Page 47 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope (The Children Of The Gods #100)

"The confidential information your allies keep from you may be the key to defeating your enemies. Pursue it and leverage it to your advantage."

—Commander Brusdick Gorlin, Elite Forces' Vedona Academy

T hrough the open window, I watched as the ground fell away beneath us, the enormous Elucian port of entry growing smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than a speck in the sprawling landscape below.

As we climbed higher, the world around us transformed. The vegetation changed, becoming sparse and hardy. And above us, the ribbons of light—green, purple, and blue—shimmered and swayed in a celestial ballet that now seemed almost close enough to touch.

"Would you look at that," Codric said, the awe in his voice reflecting my own. "The auroras are even more spectacular up close."

I couldn't look away. It was beautiful, alien, and unnerving.

Auroras could be seen from almost anywhere on Aurorys, but the sky seen from the flats of Eluria paled in comparison to this magnificence.

As the car swayed and climbed, the world below shrinking, I couldn't help but think about the structural integrity of the cable it was suspended from.

Next to me, Codric chuckled. "Stop worrying, Alar. We are not going to plummet to our deaths."

"Why would I worry?" I kept my sarcastic reply low for the sake of the other passengers. "We are only hanging from a cable thousands of feet above the ground."

"I knew it." He shook his head. "I saw you frowning at the cable before we boarded the car, checking out the bolts. You always pay attention to the smallest details and fret about their construction and how sound their maintenance is."

"Of course I do. Maintenance is done by humans, and if things don't get routinely inspected, people begin to slack off, and malfunctions happen. In the case of a cable car, a malfunction means death. We are trusting our lives to the work ethic of greasy fellows like the ones who attacked us."

He put his arm around my shoulders. "This is the only access to Elucia, save for on the back of a dragon or following a burrowing worm. Do you really think they would let it fall into disrepair?"

He had a point, but I wasn't ready to concede. "The Elucians are so focused on security that they might overlook maintenance and upkeep issues."

Travel in and out of Elucia was restricted, so the cable car rail was mostly used for bringing in merchandise and for transporting export goods. Shuttling passengers was secondary. Still, enough people sat in those cars every day for the rail to be a target for their enemies.

Dragon patrols were supposedly stationed along the way, guarding the rail, but I had seen none so far.

In fact, I had never seen a dragon in person, only in films and photographs, and I couldn't wait for my first glimpse of one.

Even if I didn't become a rider, seeing a dragon up close was almost worth the international scandal Codric and I were risking by sneaking into Elucia with fake identities.

Hells, a scandal was the least of my worries. It could get much worse.

After a while, I gave up on trying to spot dragons and turned my attention to the chatter around me. The lilting accents of the Elucians created a melodic backdrop to our ascent, and if I concentrated, I could catch snippets of conversations and glean more insight into the world I was entering.

"...the Shedun scum are relentless," said the guy sitting across the center aisle from us.

He was holding up an Elucian newspaper in front of his face, so all I could see was a portion of his profile.

"Any casualties?" the woman sitting next to him asked anxiously.

"Thank Elu, they were spotted in time." The guy folded his newspaper and put it on his lap.

"They came through multiple tunnels simultaneously.

Those drakking worms, burrowing up through our mountains like they were nothing but giant anthills.

There was no way the defenders could reach the village in time. "

The woman gasped. "Then how did they manage to avoid casualties?"

I leaned in, trying to appear casual as I listened more intently.

"The civilian patrols stopped them," the guy said.

"They detected seismic activity and sounded the alarm.

The civilians fought them off, holding the line until the riders arrived.

The dragons roasted some of the vermin, but the rest managed to retreat into the tunnels and collapse them as they slid back down the shafts. "

"Thank Elu it ended like that," the woman said. "It could have been another disaster."

"Indeed," he agreed, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

"How much more of this can we endure?" she whispered. "When will it end?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know why Elu cursed us to live surrounded by those demon worshipers."

"Shush, Bendor." She put her fingers on his lips. "That's blasphemy. Some truths are known only to Elu."

Bendor didn't seem to agree, but he said nothing, probably choosing to avoid a theological argument with his companion.

A wise man.

"Hello." I turned to them. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. We've heard rumors about the Shedun in Eluria, but it seems to me that our media doesn't paint the full picture."

"No, it doesn't." The guy looked Codric and me over with suspicion in his eyes. "Pilgrims?"

I nodded. "My name is Alar, and this is my cousin Codric. We have a tiny bit of Elucian blood, so we decided to honor our distant Elucian ancestor and join the pilgrimage."

"I'm Bendor." He extended his hand. "And this is my sister Mira."

We all shook hands, and Codric flashed Mira one of his charming smiles.

"What else did your newspaper say about the raid?" Codric asked.

"Two nights ago, the civilian watch in one of the western villages, Marvaila, detected unusual seismic activity.

Nothing too alarming at first—living in the mountains, you get used to the occasional tremor.

But when the sensors detected activity at multiple points of origin, all converging on their village, they knew that something big was up. "

This was far more detailed than what the Elurian media ever reported. Most Elurians didn't care about what was happening to the Elucians. After all, they had dragons on their side, so they could deal with the Shedun on their own.

Shockingly, some even sided with the monsters.

Irrational envy over the dragon pact and access to immortality for the select few was the breeding ground of hate.

"By the time the civilian watch realized what was happening, it was almost too late," Bendor continued. "The worms burst through at three locations, and the Shedun poured out like demons from the depths of hell."

"How can civilians manage to fight them off?" I asked.

I couldn't imagine Elurian civilians doing anything other than screaming and running for their lives, but by all accounts, the Elucians were made from hardier stuff.

"With everything they got," Mira said, her eyes flashing with anger. "Every Elucian is trained from childhood to defend our communities, and we all serve a minimum of four years in the Elucian Forces, with some of us serving much longer than that."

"We owe our existence to the dragons, Mira," Bendor said.

"Without them, we would have perished already even if every Elucian fought to their last breath.

" He turned to us with a feral smile on his weathered face.

"You should see the dragons at work. When they rain fire on the demons, the sky lights up brighter than the auroras, and the Shedun screech like the vermin they are as they try to outrun the inferno. "

I shuddered, torn between awe at the power of the dragons and horror at the vivid description of destruction. Beside me, Codric's face had gone pale.

Mira sighed. "Despite our best efforts to preserve and nurture the dragon population, there are still not enough of them, and they can't be everywhere at once, but there is an endless supply of Shedun. Kill one horde, and two more pop up. We drive them back, and they return, over and over again."

Codric shook his head. "The reports we get barely scratch the surface."

What we thought we knew about the situation in Elucia seemed deficient, but that was one of the many reasons I was here.

As I'd suspected, the Shedun threat was far greater than what the Elurian council was led to believe, and the Elucians were fighting a constant battle for survival. My fear was that they wouldn't hold off the hordes forever, and once Elucia fell again, the Sitorians would turn on Eluria.

The Elurian council believed in the myth that the Shedun didn't represent Sitoria, and that they would never escalate their terror attacks into a full-on war again, but the truth was that they were fully supported by the majority of the Sitorians, who filled the Shedun ranks with a never-ending supply of young men eager to die for their god.

Others believed that if the Shedun were allowed to exterminate the dragons once and for all, they would stop their never-ending attacks on Elucia, but that was another fallacy perpetrated by the ignorant who didn't bother to actually educate themselves about the Sitorians and what their clearly stated end goal was—dominion over all of Aurorys.

The dragons were simply the largest hurdle in their way.

As a heavy silence fell over our group, I glanced out the window, and the auroras suddenly seemed cold and distant. How could the Elucians live that way?

Was this land's beauty really worth such horrors?

They could leave the dragons to fight the war against the Shedun and relocate to Eluria, where they could live in peace, but the ugly truth was that the Elurian leadership was happy to aid Elucians in their never-ending fight by supplying them with weapons, so they would keep the Shedun occupied and weakened.