Chapter 51 - A bolt from the blue.
The National Library of Midar occupied the capital's central quarter as a single multi-tiered complex, raised skyward by austere rows of white stone columns. The light-colored walls reflected the light pouring through the tall stained-glass windows, filling the interior with multicolored bands of gold, crimson, and azure.
The stained glass depicted scenes from the Republic's history: the Great Transformation, the first Archons, the distribution of light among the Sann tribes. Vaulted ceilings rose dozens of meters, joining into carved stone arches, beneath which drifted a barely perceptible draft.
Between rows of massive oak shelves stood statues of celebrated warriors and statesmen, carved from white marble and thinly gilded at the armor and weapons.
Some figures were frozen in battle stances with blades raised, others held scrolls or books to their chests, still others stood with hands folded behind their backs, holding fixed stares on the visitors as they entered. Between the columns and statues stretched long reading halls, divided into tiers by wooden staircases and narrow galleries with carved railings.
Students and ordinary residents of Midar moved between the shelves almost soundlessly, walking the marble floor in soft shoes meant only for this place.
Conversations passed in low voices and short phrases, before the speakers parted for different sections in search of the volumes they needed.
At long wooden tables sat dozens of readers bent over open books and scrolls, some making notes with fountain pens, others comparing notes with each other, still others simply leafing thoughtfully through pages. Library attendants in light formal robes silently wheeled book carts between the rows, placing volumes on their designated shelves.
The silence here had a quality all its own — dense and all-encompassing, broken only by the creak of floorboards, the rustle of turning pages, and the occasional dry cough somewhere in the depths of the hall.
The light from the stained glass gradually shifted across the floor with the movement of the sun, tinting the spines of the books in shades that changed throughout the day.
On one of the library's far tiers, seldom visited because of its distance from the main staircases, there was a small nook between two tall shelves. A narrow window let in diffuse light without the direct colored patches of stained glass, leaving the space muted and calm.
Here, at a small wooden table pushed flush against the wall, sat Eveline.
In front of her lay a thick textbook in a dark binding titled Fundamentals of the Unified Field and the Nature of Pandorum, open roughly to the middle. Eveline's eyes moved along the lines, pausing on individual paragraphs, after which she jotted short phrases down in the open notebook beside her.
The pen in her hand moved in quick short strokes, leaving rows of cramped notes along the margin of the page.
On her lap Rexy lay curled up, paws tucked beneath him and nose buried in his own fur.
His transparent wings were folded tight along his body, and his sides rose and fell evenly in rhythm with his breathing. Every so often the creature's hind paw twitched in his sleep, claws scratching at the fabric of Eveline's skirt without ever waking him.
Finishing another paragraph, Eveline stopped her pen above the notebook and sighed.
She pressed her palm to her forehead, elbow braced on the edge of the table, and shifted her gaze from the written page to the open textbook before her. Her brows drew together over the bridge of her nose, and her lips pressed into a thin line as she studied her own notes tangled with the lines of the book.
Her fingers beneath her palm pressed lightly into the skin above her brow, as if that could help hold an escaping thought in place.
Eveline lowered her head, looking at the sleeping Rexy, then carefully slid both palms beneath his body and lifted him slightly from her lap, setting him down beside her on the free edge of the table. Rexy did not wake, only tucked his paws in tighter and went on breathing evenly and steadily.
Eveline rose from her chair silently and walked along the tall bookshelves, arms crossed behind her back, slowly studying the spines as she went.
Behind her came the hushed whisper of two girls her age who recognized a familiar face. "That Zero, the one who somehow got into the university for Conductors", rustled between the shelves, after which the girls leaned their heads together and went on whispering.
Eveline's gaze slid over them for a fraction of a second — lingering no longer than usual, out of old habit — before she returned to studying the shelves.
From nearby came a calm male voice.
"Eveline?", he said.
She turned around, faint surprise on her face.
"Oh, Mr. Uro, good day", she replied.
The man towered over her, differing from the Heliosians in his light chestnut hair, dark skin, and brown eyes. A plain build was hidden beneath airy white robes with neat gold embroidery along the collar.
"And a good day to you, Eveline. How are you? Keeping up with your studies?", he asked.
"Yes, my studies are going steadily, thanks to the books you bring me. Though lately I've been oversleeping a lot", she replied, laughing a little awkwardly as she trailed off.
Uro laughed quietly, crossing his arms in front of him with a book held between them.
"That happens sometimes, because a person works hard. Back in Aeris-Lund, students often oversleep their classes because they can sit up all night over their drafting boards...though in my youth I did more drinking", he answered, which made Eveline laugh a little louder.
"By the way, how's your father? I haven't seen him in a while, and I think I ought to come visit you both"
"He's doing well, he's on leave right now, and as I remember, he's back on duty in two weeks...And I'm sure he'll be very glad of your company!...and so will I", she replied with a smile.
Uro smiled warmly, then turned his gaze to the girls standing off to the side and watching them sideways. Both immediately turned away and went back to whispering the moment he held his gaze on them.
Uro sighed and looked back at Eveline with the same gentle smile, while she herself didn't even glance toward the girls.
"I see you're reacting better to things these days", he said.
"Seeker Marion's book spoke of wisdom practiced in the Shogunate of Mizu. It said: a person must learn to separate what he can control, namely his emotions, thoughts, reactions, from what he cannot control — other people's opinions, the weather, the future. In this way, a person finds harmony more easily and reacts less to what isn't worth reacting to", she replied.
"Well now, and it actually works for you?", Uro asked in surprise.
Eveline sighed lightly, looking away and tilting her head.
"Not always, but I'm trying to make a habit of it."
Uro smiled and placed a hand on her head, stroking her hair lightly, while his other hand went on holding the book Eveline had noticed.
"What book is that?", she asked.
"Oh, this...this is actually for you", he said, holding the book out to her.
Eveline took the book in her hands, finding neither an author's name nor a title on the cover. Only a worn brown leather cover, its edges torn in places, held old yellowed pages within.
"It's an unofficial translation of ancient records, made by an acquaintance of mine many years ago. He abandoned it near the end, since it was never more than a hobby for him, but I thought you might find it interesting to know what people wrote several generations ago", Uro added.
Eveline flipped through a few pages and quickly ran her eyes over one of them, then raised her gaze to Uro with a smile.
"You came here because you wanted to give me this book?"
"Yes, and honestly, I was hoping to buy my way out with it, since I still haven't managed to find you another seeker Marion book..."
Eveline sighed with mild disappointment, looked again at the book in her hands, and shifted her gaze back to Uro with an understanding, accepting smile.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Uro", she said, bowing slightly and pressing the book to her chest.
Uro turned with a smile and waved goodbye.
"All right, I should get going, I have a meeting with an important person. Hope to see you later, along with your father", he said, and walked off calmly.
"Of course, see you soon", Eveline replied, waving back, then lowered her gaze once more to the book in her hands.
At that same time, over the Golden Desert stretched endless rows of dunes, rising in sharp ridges beneath the scorching midday sun, while thin streams of sand poured down their slopes, leaving behind wavy patterns shaped by wind over centuries of heat and desolation.
Over this sea of golden sand, in a stretched-out formation, moved the Twelfth Detachment, gliding low over the dunes on the backs of their beasts, while Lieutenant Irvis led the group ahead, gazing thoughtfully forward through the shimmer of heated air rising off the sun-baked dunes.
Anna flew closer on her beast, drawing level with his flank and tilting her head toward him.
"Hey, do you really think whoever that bastard was talking about actually survived, and is out there in the desert somewhere?..", she asked, not taking her eyes off the lieutenant's profile.
Irvis held a pause, still tracking the horizon line ahead of him with his eyes, while his hawk's wings cut evenly through the hot air.
"I don't know...but the tracks suggest his words weren't a lie", he answered, not tearing his gaze from the dunes stretching ahead to the very edge of sight.
Anna exchanged glances with the other fighters behind her, and Artus spoke up, leaning forward in his saddle.
"But does a man even exist who could take down two Basilisks alone?...Unless it's Archon Lucia...", he said, while his gaze wandered over the monotonous sandy landscape below.
Olen added with a smirk, turning to his comrade over his shoulder.
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"Yeah, Lucia could easily handle ten at once, don't compare her to some stranger", he said.
"I wasn't comparing her, I was saying the opposite — that there couldn't be a man as strong as she is...", Artus replied, frowning slightly at how his words had been twisted.
Irvis threw a cold sideways glance at him, without shifting his position in the saddle.
"And how many people have you seen outside of Helios, to state with such certainty that no one stronger than her exists in all of Prime?", he asked, then let silence hang between them for a few seconds.
Artus said nothing, looking away toward the horizon and gripping the reins tighter.
"Besides, even in Helios itself there is one Lucia isn't equal to, and all of you should remember that", Irvis went on, sweeping his gaze over the whole detachment behind him while each fighter met that gaze with a short nod of understanding.
All the fighters looked ahead thoughtfully, saying nothing in reply, because each of them understood without needing it spelled out that this was about the chief Archon of Light, whose name was rarely spoken aloud even among their own.
"Still...whether this stranger is as strong as we assume or not doesn't change the fact that an outsider is approaching Midar...and our task is to find out who it is before he causes us trouble. Understood?", Irvis asked, sweeping the ranks with one last demanding look.
"Yes, sir", they all answered in chorus, bowing their heads almost in unison.
"Good, now let's continue the sur-"
He didn't get to finish, because from beneath the sand directly under the detachment a column of earth and dust tore upward with a deafening roar, surging dozens of meters into the air like an explosion, and right after it a powerful energy blast struck through the dispersing cloud, ripping the wall of sand apart from within and hurling a wave of scorching air at the fighters.
The magical beasts bolted in all directions in one chaotic lurch, forcing their riders to grip the reins and fight for control of the animals' tilting bodies, while the whole formation broke apart into silhouettes scattering in every direction.
High above this rupture, far higher than the dust column itself, Aren already hung in the air, thrown there moments earlier by a Basilisk's strike from below, deep underground, when the beast-god's body, smashing through the cave ceiling like a solid battering ram of flesh and bone, carried Aren through the mass of stone and sand to the surface and went on carrying him further upward on the momentum of the breaching blow, until the Basilisk burst through the same opening after him and shot into the sky behind and below him.
Irvis, sharply correcting his hawk's wings to level it out, raised a stunned gaze to the sky and saw a colossal black shape rising out of the dispersing cloud of sand, crowned with broad wings and horns branching from its skull like a sharp palisade, while above it, already tipping into a fall, was a man whose body down to the waist was covered in a half-shattered white stone shell, the fingers of both hands glowing with blue translucent claws.
The Basilisk let out a roar, spreading its wings to their full width, along whose membranes a thick electric charge of orange glow began to gather, preparing to meet its falling opponent from below.
Aren, using the height gained from his own flight through the earth, dove straight down at the beast-god, pressing his arms to his body to speed his fall, then passed right over the monster's back and unleashed a series of quick slashing strikes along its spine and the base of its wings, continuing his fall together with it toward the ground.
The Basilisk, roaring, sealed the torn flesh almost at once, its scales closing over the wounds in the space of a breath, then twisted its body sharply mid-fall and aimed its central horn at Aren, gathering a new charge of destructive energy at its tip, while both continued hurtling toward the ground at growing speed.
Irvis noticed the creature's turn first, and while the rest of the detachment froze in shock, watching the fight unfold in midair, he sent his hawk into a sharp dive, trying to intercept the fall before the charge could tear loose from the Basilisk's horn.
When the energy blast struck toward Aren after all, Irvis reached him at the last moment mid-fall and pulled him aside with a sharp maneuver, while the charge itself carried on past both of them and slammed into the slope of the nearest dune, setting off an explosion and a shockwave that rolled across the sand for hundreds of meters around them.
Irvis, with a growl, hauled the stunned Aren toward him, yanking him onto the saddle with one arm, while Aren, now seated behind him, couldn't gather his thoughts or make sense of what was happening around him after his headlong fall through solid earth and open sky.
Aren looked at the unfamiliar rider in front of him, then swept his gaze over the other riders closing in on them from every side on the backs of winged beasts.
"Who are you people?", he asked instinctively, before he'd had time to make sense of his own situation.
"NOW ISN'T THE BEST TIME FOR INTRODUCTIONS!", Irvis shouted, banking his hawk sharply aside in a steep turn, dodging another blast that tore past in a horizontal line right along the bird's wing.
Aren twisted back over his shoulder and saw the Basilisk hurtling after them in fury, tearing the air with beats of its broad wings.
Artus and the rest of the detachment watched in horror, trying to keep their distance as they flew behind Irvis and Aren.
"W-What do we do?!", Artus shouted, trying to yell over the roar of wind around them.
Anna answered with a snarl instead of words, spurring her beast sharply and tearing ahead of the whole detachment in one headlong burst.
She drew a short rod fitted with a photocyte from behind her back, then fed energy into the crystal, and sharp energy blades materialized on both sides of the shaft, forming a double-edged spear. Drawing her weapon arm far back, she flew in close behind the beast-god and, with a loud exhale, hurled the spear straight at the base of its spine.
In that same instant the creature's tail lashed sharply aside, batting the projectile away in a wide arc, while the Basilisk itself glanced back mid-flight, then turned its whole body in one fluid motion and shot straight at the shocked Anna.
Irvis saw the turn and with a shout of "DAMN IT!" wrenched his hawk around, driving it back toward the point of attack at full speed.
Anna wrenched her beast aside and bolted away, but the beast-god was already closing the distance with beats of its broad wings, gaining on her faster than she could pick up speed.
"ANNA!!!", Irvis shouted, drawing his own weapon and feeding it energy to materialize a second spear.
Anna looked back over her shoulder, horror on her face, seeing the beast-god's jaws already opening wide behind her, wide enough to close on both her and her mount in a single bite.
Irvis tried to aim on the fly, but the jolting and the high speed kept him from focusing his throw, until the spear was suddenly torn from his hand in one sharp wrench.
Aren pushed off with a powerful shove that drove the hawk down through the air from the recoil of his leap, launched himself forward, and flew straight at the Basilisk, dodging another tail strike in flight, then caught the spear in both hands and drove it between the beast-god's shoulder blades in one fluid motion.
At the last second the creature arched its head down and fired another blast straight into the sand, leaving behind a long chain of explosions that rolled across the desert in a single unbroken line.
The beast-god wrenched its head toward Aren in fury, while he kept holding the embedded spear firmly with both hands.
The Basilisk swung its tail sharply toward its own shoulder blades, aiming to knock its opponent loose, while Aren yanked the weapon free from the creature's flesh and pushed off into the air, dodging the tail strike and soaring higher above the beast-god's body.
In that instant Aren's fingers brushed unintentionally against the central crystal on the shaft — the one holding Irvis's energy, the source of the blade itself. A strange sensation passed through his body in a sudden pulse, as though the very nature of the device had opened itself to him from within. The world around him slowed, while the Basilisk turned to meet its opponent, still falling slowly from above.
Aren shifted his gaze to his own hand gripping the spear, then channeled his own energy into the crystal, and it instantly blazed blue instead of its usual yellow.
The materialized blades of yellow energy flared with a dry crackle, blinding everyone present with the sudden change of color, and when the light faded, Aren's hand held a transformed weapon, revealed to the whole detachment: a blue energy blade, twice the previous length and width, looking denser and more powerful than an ordinary magic spear.
For Aren, time snapped back to its normal speed in that same instant — the Basilisk had already gathered a new charge on the stump of its horn and released it without delay. Aren dodged the blast with a sharp evasion mid-fall, then closed the distance to the creature in a rush and stopped its gaping jaws again with a pair of Ursus-paw claws, seizing the beast-god's head at arm's length and pushing himself upward with his own body.
Gaining momentum from the push, he immediately dove back down and, with one powerful swing of the spear, sheared off the Basilisk's central horn at its very base.
The beast-god answered with a roar, beginning to thrash its wings wildly in every direction and gather a fresh electric charge along its membranes.
Aren, who'd managed to spring back to a safe distance from the creature, snapped a spiked tentacle forward, the one he'd gained after his victory over the creature from the Cursed Forest, and caught the severed horn still in midair.
Twisting his whole body around, he hurled the trophy straight at the Basilisk, distracted by rage and by gathering its new charge, too late to notice its own horn driving into its lower jaw and piercing straight through its nose.
The beast-god, in shock and fury, struck out with a wall of lightning and a series of wild, undirected wing-beats, while Aren snapped out the spiked tentacle again and, hooking it around the creature's tail, pulled himself around behind its back, staying clear of the chaotic discharges.
The fighters of the Twelfth Detachment held back at a safe distance, having decided not to join the fight.
The Basilisk, unable to pull the spike from its own snout and forced to keep its jaws clamped shut against the pain, twisted around, only to find Aren already pulled up close to the tip of its tail, gripping the scaly ridges along its spine.
The creature swung its tail in fury, trying to throw its opponent off, but that was exactly what Aren was after, since the sharp jerk carried him back up above the beast-god, while the spear held in one hand was already drawing back for a new, powerful strike.
The Basilisk swung a wing in terror, trying to bat Aren aside, but he sheared off part of the membranous wing in one sharp stroke, then continued his fall and planted a foot against the inside of the creature's neck, whose body, carried by its own momentum, ended up turned snout-first toward Aren.
Both bodies were falling together now, since the Basilisk had no time to repair its damaged wing, though that no longer mattered before Aren's cold stare, fixed on the beast-god's eyes, incapable of doing anything except charging its own body with electricity again and trying to reach its opponent by striking both wings inward at once.
Aren caught both wings with his Ursus-paw claws, forcibly holding them spread apart, then swung the spear back behind his own head with both hands and channeled even more energy into the crystal, making the weapon's shaft shudder under the mounting strain.
At the right moment the spear grew even larger, taking on the shape of a giant blade, which Aren used like an executioner, splitting the beast-god's head with one powerful blow right in the middle of their shared fall.
A few seconds later, an enormous body crashed down onto a sand dune with the force of an explosion, throwing up a tall column of dust over the point of impact. The whole Twelfth Detachment froze without a word, staring with wide eyes and parted lips at the scene unfolding before them.
"He's...insane...he must have died from a fall like that himself...", Anna muttered, while Irvis went on staring silently at the crater, shock frozen on his face.
When the dust settled, the eyes of the whole detachment widened even further at the sight of the head of the Basilisk King, lying apart from its own body, while Aren crawled out from under the sand with a wheeze and heavy effort, feeling fractures throughout his body and spitting blood onto the sand in front of him.
"He's still alive!", Artus shouted, and had already lunged to help, but froze in place, seeing the same thing the others had already noticed.
The beast-god's body began slowly dissolving into streams of iridescent energy, which drifted through the air straight toward Aren where he lay, filling his body from within with every passing second. The whole detachment stood frozen, watching Aren gradually absorb the creature's remains, until nothing was left of it but a deep crater in the sand.
Aren rose to his feet, took a deep breath in and out, then cracked his neck with a calm that made it seem as though moments earlier he hadn't just survived a fall from the sky at the edge of death. His body had fully healed, and his expression turned serious as he looked first toward the empty crater, then down at his own open palm.
Closing his eyes and focusing, Aren breathed in deeply, then glanced back over his shoulder, and from behind his back a pair of giant wings tore free, materialized from blue translucent energy, a brief electric arc running along their surface.
With no idea what was happening far away in the desert, Eveline sat at her table reading her new book, running a finger along lines set in dense, archaic type.
Her gaze, faintly surprised, lingered on one of the paragraphs, and then she muttered a barely audible phrase under her breath.
"What...what nonsense is this...", she said, leaning closer to the page.
Her eyes moved along the lines, uncovering the observations and records of long-vanished times, as she tried to reconcile the new information with what she already knew, though most of what she read left her doubting its truth and logical soundness.
" 'Ordinary creatures...now providing feed and existing as livestock...could be blessed and born as great guardians equal to great heroes'...So, ordinary beasts could be reborn?...Who in their right mind would even write something like that...", Eveline muttered, shaking her head.
She turned the page and went suddenly still, and her brows drew together over the bridge of her nose.
"Titans?...Beast-gods...wait, what...And...an Archon?....they wrote about him too?!", she thought, bending lower over the open pages and beginning to read more carefully than before.
" 'Beast-gods... descendants of titans...yet born of them not by flesh, but granted through power'...what the hell kind of translation is this, that makes no damn sense?!", she fumed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with the fingers of her free hand.
" 'And the Archon placed a part of himself into a despised serpent, who was born as a guardian protecting those who despised it' ...so...the Archon created a beast-god out of an ordinary serpent?...Wait a moment...", Eveline thought, then rose abruptly from her chair, the legs scraping against the marble floor, and Rexy woke with a start, jerking his head up with wide eyes.
She strode quickly to the right shelf and found the volume she needed within seconds, then dropped it onto the table with a loud thud, startling Rexy again and making him flinch all over. Eveline began flipping through the encyclopedia of Helios page by page, running her finger down the columns of small print.
"Come on...where are you...come on....serpents...magical beasts...basilisk...basilisk...", she muttered, moving her finger faster along the lines.
She paged through the section to its end, read closely into the final entry's description, then turned the page one last time and went still, holding her breath for a couple of seconds.
"There it is...black and most dangerous...'the Basilisk King...class — beast-like god...exact habitat unknown...extremely aggressive and dangerous'...but if it's a guardian, then why is it so dangerous?...", she thought, leaning back against the chair.
Eveline leaned her back against the wall, still seated at the table, then lifted her gaze to the vaulted ceiling and sighed.
"How tangled this all is...", she said, closing her eyes for a moment.
Rexy slowly climbed onto her lap and settled there, tilting his head to one side, plainly baffled by what was going on.