know that, if the time comes, you can and will do what you must.”

  Cor’El stood still in consideration of the admiral’s words, his eyes downcast and rolling slowly as they searched the steel floor for some wisdom. The man’s words seemed clear enough, and there was little doubt of the truth that rung within them. But still, what gave Cor’El pause was the lack of need to do this thing that was asked, more demanded. It wasn’t so much the loss of innocent life or needless destruction as much as how unimportant Byrverus truly was. The booted soldier rarely feels a necessity in crushing an anthill due to its insignificance. On the other hand, he likely wouldn’t think much of crushing it either.

  “Do this now,” Zheng’s voice interjected softly into his thoughts, “and when I return, I will help you find your mother, take you both away together. You’ll live as gods of the stars, forever.”

  As if Cor’El hadn’t already been about to step off of the precipice, these last words from the admiral helped him to leap into the abyss willfully, without hesitation. He nodded and strode back through the doorway to the corridor, his soft leather boots thudding on the metal floor with determined focus. He was fairly certain he knew which door eventually led him outside and was rewarded when he saw the countryside around Aquis’ largest city framed by a shining steel doorway. He clanged his way back down the ramp, vaguely aware that Zheng followed quietly behind him, and his boots squished almost inaudibly into the soft ground at the bottom.

  His pace did not slow or falter as he crossed the nearly obliterated field that was once someone’s farm, and Cor’El steadily climbed the small rise that put the entire city of Byrverus into view. A couple miles away, he couldn’t see the movements or daily goings of individual persons, and despite that many had fled at word of his slaying the king, he could still feel the blood of thousands who remained. They seemed to continue their lives as if nothing happened, for after all, someone must be King.

  “You wish to watch?” Cor’El called into the air.

  “I do. My ship is bouncing a signal off of a satellite overhead to record this. I look forward to watching the finer details later,” Zheng replied, his statement again full of words that Cor’El didn’t fully understand. Regardless, their meaning contained enough clarity.

  He glared at the city and its surrounding farms, uncertain as to how to begin. The great white walls and buildings within of limestone and marble shone in the summer sun as they always did, as they were meant to, a dazzling beacon meant to lead all to Garod’s greatness. There were so many ways he could wreak his havoc, so many forms it could take, to say nothing of scale, both gargantuan and miniscule. He decided to start with the first strength he knew he had as an infant, an homage to his mother and her favorite form of chaos.

  Cor’El extended his ashen gray fingers toward Byrverus in the distance and willed flame to jump from them, pushing outward. It ignited grasses, bushes and trees, continuing on until it reached the outer farms and villages. Bales of hay, crops, barns and rooves caught the blaze, and still the flames extended further, losing no substance or strength. As it closed on Byrverus’ walls, the stream set fire to clusters of buildings that made up the town immediately around the city – homes, inns and smaller temples beginning to burn. Cor’El felt the flame touch the limestone and granite walls, and he knew they would go no further. A minor twitch of his hand to the left and right, less than an inch of movement at the source, caused the coursing flame to rake over hundreds more of the surrounding buildings.

  He smiled at the destruction, his eyes alight with infernal joy as he felt the exhilaration, something his golden haired mother would also feel at the display of such fiery dominance. He felt each individual flame, regardless of its size, knowing that it consumed crops, thatch, wood and even persons. The blazes burned and grew until they were one raging inferno, and the summer breeze pushed incredible clouds of black smoke towards Cor’El and his audience, carrying with it screams and cries of the people who had not left Byrverus since his claiming of the throne.

  “Impressive, but the city still stands,” Zheng stated, and he sounded grossly unimpressed as he restrained a slight cough.

  Cor’El did not turn at the admiral’s words, but instead narrowed his eyes in consideration. Resolve borne of petulance, as is so often the case with adolescents, permeated his determination. Fine. I’ll show him, he thought.

  He raised his arms to the sky, though it was a completely unnecessary gesture, purely a grandiose affectation that felt right, and a breeze came up from behind them to blow the growing, choking clouds back toward Byrverus and its outlying towns and farmlands. The breath of wind grew in intensity, becoming a howling gale that blew the smoke to the city and then beyond, and it propelled the violent blazes up against the walls which simply would not burn. Those in attendance behind Cor’El found it necessary to brace themselves or hold onto each other lest it shove them down or toward the fires beyond. The yellow, red and orange of distantly seen fires eventually began to fizzle and extinguish against the buffeting winds, making the desolation of Cor’El’s attack plain for all to see, leaving a blackened landscape littered with charred remains that could no longer be identified.

  He defeated the walls next, though the fifty foot tall ring of granite with limestone façade represented no real challenge. It seemed to those close enough to them, that the walls themselves began to glow mutedly with a red hue that grew deeper as the seconds passed. This was not actually the case; the walls had actually changed color, becoming the deep red of arterial blood, the apparent glow actually just the reflection of the hot summer sunlight. The few remaining soldiers manning their posts above the city could only peer with befuddlement at the red upon which they stood. After a moment, the walls collapsed downward, accompanied by the sound of a great wave as it broke upon a rocky shore. To the glorious screams of those witnesses within Byrverus, blood washed through the city streets, the only remnant of the protective barrier that once stood.

  But Cor’El was not finished, for the admiral wanted a demonstration of power, and he would in fact receive it, this time in the idiom of his true father – Dahk. Closing his eyes, he searched the countryside just south of them and found plenty of willing matter to be molded as he saw fit. Intrinsically knowing that which Cor had to be told by the God of Blood, that all things are made of the same materials at their most basic level, he began to convert topsoil, hills, trees, anything he needed. Once he was satisfied that he had enough to do as he wished, he willed his creation forward, toward Byrverus.

  A low, dull roar permeated the air around them, growing in intensity and volume. It was as if the thunder of a distant storm didn’t rise and fall with sharp punctuations following the lightning, but simply rolled continuously, ominously. It grew to a consistent rumble, and the ground vibrated slightly with the coming of the sound. A great, wide smile came unbidden to Cor’El’s face as it grew to a thundering cacophony, threatening to cause deafness to those around. He heard the sharp inhalations of his spectators as they discovered wh
at came.

  “Dear God,” someone said, perhaps the translator, but Cor’El couldn’t be sure as the words were barely audible.

  A wall, wave perhaps, like that which had never been seen by anyone, except perhaps in nightmares, charged monstrously toward them. All present had seen breakers at some beach in some land on some world, but this thing dwarfed the greatest of them tenfold, a hundredfold. The onlookers, their petrifying stupor abating, scattered in a vain search for anything that would protect them, anything that would give them cover, but it was upon them too quickly. Death bore down upon them as the writhing mass of millions of gallons of blood stormed into them. Their shock magnified as it passed right through them, leaving all unharmed, Zheng’s ship undamaged and even the ground under their feet undisturbed.

  The incarnation of red death spared no one and nothing else as it continued toward Byrverus and destroyed what little still stood after Cor’El’s burning, sweeping up forlorn survivors as they searched the ruins. Everything it collected circulated and transformed within it as the wave continuously rebuilt itself just as it appeared to break, inexorably closing on the unprotected city. Thousands of people screamed and cried out in unison, and he could feel their blood as they closed and barricaded doors and hid under beds. By the time it reached Byrverus, his fabrication towered at least twice as tall as Garod’s greatest temple, a true testament to the power of Dahk and Cor’El.

  He nearly cried out in ecstasy when it crashed down upon the city, easily demolishing everything and everyone it touched. Buildings collapsed or were torn apart, streets flooded red and bones crushed. All it destroyed incorporated back into it, causing the breaker to crash again and again upon the lost metropolis. The gleaming palace spires tumbled down to the plazas below, and even Garod’s temple could not withstand Cor’El’s fury, buckling under the onslaught. Even at the distance at which they stood, it was easy to watch the calamity.

  When it was done, nothing shown for miles that a great city had ever stood next to the widest point of River Byrver. Only a shallow lake, almost an inland sea of blood, sedately wallowed as it slowly drained red into the river, a red that the people of southern Aquis and Roka would one day remember as the last remnants of a once great city.

  “Wonderful,” Zheng breathed, now standing beside him, and it was perhaps the first emotional word the man had spoken.

  Cor’El turned to face the admiral, feeling substantially larger than the shorter Zheng. His pride in his power and joy of the slaughter began to dissipate into embarrassment at the tightness in his breeches that those behind him seemed discrete enough to ignore.

  “I’m impressed,” Zheng continued. “We will make great allies. I must go, now, but when I return, I’ll take you with me.”

  “And my mother?”

  “And your mother.”

  Dahk

  Doctor Harold Brown leaned back in a rolling, mesh office chair, staring at the tiled drop ceiling as he waited. He’d spent thousands of years of watching, planning, finding a way to bring it all together, all to come to this interminable waiting. Part of it was the watched pot concept – for thousands of years he didn’t care about time, because he knew it was all a game of time. Now, he was so close to bringing the pot to a boil, and the simple waiting for others to do their part drove him nuts. Ignore the fact that he was finally degrading like the others, data decay having finally taken its toll.

  The lab was quiet. No – quiet was an incorrect assessment. Quiet still indicated some degree of activity, some sort of sound or noise still being produced as work or research continued. His lab was completely silent except for the almost imperceptible whistle through the left side of his sinuses as he breathed while reclined with his hands behind his head. Doc had been so still for so long, the proximity motion lights overhead had long darkened, having detected no movement for at least ten minutes.

  Admittedly, he only needed to desire someone else in the lab with some task or another, and it would certainly be so. Shit, it didn’t even need to be work related; he could easily cook up one of those perky little grad students that he had lusted after so often. The truth was that Doc was beginning to enjoy sulking in his solitude, a trait he had seen become more prevalent in the gods the longer they stayed in their data prison. He shrugged ever so slightly, and the LEDs overhead snapped on in their sudden awareness that life existed within the lab. The blinding white blasted the backs of Doc’s eyelids, causing him to cover them with an arm.

  “God dammit.”

  The phone rang obnoxiously about seven feet to his left. It was a “modern” electronic phone system, programmed with all sorts of departmental extensions, hold, transfer and conference call functions and voicemail. Yet some asshole decided to give it an old school rotary phone ring at a volume level of about nine million, possibly the most aggravating thing available except for a submarine’s battle klaxon.

  “God dammit.”

  Doc uncovered his face and blinked a few times until they finally adapted to the now bright lab. He leaned forward in his chair to plant his feet firmly on the ground and began to walk his chair over to the offending device. After about seven seconds, he cursed his own moronicism in the vain attempt at laziness. It required far more effort to half crab walk the chair across to the phone than it would have to simply stand and walk over to the damn thing. For that matter, if he really just did not want to get up, he could’ve turned around and pushed off to just glide over to it.

  Suddenly glad there was no one around to witness what had just happened, he answered the phone on its thousandth ring, “Yeah.”

  “Doctor?” came Zheng’s voice with just a hint of confusion.

  “Yeah?”

  “Considering I am the only person calling you on this channel, I would expect you to be more respectful,” the admiral chastised, his normal poise now fully intact.

  “Yeah, well, I expect a lot of things. Did the egg take to the boy’s DNA?”

  “As expected. Cell reproduction has begun.”

  “That’s great,” Doc replied dryly, not one iota of approval in his voice. “So, can you come get me now?”

  “Not yet, Doctor.”

  “What the fuck is the hold up?”

  “Doctor, I would suggest you mind your tone,” came Zheng’s calmly dangerous reply.

  A retort came to Doc’s lips, but he held it back only through enormous force of will. The fact was this – his part was done, and Zheng had no need for him anymore. It was entirely likely that the Iron Chinaman’s overly bloated sense of honor was the only thing that would have him live up to his end of the agreement, but if Doc pushed that too far…

  “You’re right. I apologize, Admiral.”

  “Accepted, Doctor. To answer your question, I need to take my newly forming clone to the edge of the system. I won’t be long, about three months your time.”

  Doc inhaled sharply, sudden panic at the thought of being left behind in his computerized hell filling his guts. He devoted every ounce of his being to make his next words sound calm and reasonable, not the begging of a desperate man, “Can’t you just come get me now?”

  “No,” came the icy response.

  “But… why not? Where do you keep going?”

  “Two problems, Doctor. One – your body is not finished… cooking yet. Problem two – need to know basis.”

  “Can’t you just come retrieve my data? Put me in my body when it’s ready?”

  “I have precious little data room left, and for now, you are safe right where you are.”

  “But -”

  “If,” Zheng continued loudly, demanding Doc’s silence, “I were to download you now, and if something were to happen to my ship, you would be lost forever. It is safer for you this way.”

  “Is that even likely?” Doc asked, genuinely concerned for the health of his one and only escape.

  “Commanders Chen and Dixon have made things… difficult for me.”

  “I see,” Doc sighed in defeat.


  “If all goes well, it’s just a few months, Doctor. Trust me.”

  As the line clicked, went dead and returned to an old twentieth century dial tone, Doc envisioned a wicked grin on the admiral’s face and stubby horns adorning the man’s head. “I suppose I don’t have any choice,” he replied as he hung up the phone.

  Cor

  They had stopped at the outpost and farming community once known as Fort Haldon just long enough for a hearty meal, a night’s rest in a real bed and to trade out some of the more worn horses. They set out immediately into the pass through the Spine which had changed so much in the last few years. The ground was perfectly flat and level all the way to the other side, packed down so hard as to be almost paved.

  At some point, it had been decided that the miles between Fort Haldon and Menak’s holdfast should be traversable in hours, perhaps one day at most. Cor remembered one harrowing night long ago when he had done such a thing at great risk to riders and horses alike, but with the improvements to the pass, it was now a largely safe and easy thing. Aquis had gone to great expense, first by plowing the entire pass several inches below the surface to turn up any rocks or other such obstacles. Smaller ones had been easily disposed of, but occasionally a large boulder would be discovered, just part of it lurking near the surface. Some of these took substantial amounts of men and horses to remove. What followed was months of flattening, packing down and sometimes tearing up to make as good a road as any in Aquis. Great saucers of water were laid upon the new road to make certain that it was perfectly level from one end to the other, and it was corrected where it was not. Finally, enormous oak posts were driven into the ground, about eight feet apart, along the edges of the road and down its entire length, and the workers attached sturdy, wide planks to these to make a solid fence. This prevented rocks and other debris from occasionally falling to block or damage the road, as well as prevented the occasional black bear or other fauna from harassing travelers. Potted plants, bushes and flowers had even been planted along the fence to break up its monotony.