Page 35 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

Jovo bounced up and down, slashing with his knives.

“Kiar Jovo!” I went straight to mom voice. “Calm down.”

He blinked, stunned for a second, spun around, and started pacing from one side of the tunnel to the other. Score one for the universal parent voice.

I sat down on the stone floor. The anchor chamber was right in front of me with the dial hanging there in the empty air like some bone spider. The gress was nowhere to be seen. He was biding his time. Sooner or later, we would have to leave the tunnel.

If I ever hoped to see my children again, I had to be smart. I had to find out as much about the gress as I could.

“Jovo.”

The lees turned to me, his eyes hot.

“Gress.” I imitated him squeezing the marble.

Jovo pulled the marble out, put it in front of me, and squeezed it. The image of the gress pair spilled out. I focused on it and tried to relax.

I was never successful with meditation. As soon as I closed my eyes and let my mind off its leash, my thoughts ran in all directions, floating from one topic to another.

I would start with something mundane like Noah needing a new pair of glasses, and move on to the car needing gas, then the oil change, then the calendar, then the upcoming meetings, and so it usually devolved into a mess that left me more stressed than when I started it.

This time had to be different. I sensed the power hidden deep inside me.

So far it showed me flashes of visions, little fragments, and hints, but it contained so much more.

I hadn’t even scratched the surface. It knew about the gress.

I felt it when it showed me how to open the dial.

I had to convince it to let me in. There had to be something there, some information about their weakness. Something that we could use.

Jovo lowered himself onto the floor to the left of me. He leaned forward and placed his hands in front of him, like a cat sitting. The lees took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Bear padded over and lowered herself, curling around me, her big body bracing mine.

I closed my eyes and flexed . This time I wasn’t focused on anything. I wasn’t measuring distance or trying to determine the properties of an object. I simply entered the state of flexing. My talent splayed out of me like the flames of a bonfire. I let it flail.

My time was almost never my own. I loved my children with all my heart, but they made constant demands on me.

They required attention, especially when they wanted to be ignored.

Work generated cycles of mind-numbing reports, physical fitness tests, and short, intense bursts of pressure when entering the breaches.

The carousel of household bills went round and round, from the expected utilities to the inconvenient emergencies of broken appliances and annual repairs.

Everything had to be done. Everything had to be taken care of.

My life was so busy, at times it felt like I dissolved into it.

I was getting older and older, time was flying by, and I was powerless to stop it.

Millions of moments and all of them taken.

But now my life was empty. There were no children in this breach, no tasks, no bills. There were no stalkers, dragons, or gress in this tunnel. There was only my dog, the alien creature I rescued, and me. My body. My senses. My thoughts. This moment was mine. I owned it.

Slowly, carefully, the invisible glow of my talent subsided, until it radiated from within me like soft heat from a low fire. My power stabilized and I let myself sink into it.

* * *

The air was hot and smelled of soot.

I stood on an alien planet. Above me a blue sky stretched, but unlike Earth’s crystalline blue, this color was a moody, subdued shade, hazy, almost smoky. The sky in perpetual twilight.

The ground was dark stone, triangular hills rising up, ridged with spires of jagged rock. Between the hills, lava flowed in dense currents, a river of it, miles wide, its surface cooled to a grey and purple crust. Here and there, the currents collided, and brilliant red shone in the cracks.

Farther off, at the foot of a hill on the left, where the ground came in contact with the superheated flow, flames rose in a curtain, licking at the hill that had become an island.

The fire burned, reflecting in the long stratus clouds and turning them orange and red.

Two massive moons hung above it all, translucent grey ghosts sprinkled with glitter.

I’d travelled to someone else’s reality. I was still me. When I looked at myself, I saw my hands and my coveralls. But these were not my memories. Fear squirmed down my back. What if I were trapped here?

A faint presence slipped across my consciousness. It touched me and I recognized it. The alien woman who called me her daughter. The ghost of her memories enveloped me, welcoming and warm, the way my biological mother never was. My breach mother embraced me.

It would be alright. I was safe. This world of living memory wouldn’t hurt me, because I wasn’t an intruder.

I belonged. I had a right to be here. This was a legacy gifted to me by my mother, and her mother before her, on and on, stretching into the distant past. It felt at once strange and yet fitting, as if I was a lake at the end of a long river. I was sadrin .

The ghost of my new mother whispered something soothing and reassuring. Strange energy pulsed from her, suffusing me. For a moment the world went white, and then my vision returned, and she was gone.

The transfer was complete. The gem, and everything within it, was now truly mine. I took a deep breath. She had been so kind, my new mother. If only we’d had more time.

I started walking. One step, two… Too slow. I moved the world, spinning it toward me, covering dozens of feet with single step, then hundreds. I walked and walked, tireless, over the ridges of rock and soil that smelled of tar until I climbed the hill in front of me.

A taller hill waited behind the first. A cluster of six dark towers thrust out of its apex.

They were glossy and black, like crystal points of obsidian that had grown ninety feet tall.

Time and the elements had eroded their surface, leaving it pockmarked where age gnawed on the stone. No windows interrupted the solid walls.

I walked to the tallest tower. Rock flowed like water, allowing me to pass, and I entered.

The inside of the tower lay hollow. I was on the bottom floor, on a narrow ledge guarded by a stone rail.

The black walls, solid from the outside, turned nearly transparent from within, tinting the sky and the burning flow of lava but not obscuring them.

Above me, stone balconies ringed the perimeter, six levels.

The bottom three were filled with male gress in dark robes; the top three held female gress with veils of chainmail, clothed in garments made from many layers of diaphanous black cloth.

Below my ledge, lava boiled in a round pit.

A narrow stone path protruded above it to a round platform fifteen feet wide carved from a glossy black crystal.

It looked like volcanic glass, and yet it wasn’t, because lava would have melted it into nothing.

In the center of a platform, a rectangular table stood.

The body of a female gress lay on the table.

She wore the same garments as the watchers on the upper levels, and a chainmail veil hid the lower half of her face.

I moved along the ledge to take a closer look.

The skin around her closed eyes was lined and wrinkled like old leather.

The life within her barely shivered. She was taking her final breaths.

A tall male gress strode to the dais, walking above the churning lava.

A priest of his people. He reached the body and thrust his four arms up, metal bracelets sliding down his narrow limbs with a gentle chime.

A long wail erupted from him, solemn like a hymn.

He reached down and sliced across the garments, exposing her torso.

A metal amulet lay on her chest, a dark ring with five moons etched on it.

The female gress exhaled, and the last of her life rejoined the cosmos.

The priest reached for her amulet, touched it, and uttered a sibilant word. The amulet turned red, then yellow. The body of the gress began to disintegrate around it, her skin turning black.

The temple was completely silent. The mourners stood still.

The amulet blazed with white. The clothes of the deceased caught fire. For a breath she shone like she was woven from living flame and then the fire went out, leaving behind a corpse of ash. The priest touched it, and the incinerated body fell apart, raining down into the lava.

Another priest approached, carrying a naked gress baby.

The child mewed like a kitten, waving its six limbs.

The priests placed it on the table and raised their arms. A spark burst above them and coalesced into an amulet on a thin chain.

The first priest reached for it and gently placed it around the baby’s neck.

A commotion broke out behind me. A male gress entered the tower.

The two priests hissed in unison and three male gress responded, barring the intruder’s path.

The newcomer shoved at them, trying to force his way in.

One of the defending gress slashed at the invader.

The dark garment of the intruder fell open, revealing his bare chest with no amulet.

The entire gathering hissed. The sound was so loud, it drowned everything.

The lead priest waved his arm, and everyone fell silent. The priest opened his mouth, showing jagged teeth. Alien sounds flowed and turned into words.

“There is no place for you here, soulless.”

The invader dashed out of the tower.

This knowledge was important, but it wasn’t enough. It related to the gress as a whole, but my opponent was a Kael. I needed more.

I moved my hand, bending the vision to my will. The temple vanished. I scrolled through the world, looking for the right combination of data. Mountains and valleys rolled around me, the sky darker, then lighter, the moons rising and falling…

There it was. I stopped the memory carousel. A fortress rose in front of me, carved from a mountain side. I took a step forward, conquering miles in a single movement, and landed on its wall.

I watched the gress train within the fort.

I walked between them. I listened to them talk.

I saw them spar, then learn to kill. I was there when they passed their trials and became Kael.

I witnessed them don the devourer shrouds that took root within their bodies.

I saw them suffer and inflict that suffering tenfold on others as efficiency mutated into cruelty.

I watched them take their first contracts and step into the cosmos.

I watched them hunt down their prey.

I watched them kill my mother.