Krox Rises Read online

  Aran also contacts Ree, and shames her into coming with them to help Ternus, because she feels responsible for both Frit and Nara’s escape. She’s brought a dozen spellfighters, further augmenting the relief force Aran leads to New Texas.

  Speaking of Frit, she’s brought her sisters to the Heart of Krox, where they were originally born. When she gets there, it’s nothing at all like she’d hoped. Her people are mindless slaves, incapable of language. Her sisters and she are alone, and have nowhere to go.

  Cue Nebiat’s arrival. She shows up with her son Kaho, the dude who lost a hand to Aran back in Spellship. Frit realizes they’ve been manipulated. They have nowhere to go except with Nebiat, and so they all agree to serve her. Frit goes along with it despite her reservations, and quickly finds that she has an ally in Kaho, who also hates Nebiat.

  Nebiat’s goal is to locate something called magibombs, which is a super original name, I know. I’m quite proud of it. Anyway, she wants to use these magibombs to destroy Colony 3, thus robbing the entire sector of its food supply for decades.

  Meanwhile, Voria puts out a call to Shaya, and to her shock, many, many people answer. Drifters and Shayans alike leave their world to help New Texas, and she ends up with a city full of people living inside the Spellship. Many are life mages, and quickly finish cleaning the ship. They also never lack for beer, since Drifters.

  Nara arrives at the abandoned facility where Ternus trained the Zephyrs. It’s been abandoned, but she’s hoping to learn more about her past, and has no idea where else to go. Only a few of her memories have returned, but more are coming back.

  Not long after she arrives, she finds her old combat suit, rifle, and pistol. Talifax appears and she asks him why he wanted her to come here. She gets her answer when Frit and Nebiat arrive. Talifax placed her in Nebiat’s path intentionally, though Nara has no idea why.

  This next part was hard to write, because Nebiat is devilishly smart.

  If she captured Nara she’d kill her, instantly. Because letting her live is muhahaha villain stupid. However, she gets a missive from dad, and Teodros tells her not only is she not going to kill Nara, but she’s going to give Frit the Talon, and the magibombs, and have them destroy Colony 3.

  Nebiat protests that you don’t give super important tasks to underlings, but Teodros insists. He tells Nebiat to bring the rest of the Ifrit back to the Erkadi Rift, effectively removing her from the war for the time being. She’s pissed, but reluctantly obeys. She knows her dad is planning something big, and just hopes whatever it is doesn’t screw her.

  Aran arrives at New Texas, and we get some of the most fun combat I’ve ever written. Aran and his company combat drop into the Ternus equivalent of the Pentagon, called Fort Crockett. They punch through the Krox assault, and everyone gets to show off. Looooots of pew, pew, BOOM, RAWR. Good stuff, I’m telling you.

  Ternus dispatches a reporter called Erika Tharn to record the drop, and Tharn follows the company in as they punch through all enemy opposition. They get inside, and the footage is broadcast all over the sector, finally giving Ternus hope that they can fight back against the Krox.

  Unfortunately, while Aran makes it in, the best he can do is hold the Krox at bay. Sooner or later they’ll overwhelm the facility. He deals with waves of incorporeal wights and some powerful demons, but if they don’t get backup they’ll only be able to keep them at bay for so long.

  Frit arrives at Colony 3 fully intending to destroy it. Nara realizes that the reason Talifax placed her in Frit’s path was so that she could persuade Frit not to do it. Nara succeeds, and Frit realizes that killing hundreds of millions of people, and causing billions more to starve is going too far, no matter what Shaya did to her and her sisters.

  Frit’s sister, Fritara, a total teacher’s pet sent by Nebiat, tries to kill Frit. Nara is forced to execute her, and saves Frit’s life. Just when things are looking up, Ree and her squadron of spellfighters arrive. They’re here to hunt Frit, and Frit doesn’t know what to do.

  Nara suggests contacting Ternus and offering to turn over the bombs, so they do. They surrender. Ree attacks anyway. They pilot the Talon into the Ternus battle stations, and Ree ends up getting shot down by Ternus. She dies. It’s very sad. Not like, were Crewes to die level of sad, but more like…she could have come around and been a cool ally.

  Meanwhile Voria goes to New Texas, even though she knows that this is giving her opponents time to spring some sort of trap. She gets there just as Aran has finished up like nine chapters in a row of straight combat with endless demons. He’s holding on, but barely.

  Voria casts a spell from the Spellship which engulfs the entire world, and effectively counter spells the binding holding all the undead and demons in check. The corpses collapse, and the demons turn on their masters.

  Aran and company finish saving the Ternus command structure, and everything is happy, yay! We’ve beaten the Krox.

  Here comes the trap.

  Teodros’s whole plan was to hit Shaya. Eros was right. Teodros is the Guardian of Krox, and is basically a demigod. He shows up at Shaya with an army of undead dragons. Basically he animated every dragon that died over the last three decades, and uses them to assault the tree.

  There’s a big battle with the Shayan forces losing (if only they had the Wyrm Hunter, and Ree’s fighters, and the Talon, and the Spellship). Eros falls back to the Chamber of the First where the reservoir of immense magic designed to raise Shaya is housed.

  Teodros beats Eros down, kills Erika (the Warmaster, not the reporter), and drinks the pool. Eros gets the last word though. He mutters a death curse, which puts a minor compulsion on Teodros. That becomes really important later.

  Nebiat arrives in the Erkadi Rift and finds out all about dad’s plan. It turns out he’s going to resurrect Krox, but with some stipulations. Krox will be a slave, and Teodros will be in the driver’s seat. It’s an audacious plan, and it requires a massive amount of life magic…which Teodros just stole from Shaya.

  There’s just one tiny problem. Eros’s death curse causes Teodros to build a critical flaw into his spell. When he tries casting it, his wards fail, and Krox eats him. BURRRRRP. No more Teodros. Nebiat sees the mostly finished spell, and remembers how Nara stepped in and finished casting hers back on Marid in book one.

  Why not do the same thing?

  She finishes her father’s spell, and seizes control of Krox. Nebiat rises as a goddess, backed by the power of one of the oldest gods in the universe.

  Not bad for a cliff hanger, eh?

  Prologue

  The first problem Nebiat encountered in becoming a god was dealing with the lack of sleep. She’d been a Wyrm for centuries, and could choose not to sleep when it suited her, but like most of her kin she found it a welcome respite from her many troubles. As a god, sleep was denied her.

  There was no escaping the endless sea of possibilities. No respite. That was proving more challenging than controlling the Mind of Krox, and disquiet fears that she might not be able to manage either appeared in many possibilities. She could, quite literally, see herself being subsumed into the god her father had attempted to control.

  What will you do now? Krox’s immense voice rumbled in her mind. In some ways they were the same entity, a mobile star that could sail through the heavens of its own accord. But in others Krox was completely alien, and as unknowable as the stars themselves.

  I don’t know. Admitting that terrified her. I must find a way to make them fear me, and soon, or Voria and her blasted allies will seize the offensive. It is in your best interests to work with me. They are coming for us both.

  The Mind of Krox pulsed thoughtfully, and she watched as Krox spun out countless possibilities. It happened so quickly, billions upon billions weaving out in every conceivable direction. She couldn’t follow them all, not yet, but she kept up with much of it. She saw her death, and her rise, and Krox’s return, and many other variations.

  This possibility is the most intriguing. Krox o
ffered. A possibility pulsed, growing more distinct than the rest. Destroy their capital, and their spirits will break.

  Nebiat saw, and she was pleased. A world lay before her, a shining jewel surrounded by a sea of glittering droplets, the thousands of orbital stations protecting the capitol of Ternus. In that possibility Nebiat arrived in the sky over their world, and laid waste to the planet.

  She didn’t recognize the magic she used, some sort of tremendously powerful earth spell. Yet it hardly mattered, as she didn’t possess nearly enough earth to cast a spell like that. Krox had immense reserves of spirit, nearly infinite. Thanks to her father’s theft from Shaya, Nebiat possessed a large quantity of life as well. But she possessed little else, and that limited her actions.

  How would this possibility come to pass? She made it a demand, though the god did not seem impressed.

  Permit me to travel to the Earthmother’s grave, and we will draw the power from her body. Krox showed her a possibility where she orbited a familiar world. The world where most of their hatchlings were birthed. The world where the goddess known as the Earthmother had been slain.

  Nowhere in the sector is there a stronger earth catalyst, not even the Fist of Trakalon, which I myself severed from the mighty titan.

  Nebiat drew void from her immense reserves, more than any mortal had ever had access too, though a trivial amount compared to the spirit or even life she possessed. She briefly paused as she wondered how to cast a spell without hands, but quickly realized that she understood the magic in a way she never had before.

  It didn’t require crude gestures. It required will. She reached out and opened a vast Fissure, wide enough to accommodate the bulk of a star. It shimmered for a moment, and then the magic became unstable. The edges cracked, then dissolved, exactly the way any Fissure would when exposed to the light of a star.

  Nebiat fought to rein in her temper, and narrowly succeeded. There were so many frustrating details her father had no doubt prepared for, but that she was completely unaware of. If I cannot open a Fissure because of our own light, then how are we to travel?

  The barrier on Fissures exists for our protection. Krox’s voice contained no emotion, save perhaps patience. The god seemed otherwise indifferent. If we, or any potent magical being strong enough to be considered a god, were to enter the depths, then we’d be set upon by our own progenitors and torn apart. The Fissures keep them from coming to our plane, and visiting the same fate upon every living thing in the cosmos.

  Nebiat felt something gather within the Mind of Krox, a surge of all eight aspects of magic combined into one harmonious song. When that song faded she was simply…elsewhere. The void around her was tinged with a deep purple, the familiar heart of the Erkadi Rift.

  Below her lay an ashen world, grey with the deaths of billions who’d fought to defend their draconic mother from Krox’s final, brutal assault. She could see those memories, and witnessed Krox in all his glory. She understood, as she watched the memory of him dismembering a planet-sized dragon, that the Mind of Krox was a very small part of a greater whole.

  Yes, we are much diminished. But that can be remedied, and coming here is the first step. You have seen how we traveled, a method we call translocation. We simply mold reality so that we are somewhere else. There is no spell. There is no magic that can be countered.

  Nebiat had so many questions. Who were these progenitors? There was an eternity to learn, but only if she survived the war with Voria and her blasted Confederacy. If this magic cannot be countered, then how do we defend against it?

  Krox pulsed the first emotion she’d experienced, a complex mix of amusement and exasperation. By foreseeing the possibility that such an event might occur. A rival god’s approach sends ripples through Neith’s web, and clever gods can detect such ripples. Fortunately, I possess such abilities, and any god that might challenge us will know this. Unless they are strong, they will not risk a direct confrontation. The wisest course when presented with a god of near equal strength is to flee and wage your war through proxies. Vessels, like this Voria you detest so much. Or Shaya, her forebear.

  It had never occurred to Nebiat that Krox could peruse her memories the same way she could his. Of course he’d seen everything. There was far less to observe, as she’d lived only a tiny fraction of his vast timespan. She’d not yet ascertained his true age, but billions of years seemed likely. Millions at the very least.

  Mollified, Nebiat observed the world they’d arrived at. She saw with fresh eyes—well, with whatever Krox used to observe. There were so many spectrums, so much that had been hidden from her before she’d merged with a god.

  She could see the life forms dotting the planet. She could see the places of power, most created from blood or body parts raining down to the world in the aftermath of the battle between Krox and the Earthmother.

  Krox had devoured a full third of goddess’s massive body, including everything above the shoulders. Presumably, her mind had been absorbed, and the same fate awaited Nebiat if she was not careful.

  The headless body of the Earthmother lay on the world below, a full continent in her own right. The millennia had covered her with an endless forest, each tree a miniature version of the very same redwoods that grew on the hated moon of Shaya.

  Within that forest lay countless drakes, each a primal that had been drawn to the world by the magical song of the Earthmother. Unfortunately, drakes were merely animals, because their minds had not yet developed. Given enough decades they would fully awaken, but only a handful below were that old. Most were little more than beasts. Though useful beasts.

  Their minds are yours. Something surged within Krox, and a wave of spirit washed over the world. As one, every drake looked skyward, and any old enough to have grown wings leapt into the sky. They soared toward her, basking in the light of their god as Krox bound them. But that is not why we have come. We have come for her.

  A tendril of spirit, kilometers thick, extended from the Mind of Krox and wove through the planet’s atmosphere until it reached the Earthmother’s corpse. The tendril latched onto a rent in her scaly hide, directly over the heart, and wonderful brown pulses of earth began flowing up the tendril and into their star. Nebiat could feel the power immediately, each pulse unimaginably powerful.

  After a half-dozen pulses, they stopped, and Nebiat felt a sudden emptiness. She watched as the tendril retracted back into the main body. Why did you stop?

  If we drain her fully, then the primals will no longer come. I have taken sparingly from her, so that she remains a powerful long-term asset. I have raised countless armies over the millennia, and will no doubt raise countless more after you and I have merged.

  Nebiat saw the sense in that, and didn’t press the issue. She had enough earth to cast the spell she’d seen in the possibility. It was time to pay a visit directly to Ternus, and show them the might of a god.

  1

  Suprise, Bitches

  Aran stepped through the Hunter’s airlock, entering Alamo Station. The mushroom-shaped station sat atop an enormous umbilical cord that stretched to the world below. A space elevator, Pickus had called it.

  The rest of the company followed him, all wearing full battle dress, despite being aboard the most secure Ternus facility in the sector. The governor had requested it, probably to fulfill some sort of PR goal of showing the ‘brave heroes’ from New Texas.

  Aran forced himself forward, into the middle of the strangest spectacle he’d ever imagined. The corridor ended on a stage, with a sea of bright lights glaring down on him from above. Beyond that lay a shadowed audience in stadium seating, and he’d guess there were at least a hundred. Perhaps significantly more, as the upper rows disappeared into shadow.

  Aran turned back to the tunnel he’d exited from, and found Tharn standing right behind him. The older reporter wore a simple, black flight suit that somehow managed elegant, and her bright white hair had been pulled into a tight bun. She reminded him, both in bearing and appearance, a
little bit of Voria.

  He pitched his voice low so only she would hear. “They’re really broadcasting this to their whole world?”

  The rest of the company piled out of the tunnel, with Crewes in the lead, and Kheross lurking in the rear. Each carried their weapon openly, and their armor gleamed under the lights. Even Aran had to admit they looked damned impressive.

  Kezia’s hammer gleamed under the lights as she stepped onto the stage, passing Tharn. “Would you lookit them all. They’re joost here to gawk at us?”

  “Can’t really blame ‘em,” Bord began as he sidled up in his scout armor, “I mean, have you seen my lady? I’d have stood in line to see you in person.”

  Kezia came to a dead stop, and turned and faced him. “Bord, I do believe you just paid me a classy compliment.”

  His faceplate slid upward, exposing an exuberant grin. His dark curls peaked out like shrubs badly in need of cutting. “I’ve been practicing all week for that one.”

  Tharn gave a small wave to draw Aran’s attention, then she nodded out to the audience with a wry smile. “To answer your question, yes, this is being broadcast to the entire sector. I gather social media isn’t a thing on Shaya. Every person within 30 light years will be discussing this interview for weeks—I can promise you that.”

  She gave Aran a grandmotherly smile, which was partly a performance for the cameras, though he also felt some real affection there. “This way.”

  The reporter escorted Aran over to a large U-shaped table where a pair of men already sat. Each held a glass of water, but they were only holding them, not drinking. It all felt very staged. Even their faces had been painted with a faint layer of cosmetics, hiding the blemishes that self-conscious Shayans would simply have removed with life magic.