Chapter 5

Callisto heard the desperate prayers meant for Aaralyn all the way in Solaria.

She paid them no mind until one slipped through, belief meant for the Dawn Star in their plea. She turned her face north, the sun high in the sky over the Southern Plains, her shadow barely a black halo around her feet. The travelers who'd died of thirst in the back roads from drinking out of a bog had already ended their road, guided into the stars by her helping hand.

She left the bodies behind, stepping into the aether and feeling it burn her from the inside out, like an all-consuming fever. The Dawn Star came back to herself in some other land, the prairie grass beneath her feet soaked in blood. She stood on the precipice of a deep trench, one that stretched quite a ways. She could see more dug into the earth behind huge, spiked iron balls meant to deter automatons and vehicles from advancing.

Soldiers hunkered down in the trench she stood over, most of them dead, but there was one who continued to load his rifle with shaky hands, face pale, uniform stained with blood that wasn't all his. He prayed as he reloaded, eyes glassy as he cranked the gears on his rifle to load another round.

"Please, Callisto," he begged around cracked lips, voice carrying an accent found in Ashion frontier towns that bordered Solaria. "Please let me live."

He was hers more than Aaralyn's in that moment. Callisto looked away from the soldier and across the battlefield at the advancing force led by sentinel-class automatons steered not by a human hand but by magic. Those automatons could go where humans couldn't, driven forward by the command of a magician held safe behind the battalion. Callisto watched it approach with dispassionate eyes. Her ears filled with prayers of the dying and the living and the ones who were almost dead, like the young man who clambered up the side of the trench to throw himself against the edge.

He took aim, the last of his squadron to do so, desperate to hold a broken line. Callisto stood witness to the bullets the Ashionen soldier got off before a grenade launched by the sentinel-class automaton landed within the trench. He tried to climb out, to get clear, but the resulting blast flung him past Callisto and onto the bloody battlefield, back ripped to pieces from the explosion.

The Daijalan soldiers in their green uniforms kept advancing, but Callisto ignored them and went to kneel beside the young soldier. He looked at her, through her, with glazed-over eyes, a prayer fading on his lips.

Please.

"I hear you, child," Callisto said.

She drew his soul out of skin and bones, sending the ghost of him into the sky and the stars that shone beyond the brightness of the sun. The aether in her own veins burned in solidarity as he faded to nothing. Callisto curled her fingers against her palm and drew her hand away from the body.

Shouts reached her ears, and Callisto looked over her shoulder at the encroaching enemy line. The lead automaton came inexorably forward, its mechanical gears grinding and clanking together. Callisto straightened, striding down the length of the trench, bullets passing her by as dirt rose around her from another grenade hit.

"She doesn't hear them, you know," a deep voice said from behind her. "She never comes for them."

Callisto rocked to a stop, reaching up with one hand to touch the Lion constellation tattoo wrapped around her throat. The heat of the golden lines always was a comfort amidst the surrounding death. "That is where you are wrong, brother. Aaralyn hears them; she merely chooses who to listen to."

"You would listen to them all. One prayer brought you out of Solaria."

Callisto narrowed her eyes before turning around to face her brother, the Midnight Star dressed in the clothes of a Urovan, thick arms crossed over his broad chest. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the golden lines of the Bear constellation tattoo that crawled over the back of his hands and fingers and up his forearms.

Xaxis had always been the most intimidating of their group, but his broad form and bearded visage hid a quiet gentleness few were ever privy to. Urova was a harsh land during the long winter months where the midnight sun never set and the cold was deadly. But his children had made it a home, and they worshipped him as a part of their way of life.

And now that way of life included war.

Explosions nearby that sent dirt and grass high into the air would have deafened anyone but them. Callisto barely noticed it, nor the dirt that fell like rain around them. "I hear my children's prayers no matter where they walk. Aaralyn has her reasons for the ones she answers and the ones she must leave by the wayside."

"She did the same during the Inferno." Xaxis tilted his head to the side, studying her. "I hear you stole a prince."

Callisto shrugged. "I stole nothing not freely given. I hear you delivered a Blade to the princess Innes claimed."

"I'm not here to compare our mistakes."

"I don't consider helping our children a mistake." Callisto jerked her head at the trenches and the dead resting at the bottom of them. "I consider this war Innes crafted the wrong road."

Xaxis followed her gaze, his dark eyes taking in the battlefield. The prayers rising from the earth and metal war machines went unanswered in the face of Innes' desire to find a way back to the stars they had all left behind Ages ago.

"He is tired of never dying."

Callisto snorted at that. "We all died once, and we keep being reborn. Innes is not the only one who yearns to dance amongst the stars like our children when they reach the end of their roads. But we have our own roads, and they are never-ending. We swore we would walk them together, and now he seeks to tear us all apart. You aid him in that."

Xaxis lifted a hand to stroke his fingers over the neatly trimmed beard that shadowed his features. He hadn't yet shaved off the mark of winter, but she knew he would in due time. "He means well."

At that, Callisto made a gesture with her hand, the movement of her fingers an insult of some kind, but she'd forgotten the meaning millennia ago. "He means to dictate progress through his children. Urova is not safe from his desires. You should know that by now."

"Is it so wrong to want a different road?"

"And if his want kills our children? What then?"

"Then perhaps that is progress."

Callisto snorted derisively and looked up at the haze of smoke stretched across the blue sky. "Progress won't change the road we walk. You know that."

Because Maricol was their home and their grave. They'd walked the land and sailed the seas and taught their children how to survive in this world that had saved them so long ago. They'd made a promise through the Ages to keep their feet on the earth and leave the stars alone.

"This war will end in some fashion. I will listen to the prayers that ask for my guidance," Xaxis eventually said.

"When your people pray for deliverance from Daijal's interference, you will know why Aaralyn only listens to some prayers."

Xaxis inclined his head in her direction before the constellation tattoos bled gold and consumed him in starfire, the aether drawing him to some other place. Callisto eyed where her brother once stood before staying to watch the battle through, listening to prayers not meant for her but guiding those with broken roads to the stars anyway in the North Star's absence.