Chapter 5

Helios

We began making our way over the dead and wounded Alexandrian soldiers, our goal the nearby tree line. Tib and I had arrived at the rebel encampment just a few hours before, escorting a shipment of ammunition, but we'd found the base abandoned. We could only hope the base leaders had gotten wind of the coming attack and evacuated before our arrival, because soon after we had arrived the Alexandrians had attacked.

It had been over two years since Ri had been killed. When I'd finally woken from a series of drug-induced fever dreams, I'd had a long road of recovery ahead of me.

Most of the last two years had been spent in the hospital or in rehab, enduring procedure after procedure to replace the skin I had lost and recovering function on my left side. Even now the scarred skin sometimes pulled and ached in unexpected ways, limiting my range of motion. It had been the worst pain I had experienced in my life, compounded by the aching loss of Ri and his family.

I had been the sole survivor of the attack on our camp. Ri, almost all his family, hell, almost everyone we knew had died. They said it was a miracle I had survived. Only the late return of a bonded Soma and their Mageian partner had saved me. The Soma had used their powers of healing to keep me alive and the Mageia had helped shield and transport me to a larger settlement with a functioning hospital.

The pain had been hard, but the stares. The cringing. The fear I saw on the face of my own people was worse than the pain itself. The whispers. Why had I survived, and Ri hadn't?

I heard their whispers, but they didn't say anything I wasn't thinking. Spasmenos. Broken one.

My pain made me angry. Bitter. Eventually I lashed out, and people learned to keep their distance.

They tried, of course. Counselors. Therapy. Drugs. None of it did any good. Somas who lost their bonded rarely survived, but I hadn't really been bonded, after all, since we hadn't completed the ceremony. I shouldn't be suffering like I was. Or so the specialists said.

Fuck the specialists. And fuck the Alexandrians.

Eventually, I found it was just easier, better, to be alone.

I wasn't the only one, of course. The shortage of Mageia meant that most Somas would never find their match. The high unbonded rate was shortening the life expectancy of Illyrians. Unbonded Somas had a high rate of drug addiction and suicide. The rates were so high that the War Office had created a division specifically for unbonded Somas: The Omada Aftoktronias, more commonly just called Omada.

Omada took the hopeless cases, the missions where the risk was too high for the average soldier. Most soldiers didn't last two years after joining Omada.

I'd joined the division shortly after being medically cleared for duty.

I took as many solo missions against the Alexandrians as I could, which wasn't difficult. We had far more Somas than Mageia, so it was rare that an unbonded Mageia was paired with a Soma. My solo missions also had nothing to do with the fact that no one wanted to trust me to keep a Mageian safe. Not after I lost my bonded and a whole village to the Alexandrians.

Of course not.

Tonight, they didn't have any choice. There had been an increasing number of Alexandria attacks in the area. This ammunition shipment was too vital to the settlement to send unprotected. By "unprotected" I mean "unprotected by a Mageia" of course. An unbonded Soma didn't count. The Mageia protected the ammunition. I was supposed to protect the Mageia.

This time, I wouldn't fuck it up.

I noticed the silence that fell around our small campfire first. Then, on the wind, the hint of gun oil wafted through the air.

The Alexandrian infantry attacked first. I had just enough notice to tackle Tib to the ground, the bullet aimed at his head making a high-pitched whine as it flew past my ear.

I wasn't sure exactly how many enemies we fought, but we were fortunate that there were no Elusians with them. An Elusian would have seriously decreased our odds of survival. Tib was pretty good at taking care of himself physically, but without his magic we would have been overwhelmed quickly.

"You think they got out?" I growled at Tib as we picked our way over the corpses we'd created. My throat had been badly burned in the attack. I could speak, but my voice sounded nothing like it used to.

Part of me felt a little bad for the soldiers on the ground around us. They had been fed a line of crap their whole lives, so they didn't even know what they were fighting against. That didn't keep me from finishing off anyone still moving as we clambered into the woods. They would happily put a bullet in our backs if I didn't.

"I think so," Tib answered, as we ran, his brown hair escaping the fighting queue he normally kept it. "The place was too empty. The food, weapons and ammo were gone. They got some warning, but not enough to completely clear the place out."

I nodded. I'd noticed the same thing. Food and ammo gone, but personal treasures, mementos, photos and the like were left behind. It hurt my heart that my people had lost so much of themselves, and now stood to lose even more.

At one time Illyria stretched from Ad Acroceraunia to Kratul. Now our few remaining settlements clustered close to our ports along the Adriatic Sea.

Those ports were the only reason we had been able to survive for as long as we had. Our navy was one of the best in the world, thanks to my people's inherent affinity for Air and Water. Our primary exports, oil and minerals, had bought the neutrality of Rome and Greece for years as we shipped resources to them. Now that most of Greece and the Dorians had been conquered by Alexandria the full military might of our adversary was focusing on us. Our Navy couldn't defend us when attackers were coming from inland.

Only the rise of a new military leader in our ranks, Polemos, had bought us any reprieve. Polemos was a master tactician with a keen understanding of the Alexandrian King's strategies, and his rise through our ranks had been meteoric. Under Polemos, we were holding our own, and even beginning to see some small victories here and there.

The sharp sound of a branch cracking brought me back to the present as we both froze. We had been moving through the darkness like ghosts, barely a sound escaping as we ran, thanks to Tib's ability to muffle the noise of our passing with his magic. I looked down and realized the cracking sound had come from under my foot.

Without conscious thought I snagged Tib before he could even begin to crumple from the effects of the Suppression and swung him around, flinging him back into the darkness from the way we came. I threw him with all my not-inconsiderable strength. I had to hope I could get him far enough away from the Elusians that the Suppression couldn't reach him. I didn't hear him land, so that was a good sign. He'd been able to use his powers to break his fall and muffle the sounds. If I couldn't hear him, the Elusians couldn't, either. I saw movement ahead and braced myself. It was the oath all Somatophylakes took: They'd have to go through me to get my Mageia, even if Tib and I weren't bonded.

"You fuckers may as well turn around and go home, because you aren't getting past me," I said.

The Elusian appeared out of the darkness like the fading of an illusion. His body armor was gray and black, and he was flanked on either side by human soldiers in gray and blue, three on each side guns raised. His eyes were glowing a light blue. If it hadn't been dark out, I don't think I would have noticed it, but it meant he was still trying to use his Suppression power.

"What? The Mageia you had with you?" he scoffed. "I haven't come all the way from Alexandria just to find another Mageia," the Elusian said dismissively, as though they were worthless. Ass. "Surrender, Illyrian. Your Mageia is Suppressed, and you aren't even armed," he said dismissively.

"Wanna bet?" I asked, changing my fingernails to claws. Suppression didn't affect Somas. Since I wasn't Bonded, I was limited to forming claws on my hands, but superior speed and strength would have to be enough.

Before the Elusian could move I had gutted one soldier on the right, hamstrung the second and grabbed the rifle from him. I swung it like a club, dropping the third like he had been poleaxed.

That brought me up to the Elusian. I grinned wolfishly, seeing his eyes go wide as he took in the claws reaching for his throat. Then my body jerked to a halt as I slammed into the familiar feel of a wall of Air. At first, I wondered what in all the hells Tib thought he was doing. Then I saw a woman move up behind the Elusian wearing white body armor with silver piping gesturing with her hands. Dammit! A captive Air Mageia.

"Don't do this!" I pleaded, straining against her hold. "You don't have to live this way!"

The Mageia's eyes didn't even flicker as she immobilized me with Air.

I had to hope that Tib would take the opening I'd given him to escape. The longer I could delay them, the further away he'd be by the time they started looking for him.

The Elusian circled me, his eyes taking in my appearance.

"Don't even bother, Illyrian," he oozed. "Rika is too well trained to be swayed by—beast—such as yourself," he spat. He paused, stroking her face almost lovingly. "Aren't you, my dear?"

"Yes, Master Aurelius," she said. Her voice was flat, almost without inflection, and it made my blood run cold.

This. This was what we were fighting against. The Mageia I knew were so full of life. The elements that ran through their blood creating spark and fire. This woman--girl, really--was dead inside.

"Bastard," I hissed.

The Elusian turned back to me, his eyes narrowing.

"Hmmmm… I could kill you, Illyrian," he responded, his eyes sliding over my scarred face. "But it looks like that might actually be a mercy. I think I have something far more… interesting in mind for a beast such as yourself."

Aurelius gestured to Rika.

The shield of Air tightened around my neck, and I continued to fight her hold. The world began to go dark around me as my air was cut off.

"Don't kill him, my dear," I heard the Elusian order Rika. "I have a use for him."