Chapter Nine
~
The White Herons
Ardara stood at her machine, staring into the chamber. The machine had buttons almost like an oversized typewriter, which operated the mechanical limbs inside the looming chamber. The metal claws soldered and sliced at a hunk of iron held on a tall pedestal.
Dacian stood beside her, watching intently. “New toy?” he questioned.
“I am building a device.” She clarified. “A device that I hope will stunt an Enma’s abilities, and harness their power. Rendering them…Virtually human.”
“Don’t you already use devices like that on all the slaves?”
“Yes, but this one is different. With your help, I’ll create a way to remove the energy from a large power source.”
“As in…Another way to steal an Enma’s essence?”
“And more.” She grinned.
Sven and Celina whispered to each other as the others continued to battle with Orphenn.
After bare-fisted combat drills, Orphenn advanced to the shooting range. He fired at his set targets, and when he struck all their bull’s-eyes, he glanced all around him. The others looked pleased with his progress. Eynochia beamed down at him from the balcony.
“Okay, Birdie, take a break-ten minutes. When you get back, prepare yourself for one-on-one combat training.” Sven ordered, and sent the gun targets away in dust, back to the armory. Orphenn immediately nodded and trudged off into the palace.
He met up with Eynochia in the doorway of his bedroom. “Finally out of that infirmary gown, are we? You look like you’re feeling better.” He greeted, nudging her shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m not so sick anymore.” She replied.
“Let’s see your burns.” He took Eynochia’s hand and rolled up her sleeve to examine the bracelet of sores around her wrist. “Still looks pretty bad.” He commented, running hid finger along the edge of the scarring tissue.
Eynochia gasped.
The burn seemed to glow. The blisters shrank, and were gone, and the wound disappeared as if erased from a piece of paper.
“Orphenn!” Eynochia exclaimed, rubbing her healed wrist in astonishment. She hurriedly looked at her other burns on her other wrist, waist, and ankles. All gone. “You healed me!” she yelled. “How did you do that?”
Orphenn was speechless. “I….”
“We have to show Dad!”
Orphenn’s newfound gift was greatly appreciated. He put it to use healing the minor injuries gained during training sessions, which Eynochia could now participate in. Soon his skills were catching up with hers. He discovered she was an excellent fighter, though not as viscous as Xeila or as fast as Jeremiah. But she was accurate and efficient in her attacks, and ready for anything.
But what Celina announced one morning before all of Aleida caught all of them quite off guard.
The Supreme Commander rose up to the podium. A sea of people stood in the plaza, applauding and watching her on the massive hologram screens above her head. They showed her wave at the crowd and smile, and her people cheered.
Orphenn and the others stood behind her, all clothed in white for the occasion-all but Cinder, naturally, who wore her signature head-to-toe black garb. Beside them there was a gargantuan white tarp that hid something equally large beneath it. It stood almost as tall as the palace’s highest clock tower.
The ocean of both Enma and human citizens silenced as Celina spoke, her voice like a welcome breeze about their heads.
“People of Aleida. Today, I have news that is both grave, and joyous.”
There was not a sound.
She continued. “I know you all recall the Great War that took place less than two decades ago. I know you remember the hardship and the fear, and the loss besides. But I also know that you all remember how fiercely we triumphed.” Here the swarm boomed back its acknowledgement, before Celina continued solemnly. “However, now you must be warned.
“Ardara is plotting a comeback. My sister plans to expand her conquest once again. And according to my sources, she plans to do it soon. Her rage is strong, and she is bitter and hateful in her exile. She will retaliate with more ferocity than she ever before mustered.” Whispers and anxious hushes floated in the air.
“My people, don’t let your hope be lost. I plan to bite back just as hard!” Celina held up her clenched fist, and loud encouragement rose from the audience. “I am reforming my squadron!” With this pronouncement she motioned the others to step forward. When they did, Celina ceremonially awarded each of them with a white uniform jumpsuit, and a diamond crest. She touched her own crest, which was pinned at the shoulder of her own matching uniform, and rose to the podium again. “With my loved ones at my side, the White Herons are reborn!” She pulled a thick rope cord, and the gigantic tarp slowly fell, and revealed what had been hiding beneath it. Celina smiled as a massive airship was unveiled.
“Introducing the new Avian-the Day Star! With this faithful vessel and our powerful army behind it, we can stop the Ardarans in their tracks! They’ll never get as far as the Wasteland’s border!” Again, she raised her encouraging fist.
“Aleidian victory!”
The crowd roared back: “Aleidian victory!”
“Does this mean all the other squadrons will be reformed?” Sven asked Celina later that afternoon.
“Not necessarily all the same squadrons. But yes. The Day Star is the first of seven airships to be built for future squads.”
“Seven? There were only four before.” Sven raised one short, arched eyebrow.
“The squads will be organized with only Enma members.” Celina clarified. “All humans will be field soldiers.”
“What about the remaining Enma that aren’t assigned to squadrons?”
“Also field soldiers. I want the most powerfully gifted Enma put into squads. Their airships will protect them and give them advantage during battle. There aren’t many of us left.”
“Yes, but the human portion of Aleida’s population is just as powerful! Sure, they can’t fly or erect force fields, but I wouldn’t underestimate them, Angel Face. They may be ‘only human’ but they’re a force to be reckoned with, by damn! They got spark!”
“I suppose.”
“If you’re so worried about it, why don’t ‘ya just mutate a new generation? I’m sure there’ll be willin’ voluntaries. Enma like us are revered as gods, dang near.”
“You now I would’ve thought of that. You also know that I traveled to the River a while ago. It returned the Enma mutations to me, and I realized that it remembered me. I also realized that it was running low.”
“What?” Sven started, eyes widening. “The River is….Dying?”
“I believe so.”
“I get it now. With the River runnin’ on empty, you don’t want to use any more of its essence….You’re scared it’ll dry up.”
“Precisely. I’m trying to preserve us. Without the River, there will be no turning back. The River is this world’s vitality. It’s consciousness. Without it, everything will die. I regret ever using it.”
After an interval of silent thought, she said, “I hope you’re right about the humans. They’ll need all the help they can get.”
Orphenn and Eynochia lay beneath the stars that evening, taking reprieve after a particularly exhausting training session. Tonight he had been thinking a lot about his parents. When Sven brought his memory back, he remembered what they were like. His father’s laugh, his mother’s smell. He even recalled the way his father’s hands would move, his mother’s idiosyncrasies, every little mannerism etched into him.
“Say, Eynochia?” He said.
“Yeah?”
“What was your mother’s name?”
She got up on one elbow and looked at him with glowing, green and yellow eyes. Orphenn noticed that seemed to be an Enma trademark, like a uniform characteristic, a telltale sign of mutation, apart from the mismatched color and pupils…They glowed.
“Oriana. Dad used to call her Orio.” She laughed. “Why the sudden curiosity?”
“Oh, I was just….Thinking.” He turned his head to look at Eynochia, his own blue and red eyes glowing, blades of grass tickling his ear. Her eyes and hair gleamed in the moonlight. “What was she like?”
Sven came from the veranda to lie down beside the two teenagers, and spoke, as if his intrusion was perfectly appropriate. The youngsters didn’t mind, though.
“She was like the silver moonlight shining on us right now. She was like the rain-the kind of soft rain that comes when the sun is still shining. So beautiful, when she looked at ‘ya, you wanted to die. That was my Oriana.” Eynochia gave a sad smile. “This is her.” Sven said, handing Orphenn a crumpled photo. He sat up to look at it.
Sven was right. She was gorgeous. She had the russet skin and silver hair like her two daughters. Sven was beside her in the photo. It was obviously taken long before the war; both their eyes were the same color-deep, dark black. And Sven looked so much younger-his face was bright and free of scars. But even in the photo he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Same old Sven, he thought.
Orphenn thought for a moment. “If it’s alright to ask…How did she die?”
Sven sat up, slouching, moonlight on his bare, scarred back. He began, without preamble. “It was the last battle. She and I fought side by side like warriors. My little daughters had to fight too, and I hated it. We never left their sides.” His shoulders shrugged, bony and lean.
“We were at the River, battling it out with some Ardaran soldiers. They had ambushed us when we had thought we were safe on the banks. We tossed them aside easily, but Pigeon’s knee got hurt. I picked her up.
“While my back was turned, I heard Xeila scream. I spun around. It was Dacian. He had kicked Poppet to the ground and threw down Oriana too.
“That bastard had been in my squadron. He had murdered each member months before, apart from Celina and myself. We only escaped because the two of us were out on recon.
“Anyway. He raised his lance, and pointed it at my wife. I handed Pige to her sister and rushed to hold him back. I socked him right in the face. He turned right around and slashed me with his lance. That’s how I got this.” He touched the scar that ran down his face. “It seems like only seconds I blacked out. But it was long enough for Dacian to knock her across the head with the butt end of his lance and slit her throat.
“I knew she was dead. But even as she fell into the River I didn’t wanna believe it.
“The girls were screaming on the banks, trying to get in the water and help her. I screamed at ‘em, ‘No girls, stay put! Don’t look at Mommy. Don’t look at Mommy, just look at me!’ Though I can’t have looked much better. Face cut in half, blood all over. But alive, at least. I ran through the water to get them, and hugged their faces close so they wouldn’t see.
“The traitor was gone. Nowhere to be seen.” Sven’s face took on a twinge of awe, the memory fascinating him, even now as he retold it.
“Then the water started to move. It was shining with color and it rose, and lifted my wife into the air. I reached for her. But the water rained back down and she was gone. There was no more blood in the water. Not even a trace that Oriana had existed at all.
“By that time, the war was over. Guess that’s why the traitor scrammed off so quick. The Celestial Family had come to help us. Should have been happy. But for the longest time I felt numb. It must have been years before I actually cried.
“And….I been cryin’ ever since.” His voice cracked.
Orphenn was speechless for several moments. “Do you remember?” he finally asked Eynochia, mutedly, his voice quieted with empathy.
“I remember.” She breathed tearfully.
Their pain tugged at Orphenn’s heart, and he found himself crying as well.
For a long time it was silent. They sat, staring at the stars.
Eynochia chuckled. “Dad, it’s cold. Get a shirt on.”
The marshal smirked, chin still quivering, residual tears trailing down the scar at his lips. “Nope.”
The next morning, the group was readying themselves for daily training, when Sven burst in, holding a leather belt with two holsters in his hand.
“Change of plans, ladies. Today’s our first mission. Commander’s orders.” He walked to the table where Orphenn was tying his boots. “Got somethin’ for ‘ya, Little Bird. Put this on.” He gave Orphenn the belt.
When it was securely strapped around his waist, Orphenn asked, “What’s it for?”
“These.” Sven summoned two glimmering pistols into his hands. One was gold, and the other was silver. “I want you to have them.”
“Hey! You attacked me with those!” the orphan laughed.
“Yes. On several occasions. Here.” Orphenn took the guns and admired the way their casings reflected the light, silver and gold. “And let me tell you something about these. This gold one-never runs out of ammunition. And the silver one never misses. That’s why I only shot you with the gold one.”
Orphenn twirled the pistols expertly before slipping them into their holsters. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You’ll need them for the mission.”
“Where are we going?”
“Ardara.”