CHAPTER 26

A Balance

Power makes demons of those who rule, and hunger makes savages of those who serve. The lord must be made hungry to serve his empire and the servicer must realize the power they wield with stone and scythe. The prosperous lord might be poor in his dark mind, and the boy with nothing but the dirt and his fists might smile brighter than the sun. Those who find the path will serve. Those who sacrifice will gain. Those who fight will be at peace. There must be a balance.

Passage One, The Lost Precepts

Bet you’re wanting some drink now,” Dakar slurred as the commanders watched the Knights’ massacre in silence.

Six bodies lay around the Circle at the center of the arena.

“All of my Knights,” Memnon whispered. “Gone.”

He’d known some of them since they were boys. They’d been snuffed out like candles by the Slayer, who stood at the center of the Circle, the strange smoke still wafting from his body toward the sky.

Callen had left his seat after the third of the Knights had fallen. Memnon turned and saw the high commander standing up beside the Operators in the Daimyo section, Callen’s hands moving in frantic gestures.

“What can we do against such power?” Commander Adrienne whispered.

“Nothing,” Memnon said, feeling emptiness.

He felt a hand at his side. It was Sam. The boy met his eyes.

“I wish I had some of those blue crabs right now,” Sam said. “They were delicious.”

Memnon heard a sudden hum from behind him, as if a swarm of angry hornets had lifted to the air. The Enforcers were charging their cannons, near twenty weapons ready to release their power on the Circle at the center of the arena.

Callen sat back down beside Memnon. The high commander looked pleased with himself.

“Now that your Knights have failed, as I thought they would, we’ll need to take this into our own hands.”

Dakar heard Callen and stood. “You mean to blast the Slayer to the Deep with those tin cans?”

Callen nodded.

“And what of his army?” Memnon motioned across the way at the Flux rebels, still stamping their feet in thunderous applause of Silas’s massacre.

“The Flyers are en route,” Callen said.

“There are Ezonian citizens in this crowd!” Adrienne shouted. “There’s no way the Flyers will be able to contain their attacks. There are innocents here, children watching!”

“They will be sacrifices for the greater good,” Callen hissed.

Memnon had heard it one too many times. He’d swallowed those words through his entire career. He’d always been a pawn. Not again.

“No, not anymore,” Memnon said. “There won’t be any more sacrifices.”

“What do you—”

Memnon grabbed the high commander by the throat and pinned him against the seat. He squeezed, aiming to snuff the life out of the coward.

Memnon didn’t care as he heard the Enforcers’ blasts come to full charge, the might of the mech battalion ready to be released on Silas. Memnon didn’t care as he heard the roar of the incoming Flyers, screaming toward the stadium like eagles of death. All he cared about was taking the life from this coward.

Memnon felt a hand against his wrist. Sam. The little boy was looking up at him with his strange, unfocused gaze.

“There must be a balance,” Sam said. The boyish tone of his voice was suddenly gone. Sam’s words were ethereal, as if some other presence spoke from within him.

Memnon released Callen, the man gasping before stumbling away down the aisle. “I’ll have your head, Memnon. You’re done!”

“What did you say?” Memnon whispered, staring at Sam.

“There must be a balance,” Sam repeated in the ghostly voice.

The little boy raised his hand toward the battalion of Enforcers above. All the mechs had their blasters leveled down at the Circle at the center of the stadium, at the Slayer.

Sam waved his little hand, and the Enforcers turned about-face, away from the arena, away from Silas. They pointed their cannons at the contingent of Daimyo officials right beside them, encased behind the shield wall.

“There must be a balance,” Sam said again.

The Enforcers released their charge.

Cego heard the explosion from above.

All those within the stadium stared at the section where the Governance Operators had been seated: The box was now a raging inferno, billowing black smoke to the sky.

The Enforcers stood still as statues, facing the section of the stadium they’d eradicated.

“Why the dark did those Enforcers wipe out Governance?” Dozer yelled over the screams from the crowd and the still-drumming boots of the Flux army.

Cego looked back toward Silas, who stood within the Circle, the bodies of the Knights sprawled around him at the bottom of the platform.

His brother met his eyes from afar and smiled as another explosion rocked the arena. Albright Stadium trembled, and Cego turned to see an entire section of the upper stands completely devastated, flames and smoke and screams rising into the air.

The mass of spectators began to trample each other to escape the fires. A giant stone statue toppled from its place of honor on the upper wall, crushing all in its path as it slid down the stands toward the fighting grounds.

“We’ve got to get away from the wall!” Sol yelled from beside Cego, taking his hand and rushing toward the middle of the arena, the rest of the Whelps in tow. The statue broke the lip of the lower stands and hurtled toward the ground.

Cego blinked and the statue was frozen in midair. He saw red veins of lightning across dark skies and watched the statue crash to the black sand beach. In a flash, he saw a Level Five girl he recognized take a jagged fragment through the chest; another pale Level One was crushed beneath a chunk of rock.

Cego saw the deaths before they occurred and yet he could do nothing. He could not reach the students in time, save them from their fates.

He blinked again and the statue came crashing to the ground. Cego relived the students dying, saw them broken all over again.

Spectators desperately sprinted toward the exits on the far sides of the grounds as another eruption rocked the stadium.

At first, Cego thought the Enforcers had unleashed their cannons again, until he saw the point of an obsidian Flyer drive through a lower-level crowd, tossing bodies in all directions, before sliding to a stop with its nose digging into the hard-packed earth.

“We be under attack!” Knees yelled, frantically turning his head toward each new center of chaos. “The empire sent their remaining force after the Slayer!”

“No,” Cego said as he stared back at Silas. Cego could see his face, still with that crooked smile across it. “The Flyers are out of control. They aren’t attacking; they’ve lost power. It’s the Minders again, helping Silas.”

“Look out!” Abel screamed as another giant chunk of concrete fell from the shattered stadium walls.

Sol squeezed Cego’s hand and pulled him forward as more of the crowd dropped to the arena floor and surged past them toward the few remaining exits. “Come on! We’ve got to find a safe spot!”

The Whelps scrambled together across the grounds, pushing past the soot-streaked, the terrified, the bleeding, and the dying. They took cover behind the massive head of the dislodged statue and let the mob swarm around them.

Cego watched the chaos with wide eyes. He saw the world both frozen and frenetic, silent and screaming.

Another Flyer streaked above the stadium, taking off a piece of the high wall as it hurtled to the Citadel grounds beyond. A mother grabbed her little girl’s hand, trying to pull her crushed body from beneath a concrete pillar. A man jumped to his death from the wall at the center of the arena to escape the spreading flames.

Cego felt Sol’s sweaty hand clutching his. He saw Knees wrapping his arms around Abel. He watched as Brynn and Dozer grabbed a man fallen beside them and dragged him back to his feet.

Cego saw a familiar sight: High Commander Callen Albright. The wiry man had scrambled to the ground floor from his perch in the luxury boxes. He was approaching Silas at the center of the arena, the Slayer still planted above in the Circle.

“Wait!” Callen screamed through the audio device he had attached to himself. The high commander’s voice rose over the din of chaos. “The event isn’t over yet!”

“He be deepshit crazy,” Knees whispered.

Cego watched as Callen crawled up the slope and stepped into the Circle. He fell to his knees in front of Silas.

“This can all be yours, Silas. You can become our new champion,” Callen groveled. “Fight for us, and anything you wish for will be yours.”

Silas stood in front of Callen like some conquering god, staring down at the little man.

“I will serve you, Slayer, as I served the Daimyo,” Callen pleaded from his knees. “You need someone like me. Someone that can communicate and understand the intricacies of diplomacy, someone that can make deals to improve your position.”

Cego watched as Silas swung his foot out in a sweeping arc: a low kick normally meant to bring a man to his knees. But Callen was already on his knees.

Cego had watched his brother sharpen his shins in Kiroth. Callen’s neck was not strong with the sinews of a typical Grievar, thick and sturdy from years of combat. Perhaps then, his head would have stayed attached to his body.

The high commander’s head bounced down the incline and rolled into the surging crowd.

Silas reached down to the body and picked up the audio receiver. He held it up, and the Slayer’s voice echoed through the stadium.

“Citizens of Ezo,” Silas said. “You now feel what it is like to be free.”

The sky was thick with smoke from the multitude of raging fires across the arena.

“Freedom is not clean,” Silas said. “It is dirty and chaotic, as you see now. This is the price we must pay to be free of the Daimyo.”

A child was wailing somewhere beside Cego.

“Those Grievar or Grunts who seek to join the Flux will be welcomed,” Silas said. “You will find quarter within my ranks. But most importantly, you will find purpose. Once we take the Citadel, we will continue our march south, freeing all those under Daimyo control. When we reach the Emerald Sea, we will board ships, take them to the farthest Isles to ensure freedom for all kin.”

Silas looked down at Callen’s headless corpse.

“Though if you are Daimyo, or you sympathize with them,” the Slayer said, “you will have no quarter. You will be hunted to the ends of this planet. You will be put in the dirt like this coward.”

Silas dropped the audio receiver and smashed it beneath his foot.

Sol clutched Cego’s hand; he could feel her trembling beside him. Silas would take her away from him. Silas would take Xenalia away from him.

Cego would not let that happen. He stepped out from behind the giant stone head.

“Cego, don’t!” Sol shouted back at him, coughing as the grey smoke found her lungs.

Cego turned back to Sol. “This is what I was created for.”

He began to walk toward the Circle.

The Slayer beckoned him.