Chapter 2
She felt relieved and hopeful, being next to her brother again. It had been over a year since she held his hand, two years since the death of their father, and it brought her to tears to think on how much she missed.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you, Toby.” She gazed up once again into eyes that lost the warmth she had remembered. They were still steel-blue, but clouded with wrinkles, though he was only twenty-two. His hair, though mostly red, betrayed several shocks of grey, and his face wore a stubbly beard. Sadly, he reminded her of how her father looked in his last days.
The world around her was a grey one, with no horizon line and no sun. She could make out that Toby wore a thick ermine-patterned cloak that covered a black jacket embroidered with gold trim, but had trouble seeing much else clearly, and it was in that moment she realized they weren’t anywhere real. “Are we on a city?”
“No, we are in the void between. I brought you here so I could mask our final destination from the Freilux.”
She leaned heavily into his arms, feeling the weight of the past few hours settle on her. “I . . . I need to get some sleep.”
“Sleep? Haven’t you been following the training methodology I gave you? You can’t sleep, not if you want to see any increases in your skill.”
“But I’m so tired,” she pouted, doing her best performance of an expression that in her youth would always get what she wanted from him.
Toby smiled, and ruffled her hair with his calloused fingers. “I never could say no to you, little Lissa. We have an encampment on the surface.”
“The surface? Can we actually survive down there?”
“It’s tough, but anything is preferable than living under the Freilux.” Gingerly, he lifted her left arm to examine the burns. “You still don’t know how to heal yourself?”
“No, I . . .”
“You haven’t done any of the training,” he snapped, bruising her feelings. She watched as he squinted, and felt the burns recede into nothingness on her skin. It felt warm and fuzzy, and she could faintly smell blooming hrrana petals as he finished. Yet she could still feel something remained, some echo of a vicious wound, though nothing was visible. For an instant she saw his eyes cloud with doubt and anxiety, and wondered what it was. “You’ve been complacent, lying in your plush bed, playing with your effete friends.” He shook his head in disappointment. “Much time has been wasted, and we have too little left. Now stand still as I shift us to the surface.”
She waited as he closed his eyes, and felt the pull as they moved out of the temporary grey world and onto the surface of the world of Iqui, and in an instant Melissa understood why all lived in levitating cities. It was a harsh, barren landscape, with howling winds filled with biting snow that whipped about them. Several dozen tents could be seen partially covered by snow. Glowing firespheres pulsed erratically in-between them, keeping hundreds of dark figures huddled close for warmth. She clutched even tighter on Toby’s arm, and he smoothed her shoulder in response.
“Sometimes, I wonder how long they’d last without me,” he said with a tired sigh. “At least it keeps them servile.” He extended his hand, and instantly the firespheres surged brighter, now maintaining an even glow. Cheers went up from the soldiers surrounding them, with a few even raising their hand in thanks to Toby.
Melissa felt conspicuous in her sheer ruffled dress, as it afforded no protection from the elements and left too much skin exposed.
“I . . . I think I need some new clothes.”
“In there you’ll find some warm ones,” he said, gesturing to a small tent. “Also a firesphere to warm you. I have a comfortable bed, though I hardly use it. Sleep as much as you want.”
She embraced him tightly, her head coming just up to his chest. “I love you, dear brother.”
“And I you, Lissa.”
Drifting in and out of sleep, she heard more soldiers pour into the encampment as Toby greeted their leaders nearby. Several times she started at the antics of some of the younger soldiers, and crawled to the entrance of her tent to see if she could recognize anyone. She felt if she could just find someone from school, someone she knew, that she could relax, and believe everything would be alright. But each time she was disappointed, as the armies came from every part of the ovoid but hers.
She was fully woken once by much laughing, followed by shouting that included her name. She crawled just outside her tent, where she had a view of a large gathering of men and women in dress uniforms.
“You mean your sister couldn’t be entrusted with something as simple as a glass sphere?” yelled a thin, arrogant-looking man, with eyes that glowed in green. “How are we to move forward? How can we bring back the fifteen cities destroyed and all their people?”
“It was only a guess that we could use the Centric Sphere like that anyway,” replied Toby. “No one has ever been able to conjur a physical manifestation of power from the Sphere.”
“And yet your father hung onto it like it was his own flesh and blood.”
“Yes,” grudgingly admitted Toby, as he took another bite from the leg of valla he had at his side. It was then Melissa finally acknowledged that not only had Toby grown older, but had grown fatter. His countenance wasn’t the genial one she remembered; rather it was mean, sharp, and devoid of pity. “We will get the Sphere back -- just have faith. Besides, the Freilux isn’t as strong as . . .” She could feel Toby’s gaze pierce the darkness and haze, divining that she was awake. “He isn’t as strong as he needs to be. We have nothing to worry for the moment.”
What was he about to say? she thought, as she slipped back into sleep, with her dreams haunted by scores of igra chasing her and the Freilux’s laugh rumbling through the dark landscape of her mind.