Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy)

  Revelation

  (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy Book I)

  by

  Caleb Wachter

  Copyright © 2014 by Caleb Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.

  Other books by Caleb Wachter

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

  Between White and Grey

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral's Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

  Books by my Brother:

  Luke Sky Wachter

  As of 06-07-2014

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

  Admiral Who?

  Admiral's Gambit

  Admiral's Tribulation

  Admiral's Trial

  Admiral’s Revenge

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

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  Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com.

  Be sure to stop by the blog at blog.PacificCrestPublishing.com for updates.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I: The Siege

  Chapter II: Reflections

  Chapter III: Aftermath and Reluctant Allies

  Chapter IV: Politics

  Chapter V: Departure

  Chapter VI: On the Road Again

  Chapter VII: A Puzzle

  Chapter VIII: Into the Breach

  Chapter IX: Reflections and Foreboding

  Chapter X: Formal Introductions

  Chapter XI: Negotiations

  Chapter XII: The Whole Nine Yards

  Chapter XIII: Surveying the Damage

  Chapter XIV: One Door Closes…

  Chapter XV: Bitter Memories and Guarded Secrets

  Chapter XVI: Return to Coldetz and Hard Goodbyes

  Chapter XVII: A Cold Reception

  Chapter XVIII: Honoring Bargains

  Chapter XIX: The Next Step

  Chapter XX: A Quick Trip

  Chapter XXI: Flashbacks

  Chapter XXII: Veldyrian

  Chapter XXIII: Queen’s Gambit

  Chapter XXIV: More Answers Means More Questions

  Chapter XXV: Knights and Tempo

  Chapter XXVI: Queen’s Gambit Accepted

  Chapter XXVII: Agreement, a Reading, and a Very Small Dilemma

  Chapter XXVIII: An Unwanted Ally

  Chapter XXIX: Pain

  Chapter XXX: Leaving on a Jet Plane

  Chapter XXXI: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner…

  Chapter XXXII: An Imaginary Revelation

  Chapter XXXIII: Decisions and Consequences

  A Sneak Peek of The Harbinger

  A Sneak Peek of The Price of Enlightenment

  A word (actually…519 of them, not counting this line) from the author:

  Chapter I: The Siege

  This story is probably larger than any of us will ever know, so finding a ‘correct’ place to start is impossible. But this is my part of that story…and this is where that part began.

  The ramparts to my left exploded in a shower of razor-sharp black shards and though I knew that the shimmering blue field I had erected would prevent even the largest of them from harming me, I ducked instinctively.

  The soldiers manning my section of the wall were afforded no such magical protection, and a brief chorus of screams erupted as they reacted too late to avoid the deadly shrapnel.

  The shower of stone sprayed two of them with fatal results. One had his helmet blasted off, and under the full moonlight it was clear to see the lines of blood streaming down his face. The other died instantly as the incoming projectile deflected off the wall and into his torso, carrying his lifeless body off our position atop the Middle Wall. He careened toward the castle’s Inner Wall before plummeting fifty feet to the section of cobblestoned pathway between the innermost walls of the castle’s fortifications.

  The projectile had not yet completed its charge, however. Upon landing on the cobblestones below, it erupted into a writhing mass of tentacles and claws with no apparent logic dictating its biology. The abomination lashed out at the soldiers surrounding it, but they were prepared for it and used their black-tipped long spears to stab it repeatedly from a safe distance until it was reduced to little more than a puddle of thick ooze the color of dark red wine.

  I returned my attention to the origin on the foul missile and knew that something had to be done to prevent similar weapons from breaching the walls. That last one was too close, and the enemy would find their range quickly enough.

  Unfortunately, it was unlikely to be a simple task.

  The origin of the roughly two foot diameter, nightmarish ball was not a catapult or any other form of conventional siege weaponry; instead it was at least thirty feet tall and roughly humanoid. Its features were difficult to ascertain in the black of night—except for the area in the middle of its head which burned with a malevolent, pulsating green light. Its deliberate, lumbering steps made a deep, ominous, thumping sound with each stride, and it was clearly readying another delivery for us.

  “Aemir!” I yelled. My Champion turned sharply toward me and wound between the dozens of soldiers separating us.

  “My Lord?” Aemir replied in his thick accent when he found my side, saluting with a nod of his head. His long, wavy black hair was tied up inside his turban, and his nearly foot-long, tightly braided beard had been fastened with a pair of red, stone rings.

  “We have to harry that thing,” I said, pointing at the hulking figure which was preparing to send another demonic missile our way. “Ideas?” I asked sarcastically.

  Aemir’s face contorted in that now-familiar cross between a grin and a sneer. “We could let Dancer face it,” he replied in kind.

  I shook my head. “Dancer’s needed here on the walls,” I replied. “When the flyers come in, he’ll be needed to keep Master Antolin safe. Besides,” I added, “don’t you think that thing’s just a little out of his weight class?”

  Aemir shrugged. “I doubt he would shy away from the challenge,” he replied in his thick accent.

  “Incoming!” yelled the commander of the soldiers posted to our section.

  I turned just in time to see another projectile hurtling toward our position. This one sailed directly over us, missing my head by about five feet. I turned to watch as it hurtled toward the castle’s Inner Wall.

  It impacted on the slick, black stones which formed the inner wall—but rather than bouncing off or shattering, it stuck there with a sucking sound and immediately began to shamble up the smooth surface, leaving a thin trail of dark ooze behind.

  The soldiers on our wall ignored it, while the soldiers atop the eighty foot tall gothic inner wall moved quickly to bring buckets of hot oil to bear. The shapeless mass began to writhe as it climbed, and soon tentacles, claws, and beaks emerged from its shifting, amorphous form.

  The soldiers manning the Inner Wall received their commands from the High Sheriff, who was stationed on the inner wall as was apparently customary during a siege, and they carefully poured the oil down the wall and onto the monster.

  The first buckets scored direct hits, and they were immediately followed by flaming arrows, which ignited the substance as soon as
they made contact, causing the thing to scream wordlessly before plummeting almost seventy feet, having nearly succeeded in scaling the massive wall.

  “Flyers!” came the cry of a spotter stationed nearby. I whirled to see them coming toward us, and I felt my heart go cold.

  They were bigger than even the largest man and had legs like great birds of prey which ended in talons nearly a foot long. They flew on wings that were shaped like a bat’s and each one had four long, bony arms ending in roughly human hands with even more vicious-looking talons than those on their avian feet.

  But their faces were distinctively human, except for the fact that their eyes glowed with the same sickly green light as the missile-hurling juggernaut—and one of them was coming directly for me.

  “Down, Lord!” yelled Aemir, moving himself to intercept the hellish creature. He apparently thought little of my protective wards, and frankly I couldn’t blame him at that particular moment.

  The ‘flyer,’ as the locals had labeled them, came directly at me and seemed not to notice my Champion standing in the way. I reached into my robe hastily, but dropped what I had reached for as soon as I had pulled it from its pocket.

  It was too late by then and the flyer was on Aemir, who greeted it with a pair of quick, criss-crossing slashes with his broad, curved scimitar, opening up great gashes in the beast’s chest. Then I saw the most fearsome part of the creature come to bear: a ten foot long tail which would have been an exact copy of a scorpion’s, were it not for the fact that this tail could apparently move in any direction.

  The massive stinger stabbed straight at me as Aemir fought to keep the monster from getting close enough to grab anyone. I failed to react in time, and the stinger drove for my chest before being deflected by the barely visible force field which surrounded my body like an invisible egg. I felt the impact drain my energy reserves a little, but only enough that I noticed it.

  I drew a breath, realizing I hadn’t done so for long enough to make my lungs burn, and dropped to my knees to find the object I had failed to retrieve. I found it quickly enough but my nerves were starting to go—and the battle had barely begun!

  I grabbed the smooth, metal disc and fitted the leather straps affixed to it around my hand. I had already learned that using it was risky, but there was little choice in the matter. Even among lifelong warriors Aemir was an outstanding swordsman, but no swordsman could hold off such a monstrous foe indefinitely.

  After I had fixed the disc to my hand, I closed my eyes to focus my mind more completely. It took precious seconds to banish the panic I felt at the situation, but I found what I was looking for: in my mind’s eye there appeared a huge, ethereal construct composed of swirling letters, numbers, and geometric bands of cascading energy. I willed my hand into being in this mental landscape and it appeared instantly, complete with the metal band strapped to it which glowed a bright, white color in my mind’s eye.

  Now was the hard part: timing the insertion of the key strapped to my hand into the construct to achieve the desired effect. I had seen once previously just how devastating improper timing and sequence could be. After what seemed like an eternity (but what I knew cognitively had been no more than two or three seconds) I found my opening and thrust my hand forward into the constantly shifting form of equations and energy.

  My mind’s eye and reality overlapped instantaneously, and for a brief moment I could see the ten foot ethereal construct of my spell appear between myself and the flyer, which had already wounded Aemir with its huge talons. Summoning up just the right amount of energy was the final part of the process, and I was still very unfamiliar with this particular device, having only successfully used it twice in this particular manner.

  But I kept my focus and imagined a barrel attached to the construct, and when it appeared in my mindscape I poured energy out of myself and into the receptacle. The container filled quickly—too quickly in fact, and I had to release it before it overflowed and started a catastrophic chain reaction.

  The effect was as I had hoped and more. My hand recoiled, taking my arm with it as the shock was too much for me to contain and I felt my shoulder pop with the tremendous amount of force I had just unleashed. Sharp pain exploded through my right arm as it snapped backward, but I kept my eyes locked on the target.

  A bolt of pure, white energy erupted from my palm and struck the creature squarely in the torso, sending it careening back away from the wall with a foot-wide hole in its chest. The shock was too much for it to deal with, and before it could regain its senses it crashed into the ground fifty feet below where it almost instantly transformed into a puddle of maroon-colored ooze.

  I could feel how much the effort had drained me, but I still had plenty of reserves left. I looked down the wall and quickly found the eyes of Magos Antolin Wiegraf, Primarch of House Wiegraf—my House. His expression was difficult to read, but I knew that he would demand an explanation for how I had summoned the spell after the battle was concluded.

  But one thing I had learned long before was to deal with one problem at a time, so I returned my attention to the scene of battle unfolding before us.

  The bulk of enemy forces (which were impossible to assess due to the persistent, dark cloud hanging over them) were less than a hundred meters away from the wall now, and there was no telling what strategy they would employ when they arrived. The missile-hurling juggernaut’s head stuck out above the cloud, and it was quite clearly headed for the Main Gate of the Middle Wall. While the towering thing would take a while to reach it, there appeared little doubt that it would succeed in doing so eventually.

  Finding no imminent threats, I ran to Aemir’s side where he clutched at a huge gash in his side caused by the flying monstrosity’s bird-like talons. It was a horrible wound, to be certain, which would likely claim his life in a matter of days from infection. Worse, however, was that it would prevent him from fighting effectively if left untreated. He leaned up against the wall, giving me easier access to the gash.

  I tore away his layers of shredded clothing. “I told you to wear some local armor,” I growled, “these rags are useless to you in a fight.”

  Aemir laughed. “You believe I would fare better wearing plates of metal?” he asked scornfully. “I could not move in that walking tomb; speed is my weapon!”

  I would have rolled my eyes if the situation weren’t so ridiculous already. I could move my right arm, but I didn’t want to take the time to remove the focus key from my right hand, so I placed my left hand on Aemir’s wound. I closed my eyes again and focused.

  This time was more complicated, as I didn’t have a focus device like the Spell Key to rely upon. But supplying the energy required was much easier since it was a part of the initial spell-casting process. I summoned up the image of the patterns and symbols in my head which would achieve the desired effect, and while the process was slower than the last spell I had used, it was a much simpler effect I desired. Quickly enough, the image of concentric circles coursing with energy surrounded my hand in my mental landscape, and I infused them with what I knew was the proper amount of power, causing them to glow with an almost golden aura.

  After the spell structure was complete and stable, I thrust my hand forward onto his wound, and once again the image that had been in my mind flashed into reality just before it disappeared into his wound, which made his entire body glow with a yellowish light briefly. Aemir winced at the effect, which generated a significant amount of heat but within a few seconds the wound in his side was completely closed, leaving him with a mess of bloody clothes but an otherwise intact body.

  “Yet again, you have my thanks, Master Mage,” Aemir said graciously as he stood to his feet.

  I scolded him with my eyes but I knew it was pointless to argue with him, especially at a time like this. I stood with him, feeling the draining effect of yet another hasty summoning of precious magical energy, but thankfully there was still plenty more where that came from.

  Down along both sides of
the wall there were flyers—at least a dozen by my count, two of which were battling Magos Antolin, my house’s Master…and therefore, effectively, my Master.

  He had erected a similar shield of energy to my own, but in his hand he wielded an off-white staff carved completely out of stone. The blue and red lines of marbling running up and down its length were pulsating hypnotically, with the blue ones flashing more brightly whenever his shield was impacted.

  Antolin thrust his staff toward the nearest flyer, and there was a great flash of red light which illuminated the entire field below. For a brief second I could see just how many enemies had come to besiege the castle. They were fewer than I had feared, but far more than I had hoped. I began to run calculations in my head to estimate their number after the brief light had disappeared, and in less than a second I guessed their force to be five thousand; more than enough to bring the castle down if time was with them.

  The flyer which had been viciously trying to breech Antolin’s defensive wards was nowhere to be seen after my master’s impressive display, but the second one had not yet abandoned its target. From my vantage point, I could see that it had flown below Antolin’s view in front of the wall, and it looked like it wanted to come up over the wall at the last instant in order to surprise its quarry and catch my Master unaware.

  I raised my right arm, wincing at the pain caused by the gesture but even through the pain I used the power of the Spell Key to summon up the great, complex structures necessary to unleash another bolt of raw, magical energy. Something distracted my attention momentarily, and I shook my head to see what it was.

  A small figure was leaping along the battlements of the wall, no taller than a child. He carried a spear in his hands which was longer than its bearer was tall, and the little man’s focus was quite obviously on the flyer which had nearly sprung its trap on Magos Antolin.