Ascent of the Aliomenti (36 page)

Will, Sarah, Anna, and William traveled the following day to a village some five miles distant, where the bakers were exceptionally skilled. They’d determined that William’s birthday was near the beginning of the year, and they wanted to purchase the flour, yeast, and other ingredients necessary to make the “young” man a fine cake. They also sought the recipe the cooks used to make their incredible baked goods, offering to pay a princely sum for the information.

“How is it that you have the ability to offer such a sum for something so simple as a cake recipe?” one woman asked. “I have not seen you trade, or working here at a craft, scrimping your coppers together over time. Yet you show up and offer to spend large amounts of money on trifles, and it is no false claim that you have the funds to do so. How do you come by your good fortune? Are you royalty, traveling in disguise?”

Anna shook her head. “We have had good fortune in our trading in years past, and others before us, and as such we have sufficient money set aside to enable this. It is also a special occasion, celebrating the birth of one very dear to us.” She nodded at William, her face the pride of a mother seeing her son grow to adulthood. “He is a fine young man.”

“How old is he?”

“Three... and twenty,” Sarah replied, catching herself. William would in fact be turning three hundred and fifteen years old, a fact Sarah had wisely avoided proclaiming in this town.

“Where are you from?” another asked.

“Several days’ journey away, in that direction.” Anna replied, waving a hand in the general direction of the Watt outpost.

“I see,” the second woman replied, frowning. “We saw strange lights coming from that direction the other night, and it wasn’t a storm. We didn’t hear any thunder or see any lightning. And the lights... they were all different colors. That’s not
normal
.” She narrowed her gaze at the two women. “Did you see those strange lights?”

“No,” Anna replied, a bit too quickly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

The second woman looked as if she wanted to challenge that statement, but she opted to keep silent. Will didn’t like the look on her face, and was quite concerned at the level of mistrust and fear emanating from her. It seemed to be a portent of trouble, and they had no interest in trouble or attention of any kind.

They walked home the next day, preferring that mode of travel to horses or teleportation given the pallor of suspicion that hung over the village. Anna and Sarah chatted amiably, still managing to find new and interesting topics of conversation after centuries around each other. William trailed behind, a blissful look on his face, his hand resting on the hilt of the new short sword he’d crafted for himself, the muted winter sun highlighting his thick, light brown hair.

Twilight came, and with the fading daylight came the opportunity to watch the light show in action once more. The crowds gathered, mesmerized at the patterns of light created by the display, and Will himself was impressed, knowing the level of dedication and commitment it had taken to create the display.

The shouts rose from the entrance to the outpost, a low gate that offered only cosmetic resistance. “See? I
told
you! They’re communing with evil spirits!”

The posse from the nearby village spilled over the gates, and leading their contingent were the two women suspicious of the money the sisters had available to them, who had asked about the strange lights in the sky from the direction of the Aliomenti outpost. Joining them were at least fifty others, all armed with swords, all with looks of righteous fury in their eyes. It was a look Will recognized, the same look he’d seen in the eyes of the first Aliomenti... just before they’d set upon the girl known as Elizabeth Lowell and beaten her to death.

He set off toward the mob, ignoring the confused looks on the faces of the Aliomenti. They knew the mob meant trouble, but they were unclear on just what form that trouble might take. Nor were they concerned; they were, after all, the Aliomenti, and the mob was composed of mere humans.

Will knew better, knew the power of numbers of people frightened by something they could not understand or explain. He had no interest in waiting for the Aliomenti here to find out their mistake in underestimating the invading force.

“Peace, friends,” he said, raising his voice. “You appear to be weary from traveling. May we offer you refreshment and lodging?”

The response was a mixture of muttering and feral glances at the light display still running a dozen yards away.

“Come,” Will said, holding his hands out in a welcoming gesture. “Let me get you something to eat.”

“No!” The voice came from the back of the crowd. “We’ve seen the lights. You people are clearly witches, worshiping evil spirits! Don’t trust them! They’ll poison us!”

The murmurs grew louder, the faces grew angrier, and Will saw William wince at the mention of poison, a memory still powerful three centuries after it had happened.

Will sensed in the newcomers a fear that the Aliomenti meant to destroy them, and a belief that it was best to take the fight to the dangerous light-wielders, to destroy them first. If they waited, the villagers believed, the “witches” would have a chance to work their spells and brew their potions and utterly destroy or enslave them. The fear was powerful and overwhelming.

Will projected a broadcast thought.
Don’t do anything nonhuman. Remain calm. Move quietly into your homes. Let’s not provoke them.

“The lights are not the result of magic, nor are we practitioners of witchcraft. We do not wish any trouble or bear you any ill will, friends.”

“If the lights bother you, we can turn them off.” William walked out from the crowd.

“Show us!” a voice cried out from the crowd, even as Will projected a warning thought to William.
Leave the lights go! Do not turn them off!

William nodded at the crowd.
Don’t be silly, Will.
He moved to their rudimentary generator, even as Will desperately pleaded with him to stop. William ignored the plea. With the eyes of the invaders upon him, William moved the lever that stopped the generator.

The lights went out instantly.

But the effect was the opposite of what he’d expected. Seeing a man move his hands and eliminate the evil lights reaffirmed their conviction. A power like that could only come from one engaged in witchcraft.

Witches needed to die.

With a roar, the townspeople drew swords and charged the Aliomenti, swinging blades and connecting with the flesh of their immortal foes. Screams rent the air and blood flowed, before the stunned Aliomenti could fathom that they were under attack by the very people they considered their inferiors.

And in their arrogance, they were dying at the hands of those inferior humans.

The Energy finally began flowing, and blades began to warp and melt in the hands of the townsfolk. If they hadn’t been convinced that their allegations of sorcery were true before, they most assuredly were now. The more powerful Aliomenti telekinetically hurled their attackers out of the village, unconcerned at the sound of the screams mixed with the sounds of cracking bones and torn tendons. The humans were dying in bodies crushed and battered beyond recognition, ceasing to breathe as the horrific pain overwhelmed them.

The screams woke the remaining townspeople from their fear, and they recognized that they could not defeat this foe. They turned and fled from the outpost.

With one exception.

William was engaged in a fierce sword fight with one of the townsfolk. Metal clanged against metal, as the two men fought with tremendous intensity and ferocity. Will, who’d seen William practice his sword craft for the past several decades, felt sympathy for the human man facing him. There was no chance that the man could win, even if William chose not to press his Energy skill advantages. William’s centuries of experience and the speed he’d developed would win the day.

William seemed disinterested in simply winning the sword fight. He wanted to embarrass the man, wanted to make him, and the others, regret their incursion into Aliomenti territory. For William, this man represented those who’d chosen to poison him centuries earlier, stood as an example of the humans he believed needed extermination. His moves were not meant to win; they were meant to wear the man down, to injure him deliberately, to kill him slowly, to make the man suffer before he begged for the mercy of death.

In more practical terms, William was showing off for the Aliomenti, who moved to ring the fighters and watch the lopsided contest, cheering on one of their own.

The skill level was high in the human man, but William’s speed was too overwhelming. With each blow, the man broke down further, until a blow from the flat edge of William’s sword knocked him to the ground. William raised his hands in triumph and sheathed his sword as the Aliomenti crowd roared, and he moved toward Anna and Sarah, the two women who had rescued him from his near-death so many years before.

In his move to embrace them, William did not notice his competitor rise from the ground in silence. He did not see the man’s movements, did not hear him move forward with his weapon at the ready. William’s weapon was sheathed, unavailable for defense.

He had no idea he was in mortal danger until Sarah screamed out a warning as the blade slashed through the air at William’s neck.

In a panic, William reacted instinctively, teleporting a few feet away. It was enough to save his life.

But with William out of his shielding position, the two women he loved more than any others were suddenly at risk, exposed to a slashing sword moving in a blur through the spot William had once occupied.

The blade tore through the front of Sarah’s throat, severing the jugular vein, and she fell, eyes wide, grasping at the mortal wound. The blade didn’t stop, the upward arc catching the side of Anna’s head, splitting her face open to the skull. She fell, dead before her lifeless body hit the dirt.

The entire village went silent.

The earlier deaths had caught them by surprise, and they’d had no time to process those. These deaths, though... these were the result of a cruel twist of fate. None of them seemed able to move due to their shock, and they merely watched as the blood poured from the wound in Sarah’s throat, as her hands scrabbled to close the wound in a futile effort to save her life. William finally recovered and moved to her, and he was there as her hands fell away from her neck, was there to watch as the life faded from her eyes.

William closed her eyes before shutting his own eyes, his grief palpable, the silence around him absolute.

Then he turned upon the man he’d toyed with earlier, to his eternal regret. The man had recognized he was against something beyond human when William vanished, had remained rooted to the spot as William watched the sisters die... and now realized that his life was very much at risk. He turned to run.

William appeared in front of him, his sword in hand, eyes blazing.

This time, he did not hold back or take his time. He did not care if the man suffered, just the he died. The point of the blade went straight through the man’s throat, and William followed through until the man was pinned to the ground on his back, blood spouting from the mortal wound. Dislodging the blade, he swept it in a wide arc, sweeping the sword at such a high rate of speed that the man’s head split ear to ear.

William stopped briefly, his eyes flicking to the bodies of the women he loved, and the body of the man who’d killed them both lay dead at his hands. He’d inflicted their injuries back upon their killer, a symbol of the vengeance he felt.

The man’s death was sufficient for vengeance, but not sufficient to quench William’s rage. The blade flew, again and again, until the body was no longer recognizable as human. The rage on his face was horrible, and when the blade stopped moving, he pointed at the pulpy mess and screamed. “
Burn in hell!”

Fire leapt from his hands, and the remains at his feet burned to ash. The flame burned with such intensity that there was no smoke, no smell, just instant annihilation. William was stunned, and looked down at his hands, then looked at the crowd in confusion, as if pleading for help.

No one moved to him, stunned at the display of unbridled violence and the flames thrown from his hands. When no one moved to him, William looked back at the bodies of Anna and Sarah. Will could see him piecing it together, a story with an unhappy ending even greater than the deaths of the two women he loved. For William realized that he’d had every opportunity to save them, but his pride had been their downfall. Had he listened to Will, the crowds might have been calmed. Had he dispatched the man quickly, there would have been no chance for him to deal the double death blow. And if William had turned to defend himself with steel, rather than teleporting away in fear, the blade would not have had a clear path to end two lives.

“I will never let myself forget you or forgive myself for this failure,” William whispered. He used the tip of the blade to gouge deep scars across both cheeks, refusing to wince in pain or stop the flow of blood. “And I will avenge your murders a million times over. I will decimate the human scourge.”

Will felt a chill at his actions and words.

The days thereafter were a blur, a memory that the Aliomenti could not blot out. There were the funerals for their own dead, and the genuine grief shown by a scarred William as Anna and Sarah were laid to rest reverberated through the community of telepaths. So great was his grief that his thick, brown hair had started to fall from his head. Arthur joined them as well, and seemed uncertain what to say, for once there simply to offer support to one of the many satellite communities the Aliomenti had founded.