Disciple of Vengeance by CC Rasmussen (phonics readers .txt) 📕

She exhaled, seething, and rushed ahead of him. They crossed between the fallen statues into a Trajan mausoleum, not unlike the graveyard Janis had originally chased Ruck into back at the village. Mountains of ancient metal objects lay heaped in piles, creating tight corridors littered with parts that Janis and Sciana traversed as fast as possible. “Ruck,” Janis called out. Sciana huffed and tracked the young boy through the bizarre maze. Janis stumbled behind her, his mind still swirling from his experience in the tentacle.

He nearly tripped as Sciana pulled him around a corner and into a clearing. Junk and tools lay sprawled around a large chariot, only there was no harness, the seats facing forward, with a few bars keeping them from being entirely exposed to the elements. Sciana stopped.

“No,” she said.

Ruck leaped onto the hood of the chariot. “Come on,” he shouted.

“I won’t,” Sciana said.

Janis put an arm around her shoulder. “You don’t have a choice,” he said, motioning behind them. The courtyard glowed blood red. Sciana hissed as Janis pushed her towards the Trajan chariot, his stomach finding its footing as much as his feet were. Ruck dove into the front seat and went to work on a panel of knobs, twisting and turning things underneath with a large, round tool.

“Get in.”

“You know how to ride this thing?” Sciana asked.

Ruck looked up at her like she was an idiot. “You drive a chariot. And of course not, but Janis will. Right?”

Janis coughed. “I don’t know.”

Ruck bit his lip. “Oh,” Ruck said. “Well look, it’s easy.” He hopped up on the seat behind a large wheel that extended from the chassis. “There are two pedals under here. The one on the right goes, the one on the left stops. You use this to guide it.” He pointed to the wheel.

“That’s it?” Janis asked.

Ruck shrugged. “Yeah.”

“This is ridiculous,” Sciana said.

“Malarlo made me fix it up, but he’d never let me drive it. Said I couldn’t be trusted.” Ruck smiled. “Turned out he was right.”

Janis got in the seat. “Is this the technology that you wanted?”

“No,” Ruck said. “The transponder was.”

“Transponder?”

Ruck looked annoyed. “The thing you just broke.”

Something large unseated a slew of precariously perched trash behind them. They all looked at the entrance to the clearing as the red glow grew.

“Janis…”

Janis tested the knobs. “Get in.”

Ruck settled into the front seat and pressed a button. The chariot’s heart grumbled to life. Sciana looked terrified. “You want to die?” Janis asked. She glowered at him, then grabbed the metal bar above the seats and swung herself into the back. She landed and immediately strung an arrow in her bow.

Ruck turned around. “You’re supposed to sit.”

“Just go,” she yelled. The rumbling of its heart and the feel of the wheel conjured up memories. No images, just the sense of how to turn, when to hit the pedal, and how to wield the thing. Janis hit the gas. Sciana held her footing, gripping the bar as Janis spun the chariot in circles around the clearing to face the way they’d come. The red glow loomed.

“What are you doing?” Sciana shouted.

Ruck slammed a pole in the center console forward. “Getting us out of here,” Janis replied. He slammed on the go pedal. The chariot raced forward just as the mage rounded the corner. His skin was more cracked than before, red light and blood oozing out from within the shell of a body, his eyes enraged as he howled.

Janis planned to hit him dead on, but the mage brought up his arm, unleashing a wall of raw energy that pummeled the earth between them. Janis swung left, nearly sending the chariot into a mound of ancient trash as the shock wave rippled towards and past them. He swung the wheel back to the other side, sliding the chariot past the mage as he tried to engulf them in flames. Arcs of fire poured from his hands, igniting metal and dirt and blowing pieces of the rubbish into the air. Janis swung the wheel back again, Sciana still standing just behind him, holding onto the chariot’s frame with both arms now.

“Look out,” Ruck screamed. Janis yanked the wheel to the right just before they careened into a massive metal panel, flames singing the ground just behind them and heating the back of his neck. Janis kept his foot on the pedal, twisting and turning through the tight makeshift paths.

Sciana leaned down in his ear. “You’re going back the way we came,” she yelled. A plan had formed in the back of his mind where impressions from the transponder lingered, bubbling like fiery blood. He drove the chariot through the gap in decrepit statues they’d originally entered the junkyard through, the transponder just ahead of them.

“Hold on,” Janis yelled. Foot still on the pedal, his right hand on the wheel, he leaned out the open gap in the frame and extended his hand toward the smoking tower he knew was the transponder’s mind. Electricity coiled around his outstretched hand as he manipulated the surrounding atoms.

“What are you doing?” Sciana screamed. Janis answered by hurling the bolt at the machine just as they passed it, striking it on its panel, and overloading the delicate materials inside. He swung back into his seat and sent the chariot up the sloping sides of one statue, careening over the perimeter wall of the courtyard and back into the Waste.

They landed with a thud on the hard-packed earth. The chariot shuttered with the impact. The wheels churned dirt behind them as he lay on the pedal.

“Ease off,” Ruck yelled. Janis pulled back from the pedal a little and the chariot lurched forward. He immediately hit it again, and they careened into the open Waste.

Sciana sat down. Ruck laughed. “That was amazing.”

“What were you thinking?” Sciana hissed.

The flash came earlier than he expected. The shock wave nearly toppled them, but their momentum was enough to keep them going. Sciana and Ruck both turned around, covering their eyes.

“Whoa,” Ruck said.

Despite the questions lurking in his heart, Janis grinned.

*****

THEY MADE CAMP on top of a small mesa overlooking the Waste, one of the few hills that attained any altitude at all. Sciana refused to look at or acknowledge him as she cooked their food. More skewered meat and soup. He’d offered to help, but she’d insulted his cooking and refused. The aromas made his stomach grumble.

“How did you know to do that?” Ruck asked, sitting with his knees to his chest, arms folded around them. Janis lay to his right across from Sciana, watching her as she did her work at the fire. He was languid with exhaustion.

“It showed me things inside it. I don’t understand all of them, but I didn’t need to.”

“I never knew it could do that. They didn’t let me work on it much.”

“How did you know how to work it then?”

Ruck smiled at him. “Just cause they never let me doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.”

Janis chuckled. He looked into the flames. “How did you ever get taken by them?” Sciana asked as she sliced vegetables into the soup.

“My parents died when I was young,” Ruck said. “My brother made a deal with the Society for some stuff. He was getting his business going, and to help I had to work on stuff for them. When they saw how good I was, they put me to work on more complicated things.”

“The Society?” Janis asked.

Ruck nodded. “That’s what they call themselves.”

“How many Trajan artifacts did they have?”

Ruck shrugged. “I was only ever in the back. They’d dig stuff up all the time, but most of it was useless.”

“You going back to your brother?” Janis asked.

“Yabbo no. I don’t talk to him anymore.” Ruck looked at him. “I thought… well, since I helped you out and all, and I didn’t even get to use the transponder like I wanted…”

Janis glowered. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Hey, the only reason you even got this far is cause of me. And I’m the only one who knows how to keep the chariot working.” Ruck lowered his arms and legs and leaned forward. “You owe me.”

Janis sighed. The boy was right, but the thought of having to divert any focus at all to keeping the kid alive annoyed him to no end. Visions of Motie’s fate lingered. “I’m on a dangerous quest that has nothing to do with you.”

“Yeah, it does. I’ve helped so far,” Ruck said.

“I can’t let anything get in my way. You understand? I won’t be able to help you if you get in trouble.”

“Fine,” Ruck said. “I don’t care. I can’t go back to B’lac. There’s nothing for me there. I’m the best Etheurioscaper in the whole Confederacy.” He read Janis’s sigh. “The best you’re going to find, anyway. I want to prove it. To help you get your life back. I know what it’s like to have it taken away.”

Janis looked at Ruck now with all seriousness. “So long as you understand the risk.”

“I understand.”

Janis nodded. Ruck cheered. Sciana poured some of the soup into a simple bowl before plucking two skewers from their perch. She sat back and began eating. Ruck approached the fire. “In J’Soon, a cook always serves the guests first,” Janis said.

“Well, I’m not your cook, and you’re not my guest,” Sciana replied. She chewed a piece of meat from the skewer as Ruck served himself.

“How do you two know each other, anyway?” Ruck asked. “Now that I’m a full member of the group.”

“We don’t know each other, and we’re not a group,” Sciana said through her food.

Ruck walked back to his spot. “A lover’s spat, I see,” he said, as if he had dozens of those already.

Janis laughed. Sciana looked at the boy impassively. “She has her reasons for being here, same as you,” Janis said.

“Reasons that are quickly fading,” Sciana replied.

“Why?”

She flung the now empty skewer into the flames. “Did you find the wizard, or was everything we went through back there to feed your bloodlust?”

“He nearly killed me, but I saw where he was.”

“So where is he?”

“I only remember images. Emotions.”

“Of course you do.”

“They were waiting on some kind of bridge outside of a large city. It had strange walls. The bridge was over a deep chasm. I didn’t recognize it. Metal towers. A massive wall built from interlocking pieces, topped with ballistas and arc cannons.”

“The city of Vrear,” Sciana said before eating her soup. Despite his hunger, Janis waited.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “The center of the Domain?” Ruck asked. Janis looked at him and saw the terror in his eyes. “I’ve heard stories…”

“It’s a couple of days from here, on the other side of the Peaks,” Sciana said.

“Mountains?” Ruck asked. “But we have the chariot. We could get there end of tomorrow if we-”

“No,” Sciana said, putting her bowl down with authority. “The Waste up on the outskirts of the Domain isn’t safe. Not even the Uma dare travel through the Scythian Ridge.”

“Why not?” Janis asked.

She glared at him. The anger simmering in the pits of her eyes extended out across her entire face. “It’s a death trap, filled with bandits