The Tinderbox

Chapter 1-3

“Javelins, detach and deter the TRAUMAs,” Giza ordered.

Several Javelins traced ellipticals in the sky and descended upon the approaching TRAUMAs. Their weapons were as ineffectual as rain on stone. The war machines continued to barrel toward the battle, their hardware glinting and gnashing like the teeth of ravenous beasts. In desperation, an Indiran rider leapt from his Javelin and onto a speeding TRAUMA, quickly stuffing an explosive into a g*n turret. He was rewarded for his bravery by being blown up along with the vehicle.

“Commander—” Colonel Canaan began to say before being cut off by Giza.

“I know! Javelins, provide cover. Marauder commanders, fall back.”

The Javelins efficiently fell into formation, streaming into a staggered line before the oncoming TRAUMAs. They traced a screaming arc, and suddenly a massive wall of fire rose from the desert floor, its uppermost tendrils seeming to reach the planet’s dual suns. Undeterred and unscathed, the TRAUMAs burst through the flames.

Commander Giza suddenly felt as if he were speaking a foreign language, the words as distasteful as they were unfamiliar.

“Convoys, prepare to evacuate while we still can,” he muttered. “Infantry, retreat.”

* * *

It was the sound that would haunt him. The sights were horrific, to be sure, but Everson would only ever recall them as a frenetic blur punctuated by staccato tableaus of savagery. No, it was the sound that penetrated his psyche deep enough to leave scars.

The concussions of explosions that he felt as much as heard.

The primal screams.

The swish and chunk of broadswords making contact with flesh and bone.

The sharp slap of pistols and bullets that sizzled through the air terrifyingly near to him.

Twice, he flinched at the metallic ping of slugs intended for his head but deflected instead into the magnetic gravity of his sword. Everson heard another sound cutting through the cacophony that he could not immediately place. It was the grinding of gears as the Marauders reversed into the transports.

Everson turned and saw many of his countrymen scrambling for the convoys. He needed no additional invitation, especially since the Manolith warmen seemed not content to accept retreat but continued to claim lives. Intent on the nearest entrance, Everson saw Javelins buzz into the opening. Then, to his horror, the iris door began to close.

Desperate to reach the transport, Everson could see another nucruit in front of him stumbling toward safety, a rabid warman close behind and closing for the kill. The nucruit whirled around with wild eyes, brandishing his broadsword. Everson was close enough to hear the sword ramping rapidly to full magnetic power.

In his panic, the nucruit had disregarded his proximity to the transport. He was jerked from his feet and propelled backward through the air by the attraction of metal hull to blade. Pinned instantly, he dangled by the hand that now could not release the weapon.

There was no time to save him. As the transport’s entry continued to close, Everson struggled forward, intent on his own salvation. Another enemy warman, blinded by bloodlust, clambered into the shrinking opening, firing his sidearm into the interior as he climbed.

The iris door sealed with finality, cutting off escape—and cutting the warman in half. Almost immediately, the transport’s propulsion engines ignited.

Everson recoiled from the thermal blast of the engines, but not before he saw the magnetically pinned nucruit blister and burn in agony. The convoy wobbled into the air, buffeted by an unabated barrage of enemy incendiary grenades. The transport accelerated skyward while a less fortunate one was pummeled over the precipice before taking off. It hurtled into the abyss, ablaze in a roiling ball of fire.

Before complete panic could take him, Everson heard the last sound he would remember from this barbaric battle. Something struck him hard in the head, but, instead of registering pain, he reeled with the c***k of a massive thunderclap that seemed to emanate from within his very skull. He was pitched headlong into blackness.

* * *

Consciousness came back in flickering frames of shadow and light and, for a moment, Everson thought he was home on Indira, prone on his back on the warm ground, his eyes closed as the bright light of the suns filtered through the fluttering fronds of a tree.

And then he realized he was moving. Being dragged, actually, by his feet. Everson’s eyes fluttered open and fought to focus. Indeed, the bright suns’ light beat down on his face, but it was being intermittently blocked by the hulking silhouette of whatever was dragging him.

Too confused to be frightened just yet, Everson struggled to raise his head, blinking until his eyes could filter the glare and see detail. The figure before him walked erect, making it, hopefully, a sentient being and not a beast. A dark hood hid what appeared to be a massive head atop sloped shoulders that led to long powerful arms. The creature was a good torso and head higher than Everson, making the possibility of attacking it ludicrous.

He craned his neck, and fear quickly unseated confusion. Countless corpses of his comrades were strewn in the near distance. Many were being dragged like him by the mysterious behemoths, bent and lumbering in the same direction, their ghoulish cargos in tow. To where? Everson turned his head and squinted into the still-blinding light. He instantly wished he really were blind.

Bodies were heaped haphazardly at the brink of the Grand Schism like rotting produce. More giants were silently, stoically, but steadily plucking them up and tossing them like trash over the precipice and into the abyss. Everson watched in horror as lifeless limbs flailed in the still air before falling into oblivion.

His countrymen. His friends.

This would also be his fate. An involuntary scream erupted from his throat. His ankles hit the dust. The massive creature carting him had spun, startled, to stare at his definitely-not-dead load. The face was like nothing Everson had ever encountered, and he cringed in revulsion.

It was certainly human, only more so. As in, more of everything. Albino features were swollen to bursting around a shapeless nose and a mouth that looked more like a crevice in stone. Impossibly black eyes that showed no white bubbled out from folds of flesh. Suddenly, its s***h of a mouth began to scream.

If Everson hadn’t been staring straight at it and scared senseless, he might have scanned his surroundings to find the little girl who must certainly be responsible for this silly squeal. But, no, this high-pitched, childish shriek was most definitely emanating from the mouth of the behemoth.

Repulsed, Everson rolled away, scrambling over the hardscrabble ground to the still form of his nearest fallen comrade. He snatched up the dead soldier’s broadsword, sprang to his feet, and spun to face the monsters. He slashed the air with the sword, bellowing a battle cry at the top of his lungs. It seemed it was all for show. The behemoths were not advancing. They stood, staring and swaying in place as if unable to process how a corpse could become so highly reanimated.

Everson didn’t pause to ponder providence. He turned and fled in the only direction he could. Into the desert, with only a pouch full of hydreeds for water, toward whatever fresh horrors this pitiless planet had to offer.

TWO

The surface of the Ocean of Manorain was calm and unruffled, giving no clue to the turbulent undercurrents found in its depths.

Much like the azure eyes that gazed upon the water now.

Princess Allegra stood at the rail of her lofty balcony overlooking the ocean, staring without really seeing. Those chosen few allowed to encounter the princess were always unsettled by the unflinching faraway focus of her eyes. It was as if she were looking through them to a better place beyond.

Allegra had been a prisoner in her own palace for the entirety of her seventeen years.

The person most disturbed by her countenance was her captor, her very own father, King Xander the Firm. Sadly, it was not guilt that caused his disquiet, Allegra knew. It was not knowing. Not knowing his own daughter’s mind. Not being able to read her thoughts.

It must be a characteristic of kings, Allegra decided, the need to know all.

The proof of his paranoia was obvious and unavoidable, what with the constant presence of guards and the many surveillance cameras in every room. Upon puberty, Allegra had been forced to beg for a pittance of privacy, pleading with her parents to remove the cameras from her bedchamber. It was the only battle Allegra ever remembered winning, and even then only with the intervention of her mother, Queen Nor.

No, her father had not been christened King Xander the Firm by happenstance. And so Princess Allegra took not-so-secret satisfaction in her father’s discomfort whenever he was in her presence. She knew, with bitter clarity, that the only privilege she possessed was the privacy of her thoughts and, hence, the power to project herself beyond these palace walls.

So lost was Allegra in her ocean of discontent that she failed to sense the presence behind her until she heard an urgent whisper in her ear.

“Princess Allegra, King Xander has summoned the Four Tellers.”

The princess calmly turned toward Geneva, her handmaid and also her best friend.

Allegra’s eyebrow arched upward with insouciant disinterest. “Why should I care?”

“They might change their minds. There might be something new.”

Her parents had given Geneva to her when Allegra had become a teenager, to ease the solitude of her confinement. They had chosen her carefully, an orphan who would view life in the palace not as imprisonment but providence. It was a wise decision, born of kindness and, once again, Queen Nor’s idea. Geneva was a balm to Allegra’s melancholy.

Even so, Allegra knew that her friend saw the world within the palace as a place of bounty and boundless luxury only because she had seen the worst of the real world. Gratitude could only come from comparison, and that was a luxury Allegra herself had been denied. Still, she remembered with tenderness and more than a little guilt of privilege that it had been several days before Allegra had realized that Geneva had assumed she could eat only what Allegra had left behind.

“Geneva, I adore your optimism,” Allegra said. “But I’m afraid I’m destined to remain a prisoner until the day my father or I become Inflamed.”

Geneva seemed near tears at the thought. “Don’t speak so, Allegra.”

The princess softened. “Come then. Let’s see if we can take a listen anyway.”

The pair swept silently down a deserted hall with the pretense of secrecy, even though Allegra knew it was little more than a game of make-believe. The ubiquitous eye of the camera in the corridor meant that anyone could easily be monitoring their movements.

They approached a pair of double doors. Arched and as high as the hall, they were presently ajar. Allegra held her breath and felt her heart quicken slightly. She had to admit that she still found a bit of intrigue invigorating. She peered through the gap between the doors.

The throne room was immense, with two ornate chairs sitting atop a dais, a crescent-shaped console encircling them in the front and a grand staircase leading to the royal bedchamber behind. Allegra saw her mother, Queen Nor, seated in her throne, upright in every sense of the word. Her father, King Xander, sat next to her, slightly slouched, his head resting upon his hand. Hovering behind her parents, as usual, was Chancellor Olaf. He was as long, straight and polished as the stick Allegra imagined was shoved up his backside.

Even at this distance, Allegra could see the ruddiness of her father’s cheeks. She knew that the rosy blush was not a result of exposure to the suns but, rather, could be attributed to an ever-increasing exposure to terrazka, the liquor distilled from terranuts.