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

what they say,” Ruck said. “But I’ve been out there. Other than all the drugs they use, I don’t know what they’re worshiping.”

“Oh, yeah?” Janis eyed Sciana.

She scowled. “We’re to wait here for Brethor.”

“We could wait for weeks. All the while the Arawat are searching for me. Their people will come through here, eventually.”

Sciana crossed her arms, her bow still in hand. “Eli said we’re not to continue on our own without him.”

“He read my note?” Sciana shrugged.

“I could help you get out there,” Ruck offered. Janis and Sciana broke their standoff to look at him. Sciana scoffed. “No, really. I’m probably the only one other than Yaffar who could, and you can’t trust him. He’s a lying crazy person.”

“What would that cost me?” Janis asked.

“Janis-”

“Easy,” Ruck interrupted. “I want what I helped them build.”

Ruck’s posture and confidence was a spitting image of Motie. Janis inhaled. He felt an odd mixture of emotions, like he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “And what was that?”

“I grew up in the junkyard, helping Ifir sell stuff to the pilgrims and such. He had me work for them for a while, doing repairs on Trajan stuff…” he trailed off, eyes peering into some dark memories he didn’t want to consider. “Anyway, that’s all over now. But I know where it is. I want something I was working on. It’s only fair. I’m the reason it’s usable.”

Janis pretended to think for a second. “Done,” he said. Ruck cheered.

“I say we stay.”

“We’re going,” Janis replied. “The boy will lead us.”

Sciana glared at him. “I don’t follow your orders.”

“Then stay and wait for the Arawat.” He turned and bent under the opening in the chassis, stepping out into the suns. “Alright, Ruck. We’re going back to the inn to pick up my horse, and then you show me the way to this cult. You’ll get what we agreed, but you do as I say. Understand?”

“Long as you make good, we won’t have any trouble,” Ruck said as he bounded out behind Janis.

“It’s my horse,” Sciana said.

Janis faced her. Her green eyes glowed from under the shade, the scar on her face like a visible marker of her rage, completing a picture of savage beauty. “Do you wish to fight me for it?” She didn’t move. Neither did he. Ruck looked between them. “You should know already that Brethor mentioned this cult and that he was looking into it himself. Perhaps he needs our help. Either way, our goals are aligned. We risk more waiting here for him than we do looking into it ourselves.”

She glared at him for a few seconds more. “Fine,” she said, seething. Her shoulders relaxed. She followed them out from under the chassis. Ruck ran ahead of the two of them, and she passed him without looking at him. “From now on, you and I decide together. Understand?” He didn’t respond, and she didn’t wait for an answer.

The suns had stretched to either side of the horizon as they approached the inn. It was late afternoon, and the bazaar was noticeably less crowded. “Maybe we should wait,” Sciana said, looking up at the sun. “The Waste will be dangerous for us to travel through by night.”

Ruck said something in response, but Janis didn’t hear it. The symbiote writhed in his chest. It recognized something nearby. A powerful being. Malevolent. Knowledgeable. It reached out for him through the Shimmer. He remembered calling out for its help as the Shimmer took him.

Janis Aphora… A miasma surrounded his senses. You should have died when you had the chance… a Lethi hovering in his mind’s eye like a dark cloud. Its voice reverberated through time and space as though refracting through countless unseen dimensions. Janis scanned the faces of those still walking the bazaar as he slunk beneath the thin shadow of a shop they’d just passed. He recognized the voice, the presence… a name emerged: Qinra. Member of the Yabboleth, the pantheon of god-beings that lived within the Shimmer. The god of cunning through power. His family’s patron.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Ruck said something, but he ignored it as he submerged his mind into the Shimmer, feeling for the Lethi’s edge. He fumbled, tried again. The Shimmer swirled around him, memories and dream images colliding with potential futures and pasts in a deluge of experience. He had to stay calm. Focus. He felt hot. Strained harder. Yes, there was someone nearby. No, not someone. Something. A sapien consumed by Qinra himself, serving as host to the god-being’s avatar in Urias. He could feel the man’s pain even though he couldn’t make him out among the sapien minds around him, picture Qinra’s essence swirling in his brainstem, manifesting as growths that sunk deep to keep the god-being’s purchase in Urias. Janis winced as he glimpsed the mage’s suffering. It bled into the Shimmer like a gushing wound. Qinra was hunting him. Why? He thought to answer, then inhaled sharply as he felt further. He felt Orinax’s power pulling the god-being's strings. The wizard had willed Qinra to come for him, and the god had answered.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. Sciana turned to him, angry. Her expression melted into concern.

“Well, yeah. We knew that,” Ruck said.

“What is it?” Sciana whispered.

“Qinra’s here.”

“Who?” Ruck asked. Sciana’s eyes hardened.

“Why? How?”

“Orinax,” he replied. She sidled up next to him as she inched her bow into a ready position. Janis wasn’t used to being in the Shimmer and awake at the same time. Everything was happening all at once, a myriad of futures and possibilities opening before him. The experience was disorienting, like living in a waking dream. “We have to leave.”

“We need our supplies from the inn. I’ll run and-”

“No,” Janis interjected. “The horses. Now.”

He rushed through the crowd toward the outdoor hitching post. “How is that possible?” Sciana asked as she strode behind him, her head on a swivel. “Isn’t Qinra a god of your people?”

“Gods can be bought,” Janis replied. Ruck muttered to himself about how they were crazy. A wall of customers smothered the entrance to the inn. Janis could feel their pursuer somewhere inside. Sciana saddled her horse as he approached Cth’tata. As she tried to pull away, a black stallion past her nipped at her neck.

“What are you doing?” Sciana whispered.

Janis walked around Cth’tata and touched the stallion’s back. It didn’t move. The symbiote tightened inside him. “Buying us a head start.”

It didn’t need any encouragement. He channeled its store of energy to suck the air around the horse’s mouth, suffocating it. Sciana hissed in horror as it collapsed to the ground. The other horses became frantic. Cth’tata reeled from him as he pulled her towards him and leaped onto her back.

“Monster,” Sciana said, her eyes filled with hate. Someone in the crowd cried out as they scattered from the entrance, some of them pushing to the ground. A man in a dark cloak stood like a sun blaring out from a passing cloud. Qinra’s power and hate surged through the mage into the Shimmer for all who could feel or see it.

“Run!” Janis yelled. Flames crested towards them. He lifted his hand and used the last of his stored power to shield them as the wave crashed against it. Pain arced through his brain, the lattice of atoms protecting them held together by his mind’s will and the energy of stolen souls, sending the feedback directly into his senses. Sciana scooped Ruck onto her horse and fled. He grit his teeth as Cth’tata galloped into the square behind them. Burning hair, screams behind him. His head trembled. The mage’s attacks bloomed like a fourth sun. They fled through the gate, serenaded by alarm bells and screams.

“What the Shimmer was that?” Ruck yelled, terrified.

Janis lowered the shield and slouched against Cth’tata’s back. It could have been five minutes or an hour between then and when Sciana slowed the horse down and helped him sit upright in the seat. “Your nose,” she muttered. He brought a trembling hand to his face and wiped the thick blood from his upper lip and around his mouth.

“It’s nothing,” he said. He flicked blood onto the sand. Looked at Ruck. “You know the way?” Ruck nodded. “You two go in front.” She sidled up and grabbed his hand. He could feel the terror and anger, but see the pity. That was what hurt the most. “Go,” he said.

“You need to take care of that,” she whispered.

He pulled his hand away. “I will when we get there.”

“You’re no good to me if you die before we see Brethor.”

“Just worry about getting me through this shithole,” he said, with more bitterness than he meant to. He spat blood onto the ground. “Let me worry about the mage.”

She pressed her lips together, nodded once, then faced the open Waste. He hoped she didn’t see as he clutched his chest, the symbiote’s tendrils sinking deeper within him.

#

Ruck led them across dry hillocks with only the wind as company, turning them northeast shortly after fleeing from B’lac. He knew the way using the moon and a few landmarks. He was confident, but after a few hours, Janis wondered if the boy wasn’t all confidence and no substance. Finally, his concerns evaporated when Ruck tapped Sciana’s side and told them they should dismount. They were close. Janis dismounted, peering up at the canopy of stars sweeping over the lip of the dune like grains of sand.

Sciana was nervous, Ruck less so. Being so young made the activity in B’lac exciting more than anything. Sciana had no such illusions. To her, the killing of a horse was worse than killing a human. Horses were regarded with a religious zeal among the Uma. That he’d killed an enemy’s horse to save their lives didn’t change that. It also made her realize how dire their situation was. He could tell from the way her green eyes avoided his when he faced her, by the feel of her gaze on his back when he looked away. She must be wondering what else he could do. The Uma hated magic and recognized the Yabboleth the way they recognized most foreigners: with limitless suspicion. This was something beyond her ability to comprehend. Even he was surprised and horrified by it, but it had saved their lives. That had to count for something. Best if she didn’t know the real cost.

“It’s just north of this hill,” Ruck said. It was the longest sentence any of them had spoken since their escape. “They have people on a tower out front that keep watch. I didn’t know if you wanted to sneak inside.”

“It’s a ruin?” Janis asked. Ruck nodded. Janis looked at Sciana. “What do you think?”

“Most of the ruins in the Waste are unstable. Sneaking in would be dangerous.”

“I know how it’s laid out. I’ll show you.”

Sciana sneered at the prospect. He didn’t like it either. Ruck would be unpredictable in a true fight. They might have to find out just how unpredictable at some point, but he’d rather avoid it.

“Do they accept pilgrims?”

“Sometimes people came to visit. Usually caravans, to trade and stuff. Patrols from J’Soon trying to catch Waste crews. I don’t know about pilgrims.”

“We’ll have to risk it.” He held out Cth’tata’s reins to Sciana. “Scout the outside. See if you can find any other ways in.”

“You’re a fool if you go in there alone,” she said. She didn’t reach out to accept the reins.

“I might be a fool whatever I do.”

Sciana grabbed the reins from him. “If they are in league with the Arawat, they’ll