Two-thousand years ago

What is this? Callan glanced up from the black carpet to the wall. Yes, there was the All is Vanity painting he’d kept in front of the elevator after taking the building in his first week since being Coronated. And there was the American Gothic painting beside it that he’d snagged from Chicago after a peacekeeping tour in his second year.

“I’m not...back,” he whispered, realizing that truth quickly due to the violet aura that hugged the very fringes of his sight. This was some kind of vision or memory.

He turned to see his private elevator exactly where he expected it to be. Its polished, glossy surface showed no reflection of him standing there, further proving his theory. Callan took a couple testing steps down the hallway. The floor felt real, like he was standing on something, but the fibers didn’t depress under his feet. He wandered briefly if this was was what it felt like to be a ghost, but the pounding of his heart told him he was very much alive.

Callan moved down the hallway as if in a dream, taking in every little detail. Over the years, he’d acquired half a dozen artworks that would’ve been once considered priceless, which technically they had been as he’d just walked in and removed them from the museums where they hung.

All of it seems rather vain now, he thought, frowning. These pieces of history were all gone. Taken with the rest of the world or destroyed in the fires of war over the centuries. He moved into his office space. It was exactly as he remembered with his desk facing away from the tall windows that looked over Atlanta. By the Dragon, it was stunning. Each window of every skyscraper gleamed in the noon sun and a blue sky. Callan bathed in the light of it.

Behind him, the elevator chimed on arrival. Callan turned to see himself walking down the hallway backwards, talking to someone.

I really do miss that jacket, he thought, eyeing the attire. Black, mostly leather except for under the arms and along the sides where it was inlaid with black scales, and finished with silver buttons and trims along the sleeves and collar.

“...simply saying the Fedir could stand to be less of a brute,” his younger self said. “The man speaks too freely in my presence.” He stepped to the side to allow the person that accompanied him into the office.

Christa... Callan froze in place, gaping like a landed fish, and drank in the sight of her. His wife was like a candleflame in both how she looked and how she moved. Bright, flaming red hair styled in a complex tail was set over one shoulder, her glittering emerald eyes were crinkled with a laugh, and her lips were pinched in a smile.

She was the most beautiful woman in the world. Halari was like that in her own way, wild and more untamed, but Christa was elegance and reserve incarnate.

“It’s that kind of attitude which get his people to love him,” Christa said, her voice perfect. It soothed him instantly on hearing it again, deep in his soul like cool water on burnt skin. “Fedir’s brash antics are always trending on Twitter. He generates a lot data and impressions over there.”

“As another Blessed Flame, you’d think he’d be more measured,” his younger self said, pulling her by the hand towards his desk. Callan moved aside for them, rotating to put himself between them and the elevator.

“Not all of your kin are like you, my love,” Christa said, cupping his face with her hand. Her ring sparkled in the light, casting its amethyst glint toward him. “Although the people do say they’d like to see you in more casual situations. Makes you more relatable, accessible even.”

“I’ll consider it,” he said, leaning into kiss his wife. Christa pulled away after a long, lingering moment and smiled warmly.

Why am I seeing this? Callan smiled sadly, watching them so happy together. As much comfort as seeing Christa brought him, this was agony all over again. Was the power just reminding him what he lost? What he fought for again now, mirrored two thousand years later? Or was this just a pleasing memory meant to comfort him before it consumed him?

“Oh, there you are,” Christa mused, looking directly at him with a wide grin. “What took you so long?”

She can’t possibly see me, Callan thought. I’m not really even here.

“Sorry my lady, got a little caught up arguing with Imani about trade between our Dominions,” an all too familiar voice said from behind him. Callan swiveled on stiff legs to meet the newcomer.

James.

James.

The Blessed Flame, once a brother to him in everything but blood, strutted inside. His gait was as haughty and arrogant as ever, his aquiline features drawn up in a smug expression. Callan’s gut boiled with hatred, so much so that he almost lunged for the man.

I... remember this day... he realized. It was just after a Communion of Fire in the floor upstairs, which meant almost every single one of his Blessed brethren were in Spire. Except Oliver, who took no part of their Empire.

In a few moments, James was going to head home to the Southern Dominion for a quick errand, then return for dinner.

“Is she still denying you a discount on coffee imports?” Christa asked, giving the man a quick hug. She’d loved him like family, and he her. Or so Callan had thought.

Kill him! he begged his younger self. Kill him now! He’s going to ruin everything! But his previous life only smiled pleasantly, walked over, and clapped his best friend on the shoulder.

“Have you tried a lighter touch?” he asked. “Perhaps a few spiritual platitudes? Imani loves those.”

“I’ll give those a good attempt,” James drawled. His hawkish face morphed into a devious grin; Callan saw the workings of his mind in his face and wondered for the millionth time how he could have been so stupid to have not seen the man’s true intentions. The answer resided in the fact that even now, standing so close to his wife’s murderer, he felt a spark of fidelity toward the man. That had blinded him once.

Never again.

He watched them chatter like family for a few minutes, part of him praying that this was all happening in an instant inside his head and not wasting real time. Then, as expected, James left with a promise to return before sunset for dinner.

Callan’s light-framed perception of this memory was dragged forcibly along with him. He didn’t take a single step, but the world shifted and moved with James. He followed the man into the elevator, then down three floors.

Where is he going? He glared daggers into the man’s neck as the lift slid open into one of the residential floors. James paced down the hall leisurely, turned a corner, then knocked twice on a door.

Byeol, the Third Blessed Flame of Melokon, Star Queen of the Eastern Dominion, opened it herself. Like her daughter, she was impossibly stunning, a result of her body being reforged by the Rains of Melokon. Her long, dark hair cascaded down her back and cheeks, framing her severe cheekbones and sharp face. But what was she doing down here?

“Have you had any luck convincing Fedir?” James asked without greeting. He stepped inside the room, pulling Callan’s focus with him, and Byeol closed the door behind him.

“The European does not speak with me,” Byeol said, her old Korean accent saturating her english. “He will not discuss your plan to remove the Champion from power.”

“What?” Callan sputtered, astounded. Judging by his memory of this day, it was only the fourth year of his reign; James wouldn’t pull his plan for almost another whole year. “I really lost them so soon?” His secret regarding the Vanguard weapons had come to light a couple months before this, so it made sense that the idea of betrayal might have seeded itself in his old friend’s mind.

But to be in the midst planning it so quickly?

“Did I ever know you at all?” Callan asked his friend, but memory-James didn’t hear him.

“It has to be you to speak with Fedir,” James continued. “If word gets out that I’m making clandestine visits to all of our kin, it’ll rouse Cal’s suspicions. Keep trying to make contact.”

“Why do we not just kill him now?” Byeol asked, arching a perfect brow at him and crossing her arms over her chest. “We can simply split his Dominion between us.”

“Because if Meldre’s forces attack,” James said, glancing out the window as if he expected golden, glowing soldiers to descend from the clouds at that very moment, “we will need Callan to beat them. We only move when that threat is dealt with. I just want everybody on the same page before then.”

“Fine,” Byeol said. “I will keep trying to reach Fedir in private. I make no promises, though.”

“Don’t fret, Byeol,” James said, grabbing one of her hands and pulling her to him. “You’ll have your power soon enough. Just be patient.” As he leaned into her, darkness appeared at the edges of Callan’s vision and began to constrict the memory.

“I won’t make the same mistakes,” Callan whispered while it all started to disappear. “This time, I’ll make sure it’s different.”

Everything went black.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Halari dashed up the metal steps in a frenzy. She checked her chamber, her ammo clips, her knife, and sidearm all while sprinting through the massive storage cavern toward the elevator bay.

“Hala! Hurry!” Viria called, waving her over. Dalvo and Kurt were gone, most likely already at the front line “The men up top are setting up defenses. It’s... it’s bad.”

“You said a hundred?” Halari asked, repeatingly tapping the call button even as one opened up for them.

“Maybe more,” Viria said. “They’re apparently just standing there. Like they’re waiting for something.”

“Well, let’s not keep ‘em, then.” Halari fixed the scope onto her rifle during the trip back to the surface. “Damnation, this elevator’s slow.”

After what fell like way too long, its metal portal moved to the side, revealing a single Quarry soldier waiting for them.

“C-captain D-dalvo sent me to grab you,” he said. The poor guy was sweating, little beads dropped from his chin to the floor. His grip on his rifle looked weak and slippery. “F-follow me.”

“Are you alright?” Halari asked, letting him lead her to the door.

“L-lady Halari...” The soldier took a deep breath. “A-are we going to die here?”

“Not a chance,” she said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We’re just going to hold. We do that long enough and it’ll end. You think you can do that? Just hold the line?”

“Y-yeah.” The soldier drew himself up, but his fearful shivering still made the barrel of his gun shake.

“Then let’s go show those bastards what the militia of the Quarry was made for,” Halari said. She took the lead at the door and walked out of it.

Fifty or so steps from their own front line, filling the main street and surrounding block with a wall of vibrant, sickly yellow and the air with that horrible, fluttering wheeze, were the gildgrown. All of them were armed with those jagged machetes and their powderguns, and some had crossbow-like weapons loaded with projectiles that had thick bulbs under their tips.

“How’re we looking, Kurt?” Halari asked, crouching down behind a barricade and bracing her gun on it.

“A bunch of them went to flank us,” the Fortian grumbled, racking ammunition into his own firearm. “Short guy’s took his squad to protect our back.”

Halari clicked her comms until Dalvo’s voice came through.

“Acknowledged, Lady Halari,” the officer said. “Orders?”

“Hold this line,” Halari said. “We have a trump card coming, so do not let them get through you. Understood?”

“Understood.” The line clicked off.

Halari refocused back on the opposite army just in time for something to happen behind their lines. They began to part for a hulking, armored gildgrown in a round mask. In one hand, it held one of those powderguns. In the other...

“Oh my god!” Halari aimed down her scope and put her crosshairs on the flat of the freak’s mask. Her finger tightened on the trigger, but she didn’t pull it. Shame cramped her hand, and more than that, Halari knew that if she fired a shot, the battle was going to start too early and her people would die.

By the Visionary, if she’d just looked harder...

“Is that Jora?” Viria asked, voice tiny and afraid.

The huge gildgrown held the small woman by the wrists in one hand, leaving her legs free to kick and drag across the street while he pulled her forward past the golden line so all the Quarrymen saw her. Through the scope, Jora looked frail and thin, and her face was terrified and scrunched up in pain.

“NO!” a voice screamed to Halari’s right. Jora’s brother, Thime, who’d enlisted shortly after her disappearance in a desperate hope to maybe find her in the wastes, sprang up and levelled his rifle at the gildgrown.

“Hold him!” Halari ordered. If they fired a shot, then battle was inevitable. All they had to do was wait for Callan. He wouldn’t be much longer.

He couldn’t be.

One of the Fortian soldiers quickly reached up with a big hand and yanked Thime’s gun down and away from him while another Quarry soldier forced him back under cover.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Halari stared helplessly at Jora as the armored gildgrown lifted her clear off the ground by both wrists to face them. The woman kicked weakly in the air, her pink-black hair flailing while she struggled. In one smooth motion, the gildgrown raised his powdergun and shot her in the face.

Yellow spores blasted across Jora, covering her head from view for a moment. She started to thrash, and the gildgrown dropped her to the ground in a writhing heap.

Halari’s heart and stomach clenched when the vines sprouted from Jora's eyes, nose, and mouth, choking her. Her childhood playmate died right there on the road, not thirty feet away.

Come on, Callan, Halari begged as Jora struggles to breathe went still. Where ar—

“NOOOO!!!” Thime screamed, rage and grief shattering the air around him. He struggled against the soldier holding him down like a feral animal. Tears streaked down his face.

“H-hold him!” Halari repeated, feeling her own little tears well up in her eyes.

Thime headbutted the soldier with the back of his skull and the man reflexively let him go to hold his damaged face. Jora’s brother, incensed and mindless, wrestled the soldier’s rifle away, then lept the barricade too fast for the Fortian next to him to stop. He ran forward a dozen paces, then raised his gun and fired.

The shot was loud, the loudest she’d ever heard.

The bullet sparked uselessly off the huge gildgrown’s shoulder, not even powerful enough to make the man flinch. He turned to his golden forces, raised a massive, double-edged sword in both hands.

And screamed.

“Shit!” Halari readied to fire. Wherever Callan was, they didn’t have anymore time to wait for his return. Because the gildgrown opened fire. She’d expected them to charge, but they simply loosed a barrage of thin projectiles. “Get down! Thime, come back!”

It was too late. Thime’s body jerked a number of times and before he turned around to stare at them in confusion and fear, she knew what she’d see. Six arrows sprouted from his chest, blood dripping from the impact wounds. The man who’d begged her to find his sister dropped his rifle and tried to pull one out, then dropped to his knees before falling flat on his face, dead.

The rest of the arrows smacked into the barricades and burst with clouds of heavy spores. None found a good mark, but Halari figured that luck wasn’t going to last.

“Open fire!” she screamed. “Open fire!” She raised to a crouch and shot at the retreating form of the armored gildgrown. Her shot also glanced off uselessly and the freak didn’t even turn back around. He raised one hand as he walked and began to wave as if directing a vehicle into a garage.

The forces of Stargazer and Scrag Fort opened fire all at once. Dozens of shots rang out across the field and many of the opposing gildgrown went down in sprays of blood and shredded cloth. Not enough. Not nearly enough. A few groups of enemies walked forward carrying slabs of some amber material and set them down to provide cover.

Gildgrown forces returned with their own attacks, sending arrows their way with machine-like efficiency. One arrow smacked onto the top of one barricade nearby, blowing spores up into one of her own teammate’s masked face. Stenna waved her hand in front of her to clear the air, then glanced at Halari and grinned awkwardly.

She’s not low enough. Halari realized, raising a hand to gesture her down.

“Looks like the masks work again—” Stenna started to speak just before another projectile smacked directly into her face, piercing the filtration device’s glassy surface and burying half of itself just under the woman’s eye. Her head snapped to the side and she fell to her back. A dead, empty pair of eyes stared into Halari’s soul.

“NO!” Halari turned back to the gildgrown army and slammed rounds at them until her chamber clicked empty. In a practiced movement, she reloaded her rifle’s magazine with a clip at her belt, then continued, popping five gildgrown’s skulls in short order. Kurt did the same with his gun even faster since he could hold the trigger down while racking shells simultaneously.

Halari caught sight of something and froze.

What the fuck is that thing? A huge object was crawling its way towards the front line. The weapon towered over the yellow figures below it. Only when it pushed past them and into the open courtyard did she get a good look.

Two massive, rectangular arms, seemingly made of the same organic, amber material as their machetes, were crossed over each other in an X-formation and set at the front of a long, blockish body. Thick strands of rope or vine extended from the tips of the arms all the way towards the back, pulled taut.

As Halari watched, a trio of gildgrown hefted what looked like a thin, yellow treetrunk up to the top and placed it into the upper vertice where the arms met.

Dread washed over her in that moment and she focused all fire on the gildgrown reaching for a lever extending from near the back of the goliath weapon. One shot smacked its leg and dropped him, but as the freak fell, it reached the lever, pulling it down with him. The vine-ropes flung forward.

Three barricades to her left came a sound of tearing metal and she whirled to see the leviathan projectile pierced clean through it. Half of it extended into the area behind the fortification; its severe tip was the size of Kurt’s booted foot. Kanu, her youngest scout, and a Fortian stared down at the collection of bulbous growths under it in both wonder and fear.

Then, the bulbs exploded. Or really, they transformed explosively. Each became a golden spike in an instant and lunged for the men standing beside it. Kanu’s body jerked as six points stabbed through him and protruded from his back. Two appeared near his upper spine, three through the area above his waist, and one shot out from the base of his skull. The Fortian didn’t suffer a better fate.

Halari choked up, not having to see Kanu’s face to know that he was dead, but forced herself to focus back on the battle. The weapon’s cable were stretching back to tautness as she shot at the trio of spear-loaders. One lurched with a bullet in his head, then the gildgrown beside it doubled over with a round in the gut.

Staggering with a bullet in the knee, the last loader barely managed to get the next spear into the groove, and the launcher shifted its aim right at her. She made out the spearhead pointed directly at the barricade covering her and Kurt. There was no way to move fast enough to dodge the attack or the spikes, so Halari shot wildly at another trigger operator until he fell.

“Oh fuck that,” Kurt growled as the massive gildgrown who killed Jora stepped up to the lever, then put one armored hand on the mechanism.

Save who you can, Callan. Halari sighed and glared at the weapon, bracing herself for impact.

Overhead, thunder rumbled.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the first shot rang out over the battlefield, and a horrid scream sounded shortly after, Captain Dalvo found his squad being rushed by a sizeable phalanx of gildgrown. One of their number was unbelievable in size. Tall, armored, and broad with a cloth covering his face under a helmet, the abnormal enemy charged with a remarkbaly long, curved, single-edged sword.

Dalvo fired at that one first from behind cover, but his bullets, grouped tightly thanks to Lady Halari’s mentorship with firearms, sparked off its chestpiece. He tried a few rounds at its head, but he wasn’t that good yet, so they missed the monster’s mad rush narrowly.

An impressive number of gildgrown went down, but their companions just kept coming at a full sprint. They’d be too close for rifles in a few seconds.

“First Company!” he yelled, standing and drawing his black machete from the sheathe on his back. The recurving, wicked-looking blade gleamed in the daylight having just been oiled and polished. “Blades ready!” The men of his squad drew their own swords and prepared to meet their enemy head on. Dalvo was very proud of their speed and efficiency in doing so.

His weapon trembled in his hand as he stared down the rush of gold baring down on his men. A few more gildgrown heads exploded from Fortian scattershot shells, but the instant after those shots faded into silence, they collided with Dalvo’s line.

The barricades helped keep them at bay enough to stop Dalvo from immediately getting swarmed by rasping breaths and fluttering cloth, but not for long. He swung, taking a gildgrown hand off, then clumsily twirled the blade and stabbed it in the throat. Another enemy took its place, cutting at him with its own machete, but his instincts, smacked into good condition by Old Bear for weeks, brought his arm up to parry the weapon away with a messy block.

“Gah!” Dalvo exhaled a grunt as he swept his pristine edge across the gildgrown’s stomach, sending a spray of its blood into the air. It doubled over holding intestines and fell to the ground. Dalvo drove his weapon into the base of its skull to finish it off, then rose. He immediately backstepped another blade coming down on him, then lunged when the gildgrown’s blow carried it too far forward. The black blade in his clenched fist sank deep into its chest before he ripped upwards, ventilating the enemy.

By no means was he an elegant swordsman after only two months of practice, but some training was better than no training and his height allowed him to attack from unexpected angles. Dalvo cut down four more gildgrown, each deathblow decreasing in quality, before he finally got room to breathe. His deep inhale hitched seeing Rilo staring up at that hulking gildgrown nearby in front of him. His childhood best friend stood frozen to the spot, sword pointing upward. But he didn’t attack or even move as the armored behemoth approached.

Battle panic, Dalvo realized, a cold feeling cramping his spine. “RILO!! FALL BACK!”

His second-in-command didn’t hear him through his own terror or the clamor of the battle around him. Dalvo shot forward and tried push through the throng to his friend, but there were too many bodies to navigate in time.

The armored gildgrown swung hard, but too early in its apparent eagerness to cut down Rilo, so his blow came short. Dalvo saw the tip of its too-long blade cut across his best friend’s chest while its body smacked his machete away.

“RILO MOVE!!” Dalvo fought through the crowd, helpless except to watch the golden length raise up, then come back down. This time, the edge’s sweet spot caught Rilo on the left shoulder and ripped downwards diagonally towards his opposite hip, stopping a few inches away from cutting the man fully in half.

“NOO RILO!!” He shoved through the last of the throng just as his friend’s body tipped backwards and landed with a crimson splash of blood to the concrete below. The armored gildgrown turned its helmet to look at him sprinting for an attack and shifted into a combat stance with his feet shoulder-width-apart while his sword stabbed up into the sky.

“I’ll kill you!” Dalvo roared, ducking a swing that would have decapitated him. He dove between its armored legs, letting his blade slice into the back of its thigh as he passed. The gildgrown grunted and fell to a knee, but expertly swiveled his waist to cut at him. Dalvo barely blocked the cut with his own edge, but the force of the swing knocked him off his feet. He rolled away from a downwards strike and scrambled to stand, then lunged to get inside the sword’s reach so it would lose effectiveness like Bear told him.

Air hissed past his dark blade as he brought it down on the gildgrown’s neck, but his opponent jerked his shoulder and slammed it into Dalvo's chest before the edge cut, sending him sprawling. Hot pain spiked up his chest and he felt something give in his lower ribcage.

Coughing, eyes wet with pain, Dalvo sat up in time to see the bulky, armored enemy rise to one leg and limp towards him, growling like a feral beast in its apparent bloodlust. The golden blade raised up again and his life flashed before his eyes. His childhood on his ashbud farmlot, his promotion by the Great Flame, his time running formations with his men.

And all his training with that gruff, friendly man.

Move, Dalvo! That was Old Bear’s voice. Never freeze, boy! When the blade came down with an enraged shout from the monster wielding it, Dalvo half-rolled just in time, stabbing his own blade upwards as he did so. The gildgrown had put its whole body into the strike, so it was bent perfectly for its neck to catch the tip of the black machete.

Gold-specked blood trickled down the dark metal in ribbons as Dalvo rose, shoving the blade deeper into his foe’s flesh. The gildgrown gurgled; the cloth over where its mouth had to be grew red spots that spread steadily. Its huge body slumped forward, but for some reason, even as it slid lower and lower, the gildgrown looked toward the sky. Dalvo barely made out the glint of its eyes behind the cloth staring upwards past him until they rolled back as his blade severed its spinal cord.

He pushed the body off his machete with his foot, then stagger-dashed over to Rilo’s corpse. His friend’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t breathing.

“Come on, Rilo!” Dalvo felt tears on his cheeks. In his denial, he tried to push Rilo’s split torso together to stop the bleeding, but it reopened when he let go. “Open your eyes, bud!” Rilo didn’t move.

Dalvo put his forehead on his friend’s chest and sobbed. He cried even as the bright day suddenly dimmed and the sounds of battle faded away. Out of the corner of his eyes, he vaguely registered every clashing figure going still and looking upwards.

But what did that matter when his best friend laid dead on the road? Dalvo sat down and pulled the cooling body into his arms, hugging its back to his chest while still trying to keep the ravine in its ribs closed. The strange, dark clouds over head that seemingly had appeared out of nowhere didn’t matter at all to him in this moment.

“Come on, Rilo, just get up!” Dalvo begged as purple lightning flashed in those clouds. Deep thunder followed the dry strikes, filling the air with enough sound to cover his sobs. “Open your eyes...”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Callan woke with his back on stone. Overhead, clouds colored the deepest midnight flashed with bolts of crimson and violet. They webbed through the sky like fingers reaching each horizon and lit the world with their colors.

He stood and brushed himself off. Was he back at the Quarry? The black stone around him looked familiar, but the landscape didn’t. There wasn’t a sign of civilization anywhere nearby, only sharp rocky outcrops poking out of the ground and broken mountains for miles around.

Definitely not the Quarry. “Where am I?” he asked the air. “Hello!” His voice carried on the storm’s breeze, but no response came back to him.

Under a sudden wave of divine weight, his soul shivered as a presence focused on him. Its scrutiny weighed down on his mind, pressing against him from all sides. Callan turned.

Lightning flashed again, chaining upwards and revealing the immense silhouette of a dragon in the clouds.

The Dragon.

Melokon, god of Domination, lord of Conquest, stood so tall that his head reached the zenith of the sky and his wide wings wrapped most of the entire horizon. The lightning flashed again to show he was moving; his head was lowering through the cloud cover on his long neck.

“My lord...” Callan fell to his knees, not fighting the tempest that sprang up around him as his god’s immeasurably large head manipulated the wind pressure of this place just by shifting.

A vast eye, amethyst with crimson spots, broke the storm directly above him, taking up most of his view and bathing him in light. Its pupil was identical to his own and fixed on him with singular focus. Melokon saw all connected to him, but in this moment, Callan knew all attention was on him.

“MY CHAMPION!” The Great Dragon’s voice shook the air and rattled the ground. Even the clouds shivered at the sound, spinning and swirling with more energy than just a moment before. “YOU ARE FOUND!”

“Hello, my god,” Callan said, staring up reverently on his knees. “It’s been a long time.”

“TOO LONG!” Melokon boomed. “I SEARCHED FOR YOU! BUT THEY HID YOU TOO WELL!”

“Indeed,” Callan said. “It was a clever prison, my lord. Made from the metal of Yavvia’s holiness. It severed my connection to you completely.”

“TRULY CLEVER,” Melokon said.

“Where are we, Greatest One?” Callan asked, looking around at the alien landscape. “I don’t know this place.”

“IT IS A DISTANT MOON,” the Dragon explained. Throughout the whole conversation, his glorious eye never moved or blinked. “A PLACE TO REST WHILE I SEARCH FOR YOUR KIN!”

The revelation stunned Callan. His god was connected to the Flames directly and drew power from the worship their followers generated. How in the world did they manage to hide from his sight?

“How did they escape you?” he asked, genuinely shocked.

Melokon did not speak again for a few seconds, but his next words sounded almost proud. Like a father who’d just watched his child ride a bike for the first time.

“THEY PROGRESSED,” he boomed. “THEY MADE TOOLS TO CONCEAL THEMSELVES.”

That was impressive. As much as Callan hated James for what he did to his Empire, their advancement in technology was undeniably magnificent.

“I will find them, my lord,” Callan said after a moment to recover himself. “But first, I need my strength back. Can you restore me?”

“YES! YES!!” The world shook with the Great Dragon’s excitement. A tendril of dark cloud swirled down from the sky to land an arms-length away and formed into a humanoid shape. “TAKE BACK YOUR POWER! RISE ONCE MORE, MY CHAMPION!”

My armor... Callan studied the swirling, flashing form that mimicked his old suit. It held out a clawed gauntlet to him, sharp fingers extended for him to take. The spikes of its crown tilted as it cocked its head, confused as to why he didn’t immediately take it back. He reached for it, but hesitated just before his fingers made contact. If I take this, will I really be able to make it different this time?

‘Save who you can, Callan,’ an echoing voice called out behind him. Was that Halari? He turned to see a thin stream of cloud split his view, then open a hole in the world. In the tear, he saw a vision of Halari facing down a giant, golden ballista. She looked angry, yet defiant. By Melokon above, she was gorgeous even in the heat of battle.

Changing things doesn’t matter right now, Callan realized. I have a promise to keep. He turned back to the mirage of his armor and took its hand.

Electricity struck his body, his mind, his very soul.

Dark cloud flowed over his arms and torso, coalescing into black, glossy metal. It trailed down his legs, armoring them completely, and crept up his neck to create his masked helmet. His hands became clawed and his feet were clad in sharp-toed boots. Last, but not least, five thin spikes rose from the top of his mask; the center one stood taller than the rest.

Power, his power, flowed effortlessly into his cells like it had never left. With a small thought, Callan tore open a hole into the Stormspace and reached inside, pulling out his weapon with one hand to hold it at its middle. The top end was a flanged mace, the bottom a wicked blade. He hefted it, appraising its weight and balance.

Perfection. Just the way he’d forged it.

He’d missed it greatly and it had missed him. Purple-red lightning arced excitedly along its handle and both lethal ends. His armor mimicked that, sparks of electricity trailing up and down the surface of the metal.

“Don’t worry, Halari,” the Dragon’s Champion said, twirling the weapon in his gauntleted hand, “I’ll be right there.”