42
Hope
The night had flown by amidst preparations and agreed alliances. Now, as the pale sun was peaking over the horizon, the world was waking up while the red moon still shone bright. They moured in pairs to the outer skirt of the Organ House, close enough to see and far enough to be unnoticed, to be safe.
Hope and Ciaran landed first, and Ciaran immediately covered the area in shadows, inside which everyone else landed. Jake and Lenna came next; Ayla and Stevian followed.
The Organ House was completely surrounded.
In the sky, countless sangins fought for space mid-flight, observing the living beings patrolling the ground and each gate, but not attacking them.
There were humans armed with sharp, long spears suspended just above the ground. Their uniforms were no longer red, but black.
Fifty roixers protected each gate, and in front of the West gate—the gate Jake said connected to the throne room—the Roix Reigner stood stoic and immobile, three metallic stripes across her chest differentiating her from the rest. Indianna’s mother.
The Queen had not one army, but two. One made from her own blood, patrolling the skies. One converted from the military organization that had ensured civilian obedience for centuries. The question was to what extent the roixers were loyal to her. Hope was not willing to spend much time figuring that out, though.
“Are my numbers correct in guessing around two hundred mentally-fucked-up-and-way-too-still-roixers and approximately five hundred sangins are our welcome party?” Lenna asked, tilting her head. “Cute.”
“Cute to kill our welcome party, indeed,” Jake agreed.
Hope smiled, hands caressing the crystal hilts of the Lawful Stabs on her waistbelt. Her blood was racing with excitement and impatience. Ciaran’s eyes glittered as he smiled at her, too, a trail of shadows fidgeting amongst his metallic fingers.
“They seem way too bored, though,” Hope said. “Lucky them, we are about to change that. Everyone clear on the plan?”
They nodded decisively.
“Then, bloodrose, may you unfold the beginning of the end,” Ciaran said, nodding towards Hope as a shadow caressed her arm, before she moured away by herself.
As she already knew, the Organ House allowed her straight inside it. She landed in a side room close to the South gate, and a wide-eyed roixer gasped, about to shout.
Hope’s dagger met his throat before his voice left it, and while the man slipped to the floor, she took all but five seconds to assess the room.
All she needed was a focus, a target, something to aim for. She Gave a crystal orb filled to the rim with her own Cardinal-red sparks. She smiled. Everyone would know exactly who had come—including the Cardinal Queen. She released the Fifth Power and moured away before her own magic would explode in front of her and kill her.
She moured straight to the dead-end corridor Jake had shown on the map, close to the West gate, and repeated the process. Give a Cardinal-sparks-full orb, make it mercilessly explode with the Fifth, moure away before the impact hits her.
The East gate came next, and then the North one, before she moured back to the shadow-covered clearing where Jake, Lenna, Ayla, Stevian, and Ciaran admired the performance. The Organ House was still blowing apart, four almost-simultaneous explosions destroying the harmony of the Core.
“That was fun.” Hope grinned.
Lenna snorted. “They are not bored anymore, don’t worry.”
The moment the four gates blew up, chaos began. Since the explosions were inside, the roixers ran, spears at the ready. From their backs, every panom who had answered Hope’s call for help, closed in to attack.
Not even five minutes after she sent the ink, to Hope’s surprise, Gabrielle Heliba had answered, not mentioning how destroyed Ciaran and she had left the desert in the South Petal. Now she, Arabella, and many other panoms she had never met from the South, were dealing with the South gate.
Cobrian Castel and nine panoms from the West had come, and their sparks were already flying in the West gate as they chased the roixers inside.
Courtrades led by Elara and Marcus covered the East gate, since no one had volunteered from the East Petal. Jake had held his hands up for killing half of the panoms there because they were useless, and acknowledged perhaps the others were too scared to even breathe.
The North gate’s attack, to Lenna and Ayla’s utmost shock and disbelief, was led by their own mother, Veronica Brachyan, and many other panoms the twins had grown up with.
The battle was on, and death followed. There was not a single second to waste.
It was their turn.
Hope moured Lenna and Jake in first, opposite the ruined corridor by the North gate she’d already detonated. The moment they landed, she disappeared again, this time bringing with her Ayla and Stevian, and with the final mouring she brought Ciaran into the Organ House, his protective, covering shadows with him. Their embrace was firm and uniting, his arms surrounding hers as her palm touched the back of his neck. This was all the fuel she needed.
