Chapter 34

Rone flew toward the Terra army as fast as he could. More and more spiders were escaping the tornados that he’d created. He needed to figure out a new plan or the Terras would be finished. He looked around, trying to find something that would stop the things but nothing presented itself. Frustrated and angry, he dropped out of the sky and landed about thirty feet in front of the Terra army. The warriors that were turned by the spiders were already dead but combined they killed almost fifteen warriors before they went down.

Rone cursed inwardly.

What do I do?

He did the only thing he could think of. He brought up a wall of condensed air that kept the spiders at bay, at least for the time being. There didn’t seem to be a lot of options. He knew he couldn’t keep the wall of air up for long. Eventually his strength would give out and the spiders would rush through, trying to crawl up him so they could take control of his body.

What can I do?

His sharp eyes focused on the Blak Soldiers. They were all standing dead still. The spiders had stopped crawling out of their mouths now but the damage was done. Everyone of them showed no traces of humanity in theirs eyes anymore. Not even the faint glimmerings of their former selves that had been there before.

Now they were just empty.

Sunlight glinted off the metal of their mechpaks and Rone thought it was a shame to be so close to all those nanos and not be able to use them. If he had his nanos back, he would be more effective. Air was a potent weapon, but it was remarkably useless against the spiders.

The nanos! his mind screamed at him.

If his bird beak could smile, it would have.

His body shimmered again and he resumed his human form. His bright silver leg was still there, supporting him and was the only source of nanos he currently had.

They’ll have to do, he thought to himself.

With every ounce of his will, he directed and controlled the nanos in his leg. They responded to his demands almost immediately. The leg burst apart, leaving him stumbling and hopping around on one leg while at the same time trying to keep the wall of air up. It was extremely difficult to do in his human form. He was much stronger in his Sentinel body.

He sat down in the sand to conserve some of his energy. It was easier than hopping on his remaining leg and helped him focus better.

Several times, the wall looked like it would fail as his body grew weaker but somehow he managed to hang on.

Just a little longer.

The spiders hit his air shield and were surging up and over each other as they tried to swarm ahead. Rone could see them getting higher and higher up the wall. Their sheer numbers were terrifying. Pretty soon, there was nothing but a dark, surging press of ugly bodies that blocked out his view of almost everything. He could no longer see his nanos as they raced to each available mechpak.

He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were doing their job.

The nanos were flying toward mechpak after mechpak. They would communicate with the hexagonal box’s master controls, open the vents, and then take control of the nanos inside. Normally, security protocols kept a person's nanos free of someone else's control but the mindlessness to the Blak Soldiers was also their weakness. They didn't have enough of their minds left to stop Rone's nanos from taking over. They did this several dozen times and pretty soon, there was a huge cloud of them hovering several feet off the ground.

There was no reprogramming needed.

There was no chance that the nanos would implode this time.

Soon each one was under Rone’s control.

They raced back across the desert to where their master was sitting on the sand. A wall of spiders was trying to get to him and soon, they would be able to. The nanos, although not human and therefore lacking emotions, had very sophisticated artificial intelligence software that allowed them a measure of control over their actions and thoughts, for lack of a better term. They grew…concerned….upon seeing their master in such a dire situation and raced to alleviate that concern.

They flew over the wall just as several hundred of the creatures were toppling over it. They reached Rone and swirled around him.

Rone watched the nanos come flying toward him, feeling relieved. He’d been positive his plan would work but of course there was always that nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him that he'll fail. He was happy to see that the irritating voice of his doubting side was wrong and that his plan was, so far, working.

He stood up awkwardly. It was really hard to get off the ground when you only have one leg to stand on, he realized.

He held out his hand and the nanos surged toward him. He focused his mind, aligning it so that he was in sync with them. When he was positive that he had established the necessary connections, he focused on what he needed to create.

This was the tricky part.

The concentration needed to create his machine took away from his concentration that he needed to maintain the wall. As soon as he focused on the nanos, the wall disappeared. Thousands (or possibly millions) of the spiders fell through the air only to land on the soft sand and start racing forward. They were incredibly fast and Rone bit back a pulse of revulsion as he watched them come at him. He knew what they wanted and he knew what they could do. He wasn’t anxious to be a part of that. He wasn’t anxious to see it happen to any more people either.

He pictured exactly what he needed in his mind. He pictured every circuit and motherboard. He pictured every exact piece he needed. When everything was there, ready to go, he gave the command to his new nanos to create it.

The giant cloud of nanos flew together, combining and merging to create exactly what Rone had called them to make. It took almost five minutes, the pieces appearing and fitting together like a puzzle. When it was done, a machine about five feet tall and three feet wide plopped onto the sand. It was very boxy with cylindrical projections jutting out of the tops and sides. Coils wrapped themselves around the cylinders and it hummed and buzzed with electric current.

“Let’s see how you like a little homemade lightning,” Rone said.

The humming grew louder until it was almost a whine.

He hopped over to it, tapped in the command code, and engaged it. He focused his will and a cushion of air sent it rocketing into the air. Almost immediately clouds started forming around it, growing darker and darker. They whirled around and pulses of blue light flashed out of it. A second later, a huge, jagged lightning bolt flew out and crashed into the mass of spiders still coming toward him. Thunder ripped through the air a second later.

The lightning smashed into the spiders, blowing them apart and electrocuting them at the same time.

Rone found a satisfying pleasure in using the lightning against them. He was sure Wilhelm was behind the attack that had resulted in his amputation. He could remember the way his flesh smelled as the electricity coursing through his leg burned and fried it.

There was a hideous burning smell now, but it was the rancid smell of the spiders burning this time. He hoped Wilhelm could feel each of their deaths. He hoped that bastard could feel all that pain.

More bolts of lightning tore through the air, hitting huge clumps of the ugly spiders. They came in a constant stream and left the burned and twisted bodies of the dead ones behind. Pretty soon, the desert was carpeted with them. Some still twitched but most were black and curled in on themselves.

It took another forty minutes to kill the rest. The lightning seemed to have a mind of its own. Each one would hit the press of spiders and only them. Not one strayed.

When it was over, he sat down heavily on the ground and willed the machine to stop firing. The humming, whining sound abruptly quit. The dark clouds dissipated and the box fell to the ground. A cloud of sand puffed up into the sky and wafted over to him. He had to shield his eyes for a moment.

He slowly opened them and looked around. Crisped and blackened spiders were everywhere. There were several hundred of them lying only nine or ten feet from him. He shuddered inwardly when he realized how close they’d gotten to him.

He looked farther and found Keiara walking toward him. Beyond her was a literal field of dead spiders. They looked like they stretched on forever and he saw several spiraling columns of smoke lifting into the air.

The Blak Army was gone now. Wilhelm must have seen how the fight was going and pulled them back. Rone wasn’t sure how much use he was going to get out of them now. Having thousands and thousands of spiders filling your body and then erupting out of it had to take its toll.

But that was something he could worry about later.

For now, they had won this battle.

The war, however, was far from over.

“Are you okay?” Keiara asked.

They were sitting around a fire near the center of the Terra camp. Night had come in full and the stars blinked at them from the heavens. Tarvo, Heari, and two Warlords that Rone had been introduced to (Chibbi, who seemed to despise him, and a wizened man named Soqart) sat with them.

Rone looked blearily at her. He had overtaxed himself out there and was feeling it now. He could barely keep his eyes open.

“I’ll be okay,” he responded. “That just took a lot out of me.”

She, on the other hand, seemed fine. Watching her out there, he realized that she was far stronger than him. She had greater endurance when she was using her magic.

“You’ll get stronger,” she told him, grasping his hand as she laid her head on his shoulder.

Rone looked over at Tarvo, distinctly uncomfortable, and found the big man staring intently at him. There was definitely a displeased look in his eyes. He was pretty sure the Chieftain was going to jump at him and try to rip his throat out.

Someone else, however, almost did it instead.

“I won’t stand for this!” Chibbi yelled, her young face full of rage. She glared spitefully at Rone and her hand gripped her ridiculously large war hammer. She picked it up and chucked it.

Rone didn’t move, mostly because he was too tired. He watched the big weapon come flying at him and then crash into the sand at his feet. It stuck there, the handle jutting out.

“I won’t sit here at the same fire with a Rook,” the girl spat. She got up and stalked over toward Rone. She bent down and picked up her weapon, hefted it, and then turned and walked off.

“Is there a problem?” Rone asked, his voice slightly slurred.

“Your people killed her family,” Heari told him.

“I am sorry to hear that,” he replied.

“It wasn’t you that killed them. You have nothing to be sorry for,” Keiara told him, reassuringly.

He smiled tiredly at her.

The night wore on and Chibbi never returned. There was a very real tension hanging in the air and no one wanted to talk. The Terras present, Heari and Keiara excluded, stared at Rone like he was some kind of exotic, unheard of animal.

“I know what we are, but I still don’t understand some things,” Rone said, finally breaking the awkward silence. “Keiara and I are Sentinels. Some kind of mystical guardians, right?”

He directed the question at Heari and watched her nod her head.

“Why am I one? From what I understand, this is some kind of magic. Rooks don’t do magic,” Rone said.

“The prophecy transcends petty distinctions such as that,” Heari spoke.

“Okay, I guess that’s pretty much presented itself to be true,” Rone told her. “So why is it that Keiara transformed back but got stuck in the world between and I didn’t?”

“She was sent there to learn. Of the Sentinels, she is the strongest. She had to come to know the enemy and the extent of its capabilities,” the old crone said.

“Why her?” Tarvo asked, abruptly. He nearly growled the question out. “Why my daughter?”

“The prophecy does not answer to you, Tarvo. It simply is,” Soqart spoke up. Even his voice sounded wise, Rone noted. “It chose her as it chose this young Rook. They are clearly not affected by the problems between our two races. Maybe that, more than anything, speaks to why they’ve been chosen.”

“That is one reason, yes,” Heari nodded, smiling toothlessly. Her blind eyes turned toward Soqart and she nodded her head in praise. “Both Keiara and Rone have an unusual blindness to race distinction. Keiara saved the fallen Prince, even though he was an enemy, and Rone fell in love with her. They both, I’ll wager, also have a strong desire to help people in need and a lust to explore the entirety of Purga.”

Both Rone and Keiara stared, agape, at the woman.

“It’s true,” Rone told everyone, thinking of how free he felt when he was flying over Purga, getting to see everything.

“Don’t bother answering, I already know that one to be true of you, daughter,” Tarvo replied, actually letting out a small laugh. He couldn’t even count how many times he had to discipline her for running off and trying to explore every new place and thing.

“These are qualities that the Sentinel side of you possesses. The guardian spirits have been inside both of you since birth,” Heari intoned.

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Rone asked.

“I would think that was obvious,” Heari replied. “You must find the third Sentinel.”