Page 75 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)
CHAPTER ONE—KYRION
“T his is a bad idea.”
I paced back and forth, my hands clasped behind my back. “An extremely bad idea. Awful. Horrible. Terrible.”
Vesper leaned her right hip against the metal railing and gave me an amused look. “This morning, you thought training was a great idea. Wonderful. Marvelous. Terrific, even. You were the one who was all gung-ho to test our magic, connection, and skills.”
“Training was a great idea. But this? This is not training .” I stopped and swept my right arm out wide. “This is a gigantic bloody maze .”
The two of us were standing on a concrete walkway that overlooked a fifty-foot vertical drop.
Down below, on the ground level, a dull gray metal wall soared thirty feet into the air and formed an enormous circle that stretched from this side of the facility all the way to the other far, far in the distance.
Inside the outer wall, dozens of other walls spiraled out, forming an abstract pattern that resembled an indecipherable circuit board.
All the walls were covered with dense green vines that were so tightly packed together they hid much of the metal underneath.
Many of the vines boasted pink-star honeysuckle blossoms that were bigger than dinner plates, and even here on the upper level, the honeysuckles’ sweet scent saturated the air like a Regal lady’s overpowering perfume.
My nose twitched, and I had to hold back a sneeze.
Between the walls, gray flagstones formed paths that curled, snaked, and twisted in dozens of directions.
At first glance, the area looked like a pretty hedge maze at a Regal castle on Corios, my home planet.
In fact, my mother’s garden at Castle Caldaren had several pink-star honeysuckle bushes, although not on this grand or complex a scale.
Many of the paths opened into large circular biodomes which were covered with energy shields to control the temperatures and physical elements inside.
Through the clear, shimmering shields, I spotted everything from autumn leaves to tropical flowers to snowdrifts, since those biodomes were fashioned after Temperate woods, Tropics rain forests, and Frozon moons.
And those were just the hazards I could see from this upper observational level. Far more traps and insidious tricks would be tucked away in the biodomes themselves.
“Forget what I said before,” I grumbled. “It’s not a maze. It’s a bloody obstacle course.”
Vesper nodded. “That’s exactly what it is, and I, for one, am looking forward to exploring all the twists and turns.”
She looked out over the maze, and the silver flecks in her dark blue eyes brightened with anticipation.
Vesper Quill was an inventor and engineer, and she loved figuring out how things worked and especially how to make them better, faster, stronger, and more efficient.
She was also a seer who never forgot anything she saw, heard, or experienced.
Her forehead furrowed in concentration. To Vesper, the maze-slash-obstacle course was a life-size puzzle, and she wouldn’t stop studying it until she knew exactly where every path led.
I stabbed my finger at her. “No fair using your seer magic to map the maze in advance.”
Vesper let out a shocked gasp and clutched a hand to her chest in mock outrage. “Would I do that?”
“Absolutely,” I grumbled again. “You love to win just as much as I do.”
Vesper smiled. “Well, I have to do something to keep up with the great Kyrion Caldaren, rogue Arrow, psion extraordinaire, and all-around badass.”
I harrumphed, but my lips quirked up into an answering smile.
I was a psion, a broad term for seers, spelltechs, siphons, and anyone else with incredible mental abilities.
In my case, those abilities included telekinesis, telepathy, and telempathy.
For years, I’d used my psion power as the head of the Arrows, the elite warriors of the Imperium.
I’d lived through more brutal battles than I cared to remember, but all the blood, pain, suffering, and death I’d seen, experienced, and doled out myself had been worth it, because it had all led me to Vesper.
Several months ago, Vesper had saved my life during a fight against the Techwave, a dangerous terrorist group that wanted to topple both the Imperium and the Erzton and become the main ruling force in the Archipelago Galaxy.
Vesper and I had helped each other escape when the battleground had turned into a field of oozing lava, and all that danger, stress, and trauma had led to us forming a truebond, a psionic connection that let two people share thoughts, feelings, skills, and abilities.
At first, I had been horrified at our unwanted connection.
A truebond might make two people much stronger, but in some ways, it also made them extremely vulnerable.
If one person was injured, then their truebonded partner would often feel the psionic echo and pain of that injury.
Cuts, bruises, scrapes, and burns could also physically appear on each person’s body, even if only one person had actually been wounded.
And of course, the common, romantic notion was that if one person in a truebond perished, then their partner would shortly follow.
Something I’d seen for myself when my mother, Desdemona, had sickened and died after Callus Holloway had taken too much of her power at once.
My father, Chauncey, had been so devastated by the loss of his truebond with my mother that he’d flown into a drunken rage, forcing me to kill him in self-defense, even though I’d only been thirteen at the time.
After that, I never wanted to be connected to anyone, and I had fought tooth and nail against all my growing feelings, concern, and softness for Vesper.
But one by one, she’d broken down the icy walls I’d built up over the last twenty-five years and wrapped the soft, velvety ribbon of her presence around my mind and especially around my heart.
Now I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
“Setting aside the matter of your obvious cheating, why is everything on this planet housed inside a dome?” I resumed my pacing. “What is wrong with actually being outside in the fresh air?”
“Because even though this is a Temperate planet, we’re on a mountaintop, and it can snow here year-round,” a third voice chimed in.
“House Battis, the owners of this fine establishment, don’t want their pink-star honeysuckles, blue-moon peonies, and other rare, expensive flowers to get frostbitten by a sudden cold snap, like the one we are currently experiencing. ”
Asterin Armas gestured at the dome that enclosed the entire facility and arced up hundreds of feet above our heads.
Large panels of orange solar glass were fitted together with thick seams of black solar wiring that made the dome resemble a giant jigsaw puzzle.
From the outside, the panels formed a solid wall of citrine orange, but they were clear on the inside, and snowflakes fluttered down from the dark gray clouds in the twilight sky.
Two weeks ago, Vesper and I had come to Gewitter, the capital city of Sygnustern, Asterin’s home planet and the seat of power for the Erzton, seeking refuge from Callus Holloway, the Imperium ruler who had put an enormous bounty on us.
As a siphon, Holloway was able to absorb and wield all types of energy, and he wanted to take the psionic power of the truebond connection between Vesper and me for himself.
The greedy bastard was determined to use us as his bloody batteries, just like he’d done to my parents.
A familiar combination of anger, resentment, and bitterness speared through my chest, and my inner monster growled in response.
I’d been trying to figure out a way to kill Holloway for years.
Given his siphon power, he would just absorb any blaster bolts I fired, and he could always use the electrical power in nearby lights or energy shields to heal any wounds I might inflict with my stormsword.
I could chop the Imperium ruler’s head off his shoulders, and the siphon would probably still find some way to heal himself. Bloody unkillable bastard.
As an Arrow, I’d eliminated my fair share of enemies, but my lack of progress regarding Holloway was more frustrating by the day, especially given the enormous threat the siphon posed to Vesper.
Perhaps today’s training would give me some new insight about how to kill Holloway or at least help Vesper and me further strengthen our bond so that he couldn’t siphon off so much as a spark of our power when we inevitably faced him again.
I didn’t care so much about myself, but I would burn down the galaxy to keep Vesper safe.
Pew! Pew! Pew!
The sound of blaster fire drifted up out of the maze, and in the distance, bright red and orange bolts zinged through the air like colorful streaks of lightning.
Whoops of laughter and excitement rang out, along with a smattering of applause, and the honeysuckles’ scent took on an intense, burned note.
“Why plant all this greenery if you’re just going to let people run around and shoot blasters in your maze?” I groused again.
Asterin shrugged. “House Battis made a fortune mining coal, lunarium, and diamonds several generations ago. They have money to burn, and this is how they do it.”
I harrumphed. “You mean this is how House Battis shows the other Erzton nobles just how much money they have—by planting ridiculously expensive and fragile flowers and then letting people play war games inside their massive domed garden.”
Asterin shrugged again. “Most of the Erzton Houses are like peacocks showing off their wealth, position, and power, and Lady Battis has never been shy about flaunting her many assets.”