Alliance of Serpents (3 page)

"Now, now, don't be so negative." Nori's warm
smile returned. "You don't know for sure that's how they'll
react."

Arus shrugged it off and rested his head
against the feather pillow. It was all so much for him to take in
at once. He used to stare at the stars, wondering if humans were
alone in the galaxy, and now he was being treated in a spaceship
amidst
those stars! He'd met two alien beings, a human who's
ancestors traced back to a time before the Great War, been enslaved
to a machine, now apparently freed, and it had all turned his
world—his
universe
, rather—completely upside down.
Perhaps it's all just an elaborate dream.
It didn't seem
likely, but anything was preferable to his current situation.

"Ah! Here we go!" Nori exclaimed. His fingers
rattled across the terminal keys. "This should do it." A sharp
tingle surged through his mechanical arm, though how he could feel
sensations through steel the way he felt them through his flesh was
still beyond his understanding. The implant emitted a momentary
electric hum, and rolling warmth spread across the length of the
cybernetic limb. "All right, Arus. Try to lift your arm." He
pointed at the polished steel.

The thing moved and
felt
like his
natural arm, flexing and rotating with only Arus' thoughts guiding
it. The doctor took him through a series of exercises to test its
mobility and responsiveness, flexing each finger and bending each
joint. "I can't exactly say I'm happy to see this thing in action
again," Arus mumbled.

"Two hands are better than one, that's what I
always say!" Nori laughed again. Did the man ever finish a sentence
without
laughing? How could anyone be so . . . so . . .
jolly?

Arus sighed and let the arm fall to the bed.
"Just as long as I'm the one controlling them."

Nori continued his work for quite some time,
disconnecting and removing several bundles of wires from the
circuits embedded in his scalp. Here and there, a mutter of "Oh,
would you look at that?" and "That's interesting, I never would've
thought of that!" slipped through the old man's lips, which didn't
sit so well with Arus, of course. Did this guy even know what he
was doing? And how could Arus be sure that he wasn't trying to gain
control of the implant to force him into submission again? The idea
of jumping from the bed and running for his life tempted Arus more
than once, but he wasn't so sure his body could handle it, and if
Damien had told the truth, they were only trying to help. Besides,
where would he run to?

"Very well, that should do it for now," the
old man said after a time, clapping his hands together. "I've
removed all of the cables that controlled your motor functions, and
erased the lines of code that overrode your brain's instructions. I
also deactivated any other functions that the implant was
controlling, such as pupil dilation and balance, among others. In
short, your brain is now in complete control of your body, and the
implant is just along for the ride at the moment. I am going to
have to analyze the programming of your mechanical eye for a bit to
determine which functions I need to reactivate in order to restore
your vision on your left side without activating the laser weapon
or any of the other additional functions that Truce added. For now,
I'll have some food sent up for you. After all you've been through,
you must be hungry, and you need your strength to recover!"

Arus watched Nori as he walked around the bed
and headed for the door, and his eye came to rest on an unannounced
visitor leaning against the counter. "Vultrel!" He was holding
Arus' sword, examining it as though it was some sort of
archeological find, and handling it with the same care and
precision. It took him a few moments to bring his gaze to meet
Arus' own, and even then it seemed like a chore.

"You know, I always thought this sword would
one day be used to purge the Mages from Asteria," he began, turning
his attention back to the blade. "I never thought it would wind up
where it did. It was supposed to be Truce's heart, Arus. Not my
father's."

"I know, Vultrel," Arus said, trying to force
down the lump in his throat. "I know. But you have to understand, I
was under Truce's—"

"Save it, Arus," Vultrel held up his hand as
he placed the weapon on the counter. "Anton resisted.
Anton.
He wasn't the most talented or even the most intelligent student my
father had, but he showed in the end that he certainly had the
heart of a warrior. I always thought you had that same heart, Arus.
I once believed you'd be better than me, not only with the sword,
but in every aspect of life. I saw—or
thought
 I
saw—that potential in you from the day my father gave us our first
lesson. But in the end, you showed your true self, just as Anton
did. You're weak, Arus. And your weakness cost Eaisan Lurei his
life."

"Vultrel, that's now how it was!" Arus
shouted, sitting upright. "You have no idea what it was like being
under the control of that thing!"

"But Anton did!" Vultrel shot back through a
clenched jaw. "And he managed to break free before he did something
he would've regretted."

Arus shook his head vigorously, which in turn
made the room spin a bit. "Whatever flaw existed in Anton's implant
did not exist in my own," he said, closing his eye to allow the
world to settle around him. "I fought with every ounce of my being,
Vultrel. It was maddening! You have to understand me!"

"I kept telling myself that," Vultrel nodded,
his eyes growing thin. "Even when you were fighting against me and
my father, I kept telling myself that you were going to snap out of
it before you did anything rash. I just believed that you would do
the right thing in the end, because I couldn't picture you hurting
one of us. So you can probably imagine how I felt when I saw you
standing over my father's fallen body."

Arus could no longer hold back the tears. "I
tried to stop it, Vultrel. You have to believe me! I tried with
everything—"

"I'm sure you did," his voice was almost
mocking now. "But you failed. And do you know why? Because you're
weak. Well, I'm not so sure I want someone like that watching my
back, so if you don't mind, I'll be going solo from now on."

"Listen to me, if I could've—"

The door slid closed behind Vultrel with a
quiet whisk, leaving Arus alone in the infirmary. Living with the
memories of what he'd done to Eaisan and the countless other
soldiers he'd killed was going to be more than enough punishment
for his crimes, but having his best friend turn on him during his
darkest hour was akin to a knife in the back.
How could he blame
me for this? I didn't want to do it! I fought it as much as anyone
could've. Was there something more I could've done? Am I . . .
weak?

He didn't realize he'd gotten out of bed
until he found himself holding his sword, staring at the red
leather sheath as he rotated it in his hands. He tried not to let
the mechanical arm catch his eye, but the shining steel reflected
his face, giving him a view of the implant for the first time. It
was a dreadfully large thing, completely consuming his entire left
eye socket and stretching back toward his ear. The eye itself was
composed of a steel cylinder which matched his nose in depth, its
end covered by a clear lense of some sort. The hair along the side
of his head was shaved away from his temple to just above the ear,
replaced by a crude mess of connectors and wires strung in coils
like a twisted mess of vines. The steel plating wrapped behind his
ear and ran down the left side of his neck, though those plates
seemed to serve no purpose other than to protect the wires running
from the implant to his mechanical arm. The sight was more than
enough to bring on another river of tears.

Master Eaisan was gone, killed by Arus' own
hand. Vultrel had turned on him. He was disfigured for life. His
village would never accept him back with the implant attached to
his body, yet he couldn't survive if the device were removed. The
life Arus had known was long gone, and nothing he could do would
bring it back. Fourteen years old, and he'd never see his mother
again. Never see his village. His people. His home. His life.

It was gone. All of it.

Time passed; Arus wasn't sure how long. He
didn't remember slumping into the chair beside his bed, nor did he
notice the nurse come to leave him a tray of hot food. A woman came
to see him at one point—Carsynia, he thought her name was—and she
claimed to be a counselor of some kind, but Arus paid little
attention to her. What would some woman who'd never known him or
the people in his life have to say that could help? She babbled in
his ear for a while about coping with loss and remembering the
lessons of those who've passed from this life, but Arus ignored it
all. He was in no mood to be told to look for the good in life.
There was no good in anything that had happened. Before she left,
she told him to consider how he could use his experiences to help
others, which he thought about for a good thirty seconds before
shrugging it out of his head.
Help others? What about me? I
dedicated myself to helping others a long time ago, but who's going
to help me?

Don't worry, Arus. I won't stop until Truce
and his men have paid for what they've done to us.

Arus whipped his head around, expecting to
see Kitreena standing in the doorway, but it was closed, and he was
alone in the room. He knew he'd heard her voice, but where . .
.?

"I must be losing my mind," he muttered,
rising from the chair with a groggy shake of the head. He grabbed a
few slices of fruit from the tray of food—they were still
surprisingly moist despite how long they'd been left to sit—and
stuffed them into his mouth before poking at the strange meat
beside them. It looked like pork, but the smell of beef and
assorted spices filled his nose. After a timid taste, he stuffed
that into his mouth, too. It had been a long time since he'd eaten
anything, and the more his body adjusted to being freed from the
implant's control, the more he began to realize the empty void in
his stomach. The plate was clean before he knew it, and the glass
of juice was bone dry. When he'd finally swallowed the last bite,
he wiped his mouth and grabbed his sword from the counter. With it
securely latched to his belt where it belonged, it was time to
explore the
Refuge.

The door slid away as he approached, opening
the way to a vast corridor bustling with men and women in brown
uniforms. It was an elegant looking hall, constructed mostly of
steel or some other sort of polished metal and illuminated by
glowing white tubes of glass that ran along either side of the
ceiling. Arus suspected they were powered by something called
"electricity," which was a seldom mentioned word used on Terranias
to describe how machines were operated. The walls were separated by
panels of polished wood, sometimes decorated with ornate carvings
or used to hang messages for the crewmembers to read. A narrow
strip of blue carpet ran down the center of the corridor, not quite
reaching the walls. The overall beauty of the ship's construction
was something that even the best laborers in Narleaha likely
couldn't match.

Arus recognized the uniformed crewmembers
immediately; they had accompanied Damien and Kitreena into the
Throne Room back at Castle Asteria. He tried to be casual as he
walked along, sneaking brief glances inside open doors and
listening to bits of conversations. Most of it seemed fairly
ordinary; a doctor headed to an appointment, students going to
class, a soldier late for his shift. From the outside, the other
rooms seemed pretty common as well. He passed a variety of offices
and storage rooms before Damien emerged from a doorway to the left
a few short paces away.

"You should be in bed," he noted. "Your body
needs time to recover and realign itself to your brain's
commands."

"I'm hungry," Arus said, though he hadn't
intended on starting with that. "And I'd like some information. Why
am I being held here? What happened to Lord Sarathon and the
Vermilion Mages? Are we—"

"I understand your confusion, Arus," Damien
put a comforting hand on his steel shoulder. "Vultrel has been
quite vocal about his paranoia concerning us. The truth is that we
have to keep you here until we can properly assess the threat to
Terranias. We have reason to believe that returning you to your
kingdom may jeopardize the safety of your world, so we're keeping
you here as a precaution."

"So I'm a prisoner here?"

Damien visibly suppressed a laugh. "Not at
all. If you wish to be returned to the surface, all you need to do
is say the word, and it will be done."

I can't go home anyway.
"It's not
that," Arus shook his head. "You've treated me very well, and I
appreciate it. I just don't understand half of what you say. Why
would my return to the surface bring danger to the planet? Are you
afraid the implant may take control of me again?"

"I admit, that is part of it," Damien nodded
slowly. "But it isn't our main concern. As of right now, I cannot
tell you any more. You see, history has taught us that interference
with a primitive culture by an outside influence can bring about
drastic consequences. Entire societies have been corrupted in the
past when outsiders intervened and tried to impose their own will.
Suppose we were to bring you home and insist that you are to be
left unharmed despite your people's feelings about machines? There
would inevitably be people who support you—friends, family, and
other sympathizers—and there would be others who would oppose.
There would be individuals on both sides who would see their will
done no matter what the cost, and pretty soon you've got fighting,
bloodshed, and perhaps even war."