Patrik woke to realize that his eyes had been covered, and his hands tied together. He was surrounded by quiet discussion and the noises of equipment being packed and checked.

  “Huran, this one is awake,” a female said behind Patrik’s head.

  “Good. I was afraid I broke his skull. These people are so fragile.”

  “But dangerous to hold.” The female voice carried barely contained anger.

  “Sometimes. I was not expecting an Ainadu strategej here.”

  The speaker had walked to stand beside Patrik. A hand grasped his neck and forced him to his feet. Pain blurred Patrik’s mind as he moved, almost making him black out as nausea hit him. He took a wavering step to avoid falling to his face as the infernal headache swept his mind, drowning his thoughts.

  Huran breathed out in exasperation and partly guided, partly dragged Patrik away. The ground sloped downwards, and the voices of the camp fell behind as they walked on.

  “If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” the Nocturna said. Patrik knew these people. They were strong and unnaturally tall, and their irises were always huge and black, making the eyes look like bottomless pits of night. The Nocturna were the descendants of the genetically engineered armed forces that had fought the dragons at the end of the world. They were few, but their achievements in the field of war were the material of Ainadus’ nightmares.

  “You are young to be a strategej. Why did you dig that pit?” Huran asked. He must have recognized the small insignia Patrik carried on his lapel.

  “I was following my orders.” The words felt thick in Patrik’s lips, and the vibrations of his own voice sent waves of pain in his mind. Patrik touched his head, and his questing fingers found his hood was wet with blood.

  “As we all do.” The Nocturna’s hand on Patrik’s shoulder was big and heavy, but its touch was treacherously light. “I like that you, Ainadu, have a clear hierarchy, and you blindly follow the orders someone gives you. Slavery sure has its benefits as an administrative system.”

  Patrik turned his head quickly and tried to bite the Nocturna’s hand through the fabric of the hood, which still covered his face. He was too slow, and Huran swept him down without any effort.

  “Truth hurts, right?” The Nocturna pressed his knee to Patrik’s midriff. Struggling would have been pointless in this situation, but the worst thing was that the Nocturna was not completely wrong about slavery. Or that was what Patrik had started to think when his understanding of the internal politics of his home country had increased, together with his responsibilities.

  “You put something in the forest’s system. What were you trying to do?” Huran asked.

  “You know it already. To destroy the metal harvest.”

  “It failed. Silly little strategej, you uncovered one of the sewage lines.”

  “What happened to my men?”

  “Three dead. Two wounded, three are on their feet, but one of them is such a loudmouth that I cannot guarantee his safety.”

  Patrik counted in his aching head: the Nocturna had found both the camp and the scouts. The loudmouth was Jerinhoe, who lacked all the barriers between his thinking and mouth. This, combined with his uncanny verbal brilliance, had caused several incidents and prevented him from ever being promoted.

  “We will release everyone alive after the march. Except you, strategej. You are coming with us.”

  Patrik mimicked spitting through his hood to show his disgust. There was an old grudge between the Nocturna and the Ainadu.

  “Well, dragon-slave. You can choose. Do you want to be drugged or shall I break your arms?”

  Patrik tasted the old blood in his mouth. He was not a slave to Agiisha or any other dragon. No, not even when their shadows flew through his dreams and when he sensed the weight of their thoughts passing his mind as distant memories, too large and fragmented to be understood. “I won’t listen to such ravings from anyone,” Patrik said when a hot pressure wave hit them.

  Huran lost his balance and fell on top of Patrik, emptying air from his lungs. The temperature skyrocketed, and there were shouts, crackling of fire, and low, repeating popping noises, like a giant kettle was starting to boil.

  “I’ll take my words back. You lurkers did succeed. By the Olds, this should not be possible, unless you got help from somewhere.” Huran grunted and shouted orders to his men.

  “You underestimated us,” Patrik said, bewildered by what they had done. He had studied the matrix, but hadn’t expected anything like this to happen.

  Huran glared at him. “It is spreading in the root system. Red hell takes us all if we don’t evacuate.” Huran dragged Patrik up and carried him back to where they had come from. Based on the sounds, the pressure wave had hit the camp with its full force. Patrik could hear shouting over the sounds of the fire, voices calling for help and barking commands.

  Huran’s hand was still on Patrik’s shoulder. “You are skilled in the demonic tricks, right? That’s how you did this. Into what direction is the fire spreading?”

  Huran’s words surprised Patrik. Usually, the southerners knew a little about the resonance. They had heard stories about matrices, but they did not understand that the blood-fuelled scrips were only a wasteful party trick, a tip of the iceberg when it came to using the resonance.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Patrik said.

  The cover was removed, and he saw the havoc around him. Two adjacent trees and one more in the same row had exploded. The blackened, smoking wrecks of their trunks stood billowing in ash and flames. The canopy of one tree had fallen in the middle of the camp, and the surrounding trees were on fire. Dead and wounded were everywhere.

  Huran pushed Patrik’s face harshly towards the ground. “Do you need to get closer? Do you need to bleed to make a contact?”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Resonance was the connection to the dragons, and in addition to fueling the matrices, it allowed the strong-willed among the Ainadu to see the world as the dragons did and touch it with their skills. It was the dragon sight, opening the eyes to the resonance, and it was a mind-numbing curse most of the population avoided.

  When one saw the resonance, one saw chaos that was not meant for the human mind, and all the absorbed memories stored in the great matrix, which was the combined resonance flowing through all the Ainadu veins. Even opening eyes to the resonance and concentrating on the flowing energies was taxing to the mind. The majority of the Ainadu were unable to make sense of what they saw and avoided using the trickling power in their blood.

  Tactile sense had nothing to do with the dragon sight. Patrik closed his eyes, for it helped with the headache. Huran was right, the liquid injected into the roots might still spread. They needed to evacuate somewhere where the trees were not going to explode.

  Patrik reached inwards and opened his sight, concentrating on the energies around him. Adrenaline helped to overcome the headache. He couldn’t see the roots through the soil, but the trees’ activity increased towards the forest’s edge: their energies were higher there. The liquids moved fast in their trunks, and tiny movements quivered their canopies. Patrik forced himself look deeper and felt his knees shake when an alien feeling passed through his body.

  He felt the touch of warm water on the naked skin, a body that was older and more scarred than his own. The sunlight reflected from the waves was too bright, too yellow. The feeling was a ghost in the resonance, a dead person’s memory; it was not real, and the sensation was already disappearing, leaving Patrik in a burning forest. He saw an area of increased activity south of them, but the headache was too much to bear, and he closed his sight.

  “North-east is the safest,” Patrik said, coughing as there was bile in his throat. He was sure he hadn’t thrown up, but the other memories were known to steal the sense of time.

  “You are a real treasure, little slave.” The Nocturna gave an order, and his men started to move, helping those who could still stand. Patrik saw only two other Ainadu and nine Nocturna walking away.

  ***

  They traveled towards the north-east. The forest was silent around them, but the smoke rising from behind reminded them of the imminent danger. Later, the wind changed and carried the smell of smoke to them. It was metallic, and Patrik hoped the distance had stripped most of the poison from the breeze.

  The forest was awake. Spores rushed between the trees, vines changed their colors, and the silent birds observed them from the branches. There were more birds than Patrik had ever seen. In addition to the common small and brown species, there were the large, yellow-eyed ones, and a flock of quick, black birds passed them on their flight toward the forest’s edge.

  Huran turned his hood-covered face towards the flying birds and seemed to calculate. “The forest has activated some version of the shut-out process. Claudia, do you recognize the flight pattern?”

  “H-543 or -643. Have they treated this forest already with the Schwarb concentrate?”

  “No, it was tested only in sector four,” Huran answered absentmindedly, still looking at the sky.

  Patrik listened quietly; he understood enough to reinforce the common belief that the Nocturna knew more about the industrial forests than anyone else.

  “Roger that. Based on the canopy pattern, this forest is a modified type two.”

  “That version has sluggish time constants. Hope it is not too late. We’ll push through before the process reaches the northern side.”

  “Lieutenant.” Claudia pointed towards the sky, where one bird was falling lifelessly, its chest pierced by an arrow. “We have company.”

  Huran ordered three men to advance south while the rest of the group continued towards the northeast. The Nocturna held brisk speed, changing the scout at set intervals. They moved from one tree to another, keeping the movement pattern uneven. The strategej spotted also the other signs of their training: the lack of any unnecessary noises, the directions they were spotting, and the hand signs they used.

  Watergate’s four-day-long light time was turning into the night when it traveled in its tidally locked orbit around Abyss, the giant gas planet. The twin suns, looking like one ball of light, disappeared slowly below the horizon while they walked, and the stars became visible. There were no auroras in the sky, but here, close to the equator, they were not such an everyday phenomenon as in the polar regions. Patrik wondered if he was going to see the lights dancing in the sky ever again.

  The sunrise would come after four days of darkness. Watergate’s populace used the ancient concept of a 24-hour day for keeping time and, in timeless pride or ignorance, many called their home a planet, whereas it was but a moon to Abyss.

  Nocturna’s vision in the dark was keener than an ordinary human’s. They kept on moving long after Patrik would have ordered his men to rest or to light the way. At last, Huran ordered a stop in a crevice.

  Patrik leaned on a rock, his feet weary and his throat parched. He had no time to rest as Huran spoke to him. “Strategej, check the situation.”

  “Give me some water first.”

  Huran’s black eyes glittered in the darkness, but he pushed a huge metal bottle into Patrik’s hands. Patrik drank. His head was still hurting, but he was able to open his sight without blacking out. He tried to focus on the energies, but everything seemed to shimmer. Usually, it meant that the air was very humid or maybe the cursed spores were back.

  It took a moment until Patrik understood what he was looking at. “It is already here,” he said quietly, suppressing an animal urge to run from wildfire.

  “Are you sure?”

  “How could I prove it? Check it yourself. Talk a tree or whatever it is your kind does.”

  Huran snorted in disdain but gave orders to his men. The Nocturna chose a dead-looking tree with bare branches covered in yellow growth and its trunk hidden in the luminous white vine. One cut the vine and revealed the bark below.

  “It is warm,” the soldier said. The lieutenant nodded, and the soldier took a saw, starting to cut the bark. Patrik knew that with the ordinary tools, the work would have been time-consuming, even with Nocturna’s muscles. Soon, some yellow liquid dripped from below the bark, almost sparkling in the starlight.

  “It has spread. Let’s get out of here. Claudia? Claudia! Take Weiss and empty all the inhibitors we carry in the pumping unit.”

  “Roger that, lieutenant.” Claudia looked around and left for the trees farther down the row. The others prepared to move when one came running to Huran.

  “A scout is down. Alert red three.”

  Huran cursed again and ordered a retreat. He commanded his remaining men into a line, and they proceeded into the forest. Patrik sensed the temperature changing. Some trees were ordinary, while their neighbors were almost boiling from inside.

  “Ainadu, do you want to live?” Huran asked Patrik who he held close by.

  “Yes,” Patrik agreed beneath his hood. He pretended indifference, but his heart jumped like an animal clawing at its cage. He needed to escape at any cost, forest fire seemed a horrible way to die.

  “We are being hunted. It is a rebelmonger with an inflated ego. He must be behind this fire because your tiny dose of whatever in the sewer could not have achieved this.” Patrik did not reply. He had to step quickly to keep up with the tall Nocturna, and Huran continued. “We will ambush them, and we will kill him. If you help me, I’ll let you live. Can you create an explosion for me?”

  “If I have time to prepare,” Patrik said confidently. He was skilled in writing the matrices, and the trees did not need much encouragement.

  “It must work. Esrau is a sly one, but he is not expecting you. Nor your dirty tricks.”

  Patrik nodded and walked on with the small group through the dark forest. Clouds were gathering in the sky, deepening the shadows.