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

figures leaped up from behind cover on both sides of the tall ridge beyond. The ground ahead was littered with corpses and the overturned carts of past adventurers. Arrows and javelins flew around them. Janis held up his left hand and focused, feeling the world around them from his perch in the Shimmer. He channeled the symbiote’s power to create a telekinetic shield above his head, creating it with his own mind so that each explosion sent feedback through the Shimmer like someone had just punched him in the face. He nearly lost control of the wheel as Sciana fired back. Ruck grabbed it and guided him around an overturned Uma caravan. Janis saw bleached bone, red sand, a ruptured tarp, and broken wood. Then it was gone. They were about to hit another piece of wreckage. He wrested the wheel away. “Get down,” he yelled.

Janis veered left around a downed airship, his feet maneuvering from pedal to pedal so fast he was sure to make a mistake any second. Sciana screamed something, but he didn’t hear her. Keeping the shield up was draining him. He hadn’t known he could experience feedback like that. Couldn’t do it and drive at the same time. He saw a gap in the massive airship. Without thinking twice, he veered into it, the rigging and metal overhang providing some haphazard cover. He lowered his shield.

“What if there’s not a way out?” Ruck asked.

“I’ll make one. Just make sure this thing keeps running.”

“Hussars,” Sciana yelled.

“What?” Janis screamed back.

Sciana bent down. “The Hussars are here,” she yelled. He looked back for the briefest second, but he didn’t need to. One of their armored Trajan chariots was already pulling up on their right, its scarlet flags waving defiantly in the stale air, showing the crossed scimitars that was their sigil over the armored chariot.

“Shit,” Janis said. He gritted his teeth as the half-buried part of the airship’s deck between became completely submerged below the sand. Their chariot was all metal plates haphazardly attached to a frame, not unlike their own, only it was larger with spikes arrayed along the roof and front. A panel opened and a bolt of energy streaked between them and the airship’s rigging, just missing them and pummeling into the metal of the distant hull. The ruin groaned. Sciana hissed and fired an arrow into the hole. A man screamed, and the panel closed again.

“Go faster,” she yelled.

Three panels opened. Two Hussars leaned out, bolt casters in hand. Janis didn’t wait to see what waited in the third. He shoved the chariot into a lower gear and slammed on the pedal, thrusting them ahead just as the Hussars unleashed their attack, energy bolts sending reams of super-heated metal spinning in the tight corridor. Sciana held on, regained her balance, and fired at one before he could finish slinking back into cover, catching him in the chest. Janis struggled to cut them off, but they gained too quickly. Another bit of deck rose between them. He looked back. Two more Hussar chariots were catching up fast.

“Janis,” Sciana screamed.

“Take the wheel,” he said to Ruck.

“I don’t know how,” the boy yelled back.

“You want to die? Take it.”

Ruck reached over and grabbed it as Janis reached up, grabbed the rail, and swung his body up, twisting around to face the armored chariot careening behind them. The left panel on the front had already opened, revealing a massive arc caster bending down to aim at them. Janis summoned up the symbiote within him and felt it clutch to his body like a drowning man, sucking in all the life energy from him it could. He flung his right arm out, hurling an edge of telekinetic energy at the front that sliced into the metal, carving into it but not through it.

Sciana fired an arrow through the gap. A man screamed inside. He felt the Hussar’s mind receding to the Shimmer. Janis reached out and consumed it instead, feeding it to the symbiote rather than relying just on his own energy. The force of it hit him in his spine like a jolt of soma. He gripped a piece of reality from the Shimmer and, with one strong motion, commanded it up. The hard earth answered, dry rock jolting underneath their chariot, sending it into the ceiling above them and back down as a tumbling ruin. The chariot just behind it couldn’t dodge fast enough and careened into it. They exploded, blowing Janis into the dash as Ruck nearly lost control. Janis flipped around. “Get out,” he yelled. Ruck hopped back into his seat as Janis shifted and grabbed the wheel, regaining control. Sunlight poured in from the end of the airship ahead.

“There’s still one to our right,” Sciana yelled.

“We’re near the end, get down,” he screamed, but the sound of something ahead drowned him out. Ruck yelled into the roar. Janis held onto the gear stick, ready to lower it again if needed, when they careened out from within the airship.

The suns slapped him in the face, dazing him for a second, but he threw up the kinetic shield, anyway. He felt the blasts hit against his mind as it caught whatever they were throwing at them, including something that made his spine tingle and his thoughts turn to mush. The world devolved into impressions he couldn’t understand. A figure here, a shadow there; a rock, a crevice, a tree, a ruin. Two people were screaming. What were their names again? He was moving quick, that much he knew. Was that safe? He felt something alien writhe inside him, gaining ground on his weakened mind. That was something to protect against, but he couldn’t remember why. Every why seemed unimportant now.

“Janis,” a woman yelled. That was his name, wasn’t it? Yes. Janis of House Aphora.

It came back to him then. A surge of memories hit him like a gust of ice. Renea, Brethor, his mother’s corpse lying dead on the table, bleeding out, older brother begging for mercy, the arrows, the downed retainers, the laughing Arawat mercenaries, the smell of it, the stench.

Orinax.

He came back to see the chariot was hurtling towards the wall of the ridge, marauders throwing everything they had. A group of them to the right were wielding a machine that was perched on the back of a horse-drawn wagon, a kind of dish smothered in dust. The symbiote writhed with anger and pain. He knew intuitively that was what had hit him.

If I help you, it’ll feel our connection and close it…

They knew now they were dealing with a sorcerer, and they had ways to handle it.

Janis hit the brake and turn the wheel hard to the right in front of the lead Hussar chariot. Its front panel opened. Janis careened to the other side of it just before it would have crashed into them, plunging towards the ridge wall ahead. The chariot died. The bandits above were circling to get a better position.

Sciana pat the back of his seat. “Now, now, now!”

“I can’t,” he said. He restarted the chariot instead, its heart coughing and wheezing but not pumping. “Ruck!”

Ruck dove underneath the dash. Sciana fired at the bandits above, catching one in his leg and sending the others behind cover for at least a moment. The Hussar chariot was turning. In seconds, it would be on them. He heard Sciana curse just before she fired at the thing’s front right tire.

The arrow hit. The Hussar chariot sped up towards them, death waiting in the black pit of its open front panel. Then the arrow’s barbs popped open, shredding through the wheel. The chariot lurched to its left, casting sand over its roof and front as it veered to their right and towards the cliffside.

The heart started. He heard Ruck tap the inside and hit the pedal. He was getting weak holding up the shield. Like he might pass out any second. Janis hit the go pedal with all he had.

The chariot’s wheels spun and caught. He kept it going as close to the cliffside as possible as arrows and bullets rained down on them. Janis lowered his arm.

“Shield us,” Sciana yelled, trying to fire back.

“I can’t,” he wheezed, but there was no way she could hear him.

“Janis,” she screamed.

He motioned to the bandit’s vehicle with the dish. “Bring that thing down.”

She changed her aim at the last second, unleashing an arrow that just missed one of the dish operators. They ducked for cover behind the thing, twisting it to stay aimed at the chariot as Janis sent the vehicle hurtling towards the tight corridor that led out into the rest of the Gash and away from what Sciana had rightfully called a deathtrap. An arrow hit his back right shoulder. He grimaced. Warmth spread down his back as he tried to keep the chariot aimed down the length of the cliff wall. Sciana fired again, but the dish operators were behind cover. The bandits above were getting in a better position. Janis figured he had seconds, not minutes.

“Hold on,” Sciana said before wrapping her legs around the frame of the chariot and lowering her arms to the ground. He tried to turn and look, but the arrow sticking out of his back made turning difficult. They were only a few lengths away from the exit, but it wasn’t enough time. The bandits lifted their arc throwers and bows.

“Sciana,” he screamed.

He saw her lift herself back up out of the corner of his eye, one of the bulbous javelins the bandits had been using in hand. She notched it in her bow, took aim, and fired.

He dodged the first energy blast from above, veering the chariot to the right and away from the cliff wall as the blue energy ball struck where they would’ve been, flinging melting rock and debris into the air. Some of it cut into his left side, blasting across his cheek as he crouched low to avoid the arrows puncturing his seat and the inside of the chariot. He heard an explosion and saw that Sciana had hit the dish squarely on its surface, shattering the metal and throwing the operators onto the ground. Janis lifted his hand and felt the symbiote respond to his urging. The next energy pulse hit his barrier and sent a spike of pain through his head, but it protected them. They made it through the pass and out of the clearing.

“Sciana, are they following? Are there more Hussars?”

He turned and saw her splayed across the back seat, two arrows in her chest, blood gushing out of her mouth. In all the excitement, he hadn’t noticed the symbiote squirming with anticipation at the chance to feed on her life.

“Ruck, get out here,” he yelled. The boy said something, but he couldn’t hear it. He could feel something gaining behind them, looked back and saw a giant armored chariot, bigger than those they’d destroyed before. At least double the size. It crashed through the downed chariot behind them with ease as it followed them into the ravine’s entrance. A turret on the top aimed with an arc caster, the energy weapon swinging left and right, trying to find the best angle to fire at them. “Check her.”

Ruck crawled out from under the dash, his eyes widening when he saw Sciana in the back. She was barely hanging on. Janis could feel it. “Help her.”

“There’s nothing,” Sciana said. She coughed as she tried to move. Janis followed the twisting ravine as its walls narrowed. He could feel bandits racing to keep up above them.

“Don’t move.”

She lurched forward, then fell back. Ruck helped her up. The Hussar vehicle gained on them.

Sciana glared at him.