The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH FUTURE’S PAST

“So, we were prisoners of war?” Yurieth demanded.

“Not exactly, you were prisoners between wars. I was taken when the Darkness tried to kidnap our Crown Princess. I was held, tortured, but I escaped. Then I came back after I was healed to rescued you all from your imprisonment. We fought in the next war together after you recovered from your imprisonment. None of you remember very much of this time or the wars here, but Yurieth’s soul still bears the scars of it, even if his mind does not hold the memories.”

Abrieth gaped at her, “How can that be? Father said that time is twelve to fifteen thousand years away.”

“Time is different in the dust dimension and so is existence. When I escaped, I couldn’t leave my fellow Aetherians in that place. Kaleth helped me rescue you all, and once you were healed, my worst nightmare ended with his greatest dream coming true. The reuniting of the Sons of the House of Adamos. He was so happy to have both of you back even if it was only for a few short years before his death.” Even though her voice was steady, Yurieth felt a tremor of horror and grief and something like darkness through the soul bond they now shared.

“You didn’t know who we were, but you came back for us. Why?” Abrieth had been horrified by her torture when Serapha had described it, he did not know if he could have returned to such a place after suffering as she did.

“Because you were of the Light, it was my duty and my honor to rescue you,” she tipped her head as if she was looking at him through her bandages. “Just as it is my duty and my honor to save the children of this time and to fight the Darkness wherever its shadow falls, no matter the cost. And you will help me, Huntsman, because you already did.”

Yurieth made a scoffing sound in his throat and stomped out before she could snap at him. Twisting her lips, she realized the Yurieth of this time was more bad tempered than the one in her time, a possibility she hadn’t considered possible.

“Forgive him, Lady Fleur, my brother is overly practical and the whole idea of time travel seems...” Abrieth paused searching for a word.

“Difficult?” Fleur asked, then she bowed her head. “The first question he asked the first time we went through time together was “Is this real?” Even seeing it, he did not want to believe it. In my time, I will have to show him the calculations I did for the magic for him to accept it.”

“You calculate magic?” Adamos asked surprised.

“Yes, before I became an oracle, I was a theoretical physicist and tactical analyst. I’m all about the math,” Fleur grinned, then groaned, “Oh my face.”

A warm golden glow surrounded her, it felt familiar, “Thank you, Serapha.”

“You are very welcome, oracle. The wounds you received are almost as though they were made by a dark blade. If you can handle a short increase in pain, we need to get you into a healing pool,” Serapha offered.

“It always makes the dark wounds burn cold,” Fleur murmured to herself then held up her head, “Whenever you have the water of light prepared, I will get in it.”

“We are ready now,” Serapha said softly. “You... you have suffered much at the hands of my people. I’m sorry.”

“So, have you, Pha. But we endured, and the kingdom was saved.”

Abrieth picked Fluer up and carried her after Serapha and Mina. A pool of effervescing golden water waited as they carefully removed her bandages. The shallower cuts were healed, creating fine white lines of filigree around angry red lines that were weeping. Fleur clung to Serapha, her breath hissed in and out as the water glowed. She inhaled a deep sobbing breath and sunk under the surface. She seemed to stay under impossibly long before surfacing, catching a breath and submerging again.

“My angel, how much more of this will she have to endure?” Abrieth asked through gritted teeth. Everyone in the room could feel the pain radiating from Fleur.

“At least, ten more treatments. One every few days, until the Essence of Darkness is completely leached from her system.” Serapha answered as Fleur surfaced and took several deep breaths before ducking back under. Tiny particles that looked like black oil beaded out of her wounds as she scrubbed at her skin violently.

The third time she surfaced, Fleur inhaled and screamed before passing out. Carefully, they lifted her from the water and wrapped her wounds before Abrieth carried her back to her room. Serapha cried softly once she was alone, she knew how the wounds were made but she didn’t know what had made them. When her grandmother had used the dark magic to torture someone, tendrils of smoke and oil would crawl over their body like vines then cut in. Something had attacked Fleur, something like the things that had lived inside her grandparents. Serapha had hoped those entities were destroyed when they lost their host and didn’t gain a new one. She knew now, she was wrong. They were back, they were coming back, and Fleur had told them only a few would survive.

Leaning against a tree outside the healing room, Yurieth pressed his back into the wood to keep from going to the strange and infuriating oracle from the future. He could feel her pain and her will to overcome it. When she had forced herself under the water, her soul had screamed out its agony to his while she had brutally scrubbed her own wounds. He had known very few warriors with the fortitude to endure what she did and hearing Serapha say she needed ten treatments... Yurieth shuddered. He needed to put some distance between them, but his father had ordered him to guard her. His mind said go, but his honor refused to let him. Inside his chest, his heart ached.

(Shadz’s memories are from The Guardian and The Oracle)

The public furor over the strange events the day of their arrival had finally died away. But Oshay/Shadz stayed away from where Fleur was staying because they couldn’t take the risk of Yurieth or Abrieth recognizing him in the future. Every day he suffered from the distance between he and Asha. His soul rejected his mind’s certainty that she was alive and well because it couldn’t feel her as it has since the first time she shined him when she had only been a year old. Oshay stood up and the room shifted. He held on the workstation for a moment then straightened up, he had to stay, the oracle needed him, his house needed him

Shadz as Oshay was her project manager at the building site of the Tear of Heaven’s Hope. He had been her best student and between them they had the basic systems designed the first two weeks. The Aetherians had never built anything for travel in space beyond ten days. Daisy and Odinus worked on the reactor that would power the ship while Oshay, Odini, and Oren worked on the fusion of magic and technology to create the life support systems and stasis sleep sarcophagi.

It reminded him of the days when they were first building the Aetherian space fleet over 500 years ago. He smiled slightly at the memory of carrying baby Asha through the ship as the oracle worked. He remembered the way she had glowed golden and his heart felt less empty. The way she always held onto a lock of his hair, the same lock she still twisted around her finger when they were having quiet moments. The way she had called him Mine since she was 32 and had wandered away to pick red flowers.

“You’re thinking about her,” Odini said.

“I can’t help it, I miss her.” Oshay answered as he ran his hand through his now-red hair. “I don’t know how Da... Fleur has endured a century without the Guardian. I have barely been a month without my sealed one and I know she is alive... but I don’t know how much longer I can bear it. I have protected her since she was a year old. If she had never chosen me, I would have protected her until the day I died. She was the first child of the light born on our world and I was the last son of darkness from the old world. She saved me, saved me from the darkness as much as you did.”

“Promise me, if it becomes too much, you will tell me. I will take you home and return.” Odini couldn’t hide his concern for his great-grandson. “I would very much like to meet your sealed one, if she is anything like her mother, she must be an amazing woman.”

Oshay nodded, “She is the light of my world, grandfather, just like you told me my sealed one would be.” He grinned. “She is as beautiful and intelligent as she is compassionate and willful. I love her with all I am, even when she drives me crazy. But you said it would be worth it.”

Odini laughed, “Well, perhaps I will have an unfair knowledge when you are a boy.”

A month after their arrival, Fleur’s wounds had healed, and she had regained her strength, but they kept her hidden.

Her eyes were mostly blind, she only see three or four handspans away from her face, and her eyes, when she overtaxed them, leaked tears and blood. The color of everything was faded, muted. Anything further away from her was a blur and beyond 3 stones there was nothing but grayness and formless fog. The faded lavender of her eyes was mostly hidden by the white scarring across her corneas. The more the color of her lavender eyes faded, the blinder she became, but she still had her math as she worked on the Tear of Heaven’s Hope, the ark to carry the Aetherian children to safety. THe colors of the world didn’t matter in space, only the math.

Her eyes were as healed as they could be, but she would put drops of water of healing into them to give herself a little more time to work with the others on the systems of the spaceship they were building. Odinus and Oshay had even programed a special screen that she could see better to work but there was so much to do.

Fleur leaned her head back and put some drops of water of light in her weeping eyes. Blinking rapidly, she leaned forward and continued typing rapidly. Yurieth watched her dabbing her eyes every few minutes as her fingers flew over the panel. He was amazed at her resilience and determination. Her eyes were dripping more blood than tears. He wished his mother had taken her back to the City of the Kings, but his father insisted she remain hidden at the Summer Castle and that Yurieth stay with her. The pain being across the lake from where his family was murdered caused him, pushed aside by his parents in their grim need to save the Remnant from the disaster Fleur had confirmed would come. Yurieth let her sense him, but she didn’t stop tapping on the terminal panel, so he walked over and took her hands.

“Your bleeding on the terminal and your hands.” Gently he wiped her hands and face with a tissue, he could feel her pain as he scolded her. “My Lady, you must rest your eyes.”

“I have to get the programming for this system done for Oren and Orion tomorrow.” She started to turn away, but he held her hands, “Please Yurieth, I only have an hour or so left, then I can rest.”

“No,” Yurieth shook his head as he said it. He had never met anyone as driven as her or as stubborn. “You need to rest your eyes; they are hurting you.”

Her thumbs made little circles on the back of his hands. “Please help me. They have been waiting for a week for this and.... and I lied, I can’t finish it in an hour... I know you have been avoiding me because of Kaleth, but you don’t have to worry. I haven’t felt his heartbeat in 116 years and...” She placed his hand against her heart. “And I did not feel it the way, I feel yours. It makes me miss you more. I know it pains you but please, Yurieth, I need...”

“My lady, this bond cannot be, I...” he stopped not knowing what else to say to reject her.

“Yurieth, I am not asking you for anything but to help me with some programming... and maybe someday to be my friend.” She released his hands and dabbed her eyes. “In the time, I come from... If you were not my friend and my protector then, I would not have endured the war after I lost him. You saved my children from becoming orphans... I know it is unfair to expect the same friendship of you now, especially after what happened the day I arrived. I don’t know how to undo it...” She sighed, squinting at the bloody cloth in her hand. “There are so many things to tell you about my past, our past, but you won’t remember then. I know you have questions and I don’t want to burden you with it all, so I will ask you if you want that burden of knowledge, even if it is only for a short while. Life for us is very different then and I only want to ease your heart.”

“You are a very different oracle. I will think about it.” He took the cloth from her hand, then picked up a clean one, and dabbed the tear of blood running down her cheek. “What do you require of me, Lady Fluer?”

“I know you can program and have a brilliant mind for numbers. We...I mean myself and future you have worked in tandem... it was a ...” she paused then explained, “I can feed you the data from my mind, if you could type it in for me. Our minds have always been able to touch and work together this way, even our magic seemed to overlap. Now I know why and we will have a lot to talk about when I go back forward. Is it okay if I share my memories with you since you only have one or two memories of me here?”

“Really, what memories?” He asked and she smirked at him.

“Uhhh, I don’t think so, ” she shook her finger at him.

“But you said you’d tell me,” Yurieth pointed out.

Daisy laughed, “I’ll tell you then because you won’t remember after your imprisonment, but you get to live the ones from here, so no hints.”

“Fine, how do we do this? Do you have to feed me the data to my mind, can’t you just tell me?” he asked. He didn’t really want her in his mind and through it, his soul. It was an intimate act, even more than any physical intimacy. He had never let anyone touch his soul after his oracle training stopped when he was a child. Her simple explanation drew him back to her request.

She tipped her head at him, “You type far faster than I talk, we’ve tried.” She seemed completely comfortable and trusting allowing him the share her thoughts.

“Show me what to do,” he volunteered grimly.

They traded chairs and she laid her hand on his arm, her oracle stone glowed and Yurieth almost fell out of his seat at the sight of it. He had not looked at it closely until then. As his mind filled with numbers and coding and magical calculations, he pushed his shocked realization aside and began typing. He was just her hands today, nothing more. Hours later, he carried her back to her room, she was completely exhausted. With one last look at the stone around her neck, he left her with Serapha and went to find Abrieth.

His brother was talking with their father Adamos and Yurieth looked at his father with sudden fury. “I will not be manipulated, Father!”

Abrieth looked at him shock. “What happened with Lady Fleur? I felt her mind touching yours.”

“Nothing with her. I was simply helping her with some programming, she has some very interesting abilities. But what happened is, Lady Fleur is wearing my oracle stone.” Yurieth announced harshly.

“It is not your oracle stone, my son, you are not an oracle,” Adamos said calmly.

Yurieth’s eyes blazed with rage, “The Pools of Destiny gave it to me.”

Adamos opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a silk bag, “And you gave it to your mother the day you tried to kill your brother with a wild animal.” Pouring the bag out, Yurieth’s stone fell into his hand. “Your stone has been kept in this pouch since you surrendered it.” Adamos put it back and calmly appraised his son.

Yurieth’s cheek twitched. “Then keep it there, and don’t give it to her in the future. She is my brother’s sealed one, not mine.”

“I promise... I will not give it to her.” Adamos vowed.

Yurieth turned on his heel and walked out. Adamos blinked once then turned back to Abrieth, who was shaking his head. “You won’t, but our youngest brother will.”

Adamos shrugged. “I did not lie to your elder brother.”

“No, Father, you didn’t, but you didn’t tell him the truth either...”