Page 37 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

The gress loomed in front of me, so fast his movement was a blur. He leaped, spinning, his four arms rotating like the blades of a fan.

I flexed and saw him fly toward me in slow motion. He had decided I was done. This was the Kael finishing move, brutal and impossible to counter. He knew he would hit me, and his sickles would carve me apart.

Finally.

I shied to the right, putting all of the reserves I was saving into my speed. He hurtled past me and in the instant his feet touched the ground, his back was to me.

I sliced, shaving a wide section of the shroud off his back. It fell to the ground, a writhing, grey mat. The gress’ exposed back gaped in front of me.

The devourer shroud wasn’t a garment; it was a symbiotic second skin, bound to the gress by a myriad of nerves.

If I had stabbed through it, it would barely react, but I didn’t pierce it.

I cut it off. The moment my blade peeled a chunk of it off of him, every neuron of the shroud screamed in agony, dumping all of that pain into its host.

The gress shrieked as the excruciating pain twisted his limbs and dropped him to his knees.

I yanked the spider lasso off my arm and looped it around his neck.

He lunged away from me. The gress were fast. They were not strong. The spider rope snapped taut, and I jerked him back and onto my blade. My sword carved through his innards.

The gress tore himself off my blade, the ragged edges of the shroud reaching for me and falling short. He tried to spin around, his sickles lashing out, but I pulled him back, stabbing into his exposed flesh again and again and again.

The gress convulsed. I sliced the top right forearm off his body. Then the top left. The other two arms followed. I jerked him off his feet and dragged him across the floor to the pillar. It took me two seconds to tie him to the anchor.

I straightened. In the corner the skelzhar was snarling, bleeding from a dozen wounds, trying to stay upright on three legs. Its right hind paw hung useless. Its left eye was gone.

Huge angry gashes marked Bear’s back. She didn’t seem to mind, chewing on the other hind leg, while Jovo clung to the skelzhar’s back, sinking his knives into the fur.

I dropped by the gress, sliced the shroud on his chest, and ripped the metal amulet free. He wailed, his voice weak and fading. He thought I held his soul in my hand.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him in his language. “Don’t go anywhere.”

* * *

It took less than a minute for the skelzhar to die. I disengaged once the cat collapsed, but Jovo was still stabbing it, drenched in blood and lost to a frenzy.

I made my way back to the gress and crouched by him, holding the amulet by the chain.

The small metal disk rotated, suspended from my fingers.

The gress’ eyes locked on it. His breathing was labored.

The stumps of his arms weren’t bleeding.

The shroud was devouring him from within, trying to repair itself, and it was draining his blood.

The Kael Order believed that during the final rite of their training their god sent a holy demon warrior to inhabit their bodies.

The demon raged, and the best way to honor and satisfy it was to deliver pain and suffering.

It was a very convenient construct that absolved the Kael’gress of all moral responsibility for their actions.

The ruling elite had to maintain control, and that’s where the amulets came in.

According to their doctrine, the little metal circles literally contained their souls, safeguarding them from harm, and in case of the Kael, the holy fire of the demon warrior’s aura.

A gress who lost the amulet was but “a bag of meat,” and their soul would never be reborn, remaining bound to the amulet for eternity.

I let the amulet dangle.

“Where is your witness?”

He didn’t answer. He was still focused on the amulet.

“Bring your witness to me or die soulless.”

His gaze shifted to my face. He squeezed out a single word.

A small metal sphere descended from the ceiling and hung in front of me. I sliced through it with my blade. It fell apart, spilling its electronic guts onto the stone floor. The gress recorded their kills, both to prove they completed their contracts and to boast.

I looked back at the gress. “Who hired you?”

He took a deep breath. “Rakalan.”

No reaction from the power within me. The gem was still dormant. “Did the Rakalan make this breach?”

“Rakalan do not invade. They are the invaded.”

“Who does the invading?”

“Tsuun.”

“How many worlds did the Tsuun invade?”

“More than six of greater of six.”

Greater of six in their counting system was six squared, so thirty-six. Six of thirty-six was two hundred and sixteen. So many…

“Why do the Tsuun invade? What do they want?”

He blinked slowly. “Power. Resources. Territory.”

He was fading fast. I had to get to the important questions.

“What were the terms of your contract?”

“Find sadrin . Bring her back. Kill her if you fail.”

“Is that why you hunt me?”

“Yes.” His voice was a soft sibilant whisper. “You are sadrin . I must take you back.”

“How do you know I am sadrin ?”

His breath was a soft rasp. “I feel it…”

That wasn’t good. If he felt it, did that mean anybody could feel it?

“Was the previous sadrin a Tsuun?”

“She was Rakalan.”

“Her own people hired you to kill her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Rakalan submitted. She did not. Rakalan resisted for greater of greater six of their rotations. Their sadrin held much knowledge. She was of value to Tsuun. Rakalan failed to deliver her. They feared destruction.”

The Tsuun had invaded the Rakalan world, and the Rakalans fought them off for one thousand two hundred and ninety-six years. In the end, the Tsuun won the interdimensional war, and the Rakalan surrendered. Turning over their sadrin must’ve been a condition of that surrender.

A death rattle clamped the gress. He reached for the amulet with a handless arm.

“How did you come to be here?”

“ Sadrin fled. We pursued.”

“What makes sadrin valuable?”

“Knowledge. Knowledge accumulated, knowledge passed from parent to chosen offspring, again and again.”

“Why didn’t the Rakalan order you to bring the knowledge back?” They could’ve just carved that stone out of my mother’s head.

“Cannot be taken. Only gifted. If not gifted, knowledge dies with sadrin .”

I always wondered why the last Kael’gress had switched targets back in the cave.

He was fighting my sadrin mother, and then he abruptly tried to kill me.

It was because he knew he would lose the fight, and I was the only other creature in the cave capable of becoming a sadrin. Bear wasn’t sapient enough.

The gress trembled.

“What does it mean to be sadrin?” I asked.

His voice was barely audible. His eyes were desperate. “Everything.”

I placed the amulet on his chest.

“You can let go now. I will make sure the shroud of the holy power cleanses your passing.”

Relief shone in his eyes. He took one last shuddering breath and went still.

I flexed . The gress no longer glowed red. In the moment I had scanned him on that stone breach, I wanted to go home, and I wanted answers. My talent tagged him as key to either one or possibly both. Now the way home was clear. I had my answers, too, but they just led to more questions.

Somewhere out there a civilization named Tsuun waged interdimensional war. They invaded world after world. They probably had it down to routine now. Earth was just the latest of their targets. Some worlds must’ve been conquered immediately. Others, like the Rakalan, fought back for centuries.

When I sank into the gem, looking for the information on the gress, moving through their world didn’t feel like accessing a specific memory of a single being.

It felt like a compilation of memories from different individuals, woven into a semi-cohesive whole.

Like an encyclopedia article come to life, a summary of collected information from many sources presented in a concise format.

The assassin said that the Rakalan resisted for almost thirteen hundred years, which was why my mother was “of value.” This and the memories in the gem suggested that my mother wasn’t the original sadrin .

She inherited her knowledge just like I inherited mine.

If my guess was right, each sadrin added to the gem and passed that gift to the next, on and on, through generations.

The longer their world resisted, the more knowledge the gem accumulated, and the more value it had.

When the Rakalan surrendered, my mother must’ve fled into a Tsuun breach linked to Earth.

I had no idea how she ended up here, but she did, and the gress chased her into it.

It had to be more than just an attempt to escape.

What I saw of the gress was just a tiny sample of the information hidden in the gem.

My mother had access to so much, she could’ve gone anywhere, and yet she decided to enter this breach.

She didn’t just choose me, she chose humanity.

My mother picked Earth and gave us this priceless gift.

Her world’s war against the invaders was done, but ours was just beginning.

She let herself die. Had she kept the gem, she would’ve survived, I was sure of it.

She didn’t want to continue. The invasion of the Rakalan began with a breach, and my mother had chosen to die in one, closing the whole tragic saga full circle.

She passed, betrayed by her people and never knowing if I and the knowledge she gifted me would survive.

I felt strangely hollow.

The gress didn’t say “ sadrin. ” He said “ their sadrin .” That meant other worlds had them as well. Was that something that occurred naturally or just in response to the invasion? Whatever the answer was, the Tsuun wanted sadrins . Perhaps they had a way to harvest our knowledge.