Chapter One
The footsteps meant they were coming for another victim, and Elara tightened her arms around the two girls pressed against her ribs, willing her goddess to make them invisible.
“Goddess, give me strength,” she prayed, barely whispering.
Her belief would not let her ask for rescue or escape, not so long as these other girls were at risk. She had witnessed one girl pulled from the damp cell, stripped outside the thick metal bars, and roughly tied before being led through the stout wooden door set in the black stone wall. The thickness of the door did nothing to prevent her from hearing the screams of the child.
That same door now opened, and the two jailers entered, laughing between themselves. A heavyset man stood in a black robe, worn leather boots jutting from beneath the hem above the damp floor. Grey threaded his hair and sparse beard, and his broad, flat nose dominated the space between his small, dark eyes. His gaze was hungry as he looked through the bars at the cowering women and girls.
Elara's stomach lurched, a hot wave climbing her throat. She willed it back down.
The other was younger and fitter, but no kinder. Leather pants and a tan tunic clung to a frame that might have been handsome if not for the leer twisting his mouth and the cold flatness in his eyes. Where his companion was hungry, he was simply mean, coiled with the urge to strike, to hurt for the pleasure of it. He was the one who pulled a length of well-worn rope from his belt and smiled in anticipation.
I must protect the innocent.
It was a precept of her goddess.
“Not a young one this time,” the older man said. “The master wants someone who’s old enough to breed.”
“I guess that limits us,” the mean man said. “But it will mean we’ll get a young one for dessert.” He laughed, and there was nothing pleasant in it.
Elara shuddered. The fear in the cell was palpable. She could feel it rolling off her cellmates. Fear of being chosen now. Fear of remaining to be selected later. The different flavors of fear filled her as her goddess’ gift let her feel those around her.
Needing to face that fear, she gave the two girls at her sides a quick hug, then released them to force herself up to her feet. Her hands pressed against the damp walls. She breathed through her nose in shallow, controlled sips and locked her jaw against the thread of losing control.
Both men leered at her.
“Looks like we have a volunteer,” the mean man said. “Get over here to the gate,” he ordered.
Elara stepped with unconscious precision, feeling the cold stone floor in the soles of her feet. Their eyes climbed her in a slow, deliberate sweep, from painted toes to bare legs to the thin shift clinging to her body, then finally to the fall of her silver hair. The coarse garment they had issued the prisoners barely reached mid‑thigh, offering her far too little cover. She felt the others' momentary sense of relief as the jailers seemed to accept her as their next victim.
The door was unlocked, and the mean man grabbed her firmly by the arm, jerking her through the doorway before the other man slammed it shut and turned the key, locking it behind them. She could feel the men’s lust rising as the mean man pulled out his knife and quickly cut up her shift, exposing her to their eyes.
They both licked their lips, then spun her around and tied her elbows behind her back.
“If the master doesn’t like her,” the old man said. “I’ll take her. I’ve never had one with silver hair before.”
The mean man laughed. “I thought you didn’t like them with any hair!”
Elara blocked their dark thoughts and let them push her out of the dungeon and along the dark corridor. Green magical lights cast eerie shadows as they walked. Down the corridor, up the winding stairs, through a dim passage of black doors, then down again.
Eventually, they reached a larger chamber, appearing carved from obsidian, its surfaces finished in precise angular cuts. The room seemed to pulse with an otherworldly energy, and she could sense the boundary between the physical world and the magical realm growing thin. Crystalline structures glowed with an inner radiance, their facets refracting the ethereal light that filled the space. Gigantic machines hummed softly, their purpose a mystery to her.
A massive obsidian altar dominated the center of the chamber, and Elara could feel the power emanating from it. The air was thick with anticipation and possibility. She reached out with her mind, seeking to meld a fraction of the power to her belief. Nothing.
She had heard dark tales of such places but had never witnessed one firsthand. Despite her unease, Elara couldn't deny the pull of this extraordinary place, coursing with power and potential.
A cloaked figure emerged from the shadows beside a series of carved bookshelves. He wore a dark and flowing robe of rich fabrics. Elara could see the complex glyphs sewn in a matching hue, shimmering with subtle magical energies. Many of the symbols were unknown to her, but she recognized enough: chaos magic.
No wonder I cannot grasp it with my goddess given gifts.
"What have you brought me?" The voice was deep and sonorous, and it seemed to come from all around them.
Neither of the men spoke, but the old man put a hot hand in the small of her back, just above her bound wrists, and pushed her forward.
The figure lifted his hands to his hood and pushed it back, exposing sharp features that gave him an air of mystery and danger. His high cheekbones were accentuated by deep lines etched into his skin. She suspected the lines were from years of intense concentration during spell casting. His strong jawline was framed by a neatly trimmed beard, adding to the air of authority and power surrounding him.
“A priestess?” He stepped closer, examining her. “Excellent. You’ve chosen well,” he said to the men. “Now leave me. You may have one prisoner to share.”
Her heart sank, knowing one of the girls in the cell would soon be journeying to the Celestial Realm, but only after suffering greatly. She resolved to not go gently to such a fate.
Elara watched the magician approach, carefully considering what she could do with her arms bound tightly behind her. She felt something probing at her emotions, as if trying to soothe her and make her trusting and compliant.
Goddess, aid me.
She used her powers to mirror back the calm he was trying to impose on her. She managed not to shudder as he reached out and caressed her naked breast.
“A virgin priestess will suit my purpose,” he said softly.
Elara struck.
She kicked up and out viciously, aiming for his groin, but finding her foot tangled in his robes. She snapped her head forward, planting her forehead against his nose, and was rewarded with a gasp and the sound of crunching bone.
Pain blossomed across her face. She reeled away, unable to balance with her arms tied behind her, and fell, smashing her shoulder against the cold stone floor.
“You should have tried to enjoy this,” the magician growled while grabbing her bound arms and lifting her. She refused to stand. He dragged her to the altar. His fingers twisted in her hair, forcing her head down across the strangely warm stone slab.
A single drop of his blood fell by her face, causing the deep black stone to flare with a crystalline bolt of green energy.
He grabbed a knife from one end, cutting her bonds effortlessly, and then quickly securing her in a hinged wooden collar with two cuffs on the end. Her arms were now stretched out before her. The contraption forced her to hold them up lest she strangle herself.
He bent her forward, quickly securing the wrists of the collar to a clip on the far side of the altar. She felt her feet being spread apart and realized she was not going to be merely sacrificed for some arcane ritual.
First, he intended to soil her body, her goddess's temple. Praying for strength from her goddess, she arched her back, forcing the collar against her neck. Her vision swam.
Blackness took her.
Malachi, the Guardian of Set, stepped back from his altar, looking at the woman bound and bent over it. The pain in his nose and face was fading as he let the power of chaos mend him. She had struggled. It hadn't mattered. His seed was planted within her, completing the connection the magic would need. He dropped the hem of his robe, covering his nakedness, and began the final chants that would seal the compulsion on her while the connection remained fresh. Once done, he would be able to perform the sending easily. Then, it would only be a matter of time before she returned to him with the prize he needed to master the realms of Elysia.
Then I shall ascend and challenge.
Chapter Two
Finn Miller had built the most dangerous surveillance tool in history, and in two minutes, he was going to use it against the people who paid for it. He watched the progress bar on the screen and tapped his fingers on the edge of the ancient wooden table the third-hand terminal sat on. The flat screen was cracked but still functioned. He hoped the location would give him a few more minutes of anonymity if the task took too long.
He stood, stretching from his hours-long effort, preparing his body to flee. It was going to be close. He had three exits. When the time came, he'd have to pick fast. The fourth path, the way he had entered, was not an option. That path led to an open street that he knew had cameras. It had crowds as well, despite the late hour. It was, after all, a city that never slept.
A sound outside, maybe a footstep, caused him to look at the main door. His temporary locks were still in place. Plastic shims sat on the hinge side of the door, keeping it from swinging open. He checked the monitor, then crossed the small room to add two more wedges, one high on the opening side, one on the floor. A tap of his finger activated them, their adhesive edges flaring out to grip the frame and the tiles. Even a battering ram would need several hits to break through now. The wedges would hold much longer than the thin metal shell of the door itself. It was the best he could do to buy some extra time.
He glanced at his phone. It looked old, bulkier than the most modern models, but he would not trade it for anything. He knew every chip, circuit, and wire in the device. A commercial phone had too many attack surfaces for him to trust. He should know; he had helped design the hardware compromises built into them for years, and had written parts of the low-level operating systems. Finn had thought he was making the world a better place.
He shook his head at how naïve he had been.
Most people, even the technical elites, thought their phones were secure with end-to-end encryption and enterprise operating systems. He knew better.
His master’s thesis had gained him the job with the No Such Agency. They had placed him with a chip design company. He thought giving the agency the ability to bypass all the commercial security efforts was warranted in the war on terror.
By using quantum entanglement and post-deployment microcode modifications, he had given his superiors a backdoor into any device on the planet. The agency had then subsidized the chips so heavily that no manufacturer could afford not to use them.
He had been proud of his work. It should have earned him accolades. Instead, he was patted on the head and brought back into a windowless office hidden deep in a secure facility. He consoled himself with further refinements to the modified microcode running on billions of devices. He had decided to get a life, date, maybe settle down.
A few years later, he realized that no one he worked with could understand what he did. They nicknamed him 'microcoder', since they only understood that he modified how processors operated. He began to wonder. If they couldn't follow his methods, did they understand the data collection those exploits enabled?
He began looking at how his work was being used. Yes, it was enabling traffic analysis for teams fighting terrorists and extremists, as intended. But it was also being used to track citizens critical of the government. It was being used to listen in on private conversations of opposition party members. Then to collect blackmail material on government officials. The agency wasn't just controlling the flow of information. It was using that information to grow its own power.
His departure from government work had not happened quickly. His clearances made it a slow withdrawal to avoid tripping any of the watchers tasked with keeping secrets, secret. He used the time to slip away from the world. He built his phone during that year-long retreat. It ran code that he would never give to the government. When he thought about how his work had been subverted, he got angry. Then he decided to get even.
That had led him to this dirty room with a decrepit terminal and spotty connectivity. He was tracing funds and messages between buyers and sellers. It was not weapons or intelligence in the traditional sense. It was the transactions people in power, people who thought they were beyond the law, were using to literally buy and sell lives. His digging uncovered how the leaders of the agency, along with several multi-billionaires, were trafficking in people and using them as sexual playthings. Worse still, they were using parts of his backdoor technology to hide their actions and communicate across a network of the powerful and the untouchable, beyond the reach of any law enforcement agency.
He looked at the timer. The progress bar reached its end, but he was a minute past his self-imposed deadline. But he had what he needed to expose them all.
Someone would be coming for him. No one would miss him if he was caught.
It was time to leave.
“Some fucker is far too smart for our own good,” Agent Morrison said as he looked at the smoking keyboard on the table connected to the ancient terminal. “Who uses fucking acid to make sure they don’t leave prints or DNA behind?”
“Not only that,” his partner, Agent Pamela Wilson, said, looking around the room. “They came in long enough ago that the spotters on the street overwrote their footage, and they fried the connection on their way out, so any surveillance out back would never make it up to the cloud."
Her gaze swept around the corners of the room once more. "All that, and no physical evidence of how they managed to stay here so long. No food wrappers, water bottles, nothing.”
This was a serious operator. Director Sinclair signed the op-order. He knows the sort of person we're after.
“This isn’t some low-life amateur,” Morrison said.
“Nope,” Wilson agreed. “Our only break is that they had to leave by one of the other exits. The keyboard is still smoking, so they can’t have too much of a head start on us.”
“But how much will that lead grow if we don’t pick the right path first?”
Wilson shrugged. “Who knows, but we'd better pick one and get chasing. The bosses are worried about the hack on their banks.”
“I wonder why their personal accounts were targeted,” Morrison said. “A suspicious mind would think they had something to hide.”
Wilson paled. “I like breathing free air, Tony. Let’s keep any suspicions strictly between your ears.”
Chapter Three
A palpable stench assaulted Elara's senses, a noxious blend of decay and filth. The sharp tang of rotting food mingled with the rank aroma of spoiled garbage, its sickly sweetness clinging to her nostrils and forcing her to wake, gagging. Decomposing organic matter gave way to a sharper, more pungent smell: the unmistakable stink of putrefying meat and fish. The sour, acrid odor of urine added another note to the stench.
Elara groaned and forced her eyes open, afraid to see what foul place she had been thrown into now.
“Goddess, help me,” she pleaded softly as she spotted the barest hint of moonlight edging its way into the filthy alleyway she awoke in. Garbage spilled from large metal bins along one wall. Something puddled the rough street; she hoped it was only rainwater. She heard sounds of people, strange horns, and a dull discordant rumble from the distant opening. A few lights shone through the mouth of the narrow passage.
She steadied herself, realizing she was still naked except for the silver anklets with their tiny jewels and moonstones. She reached out with her mind, seeking the cool, comforting connection to the powers her goddess had granted. The barest trickle of power would clothe her. It was one of the first lessons an acolyte learned, weaving the moonbeams into clothes.
For the first time since learning the weave, her goddess’ power eluded her. The loss of her connection hit her as hard as the wizard’s fist had. She struggled to sit up and hugged her knees tight. Where was her patron? Why had the connection been lost? How?
Alone. She could sense none of her sisters in the order. She could not feel Mother Nightbloom, the only woman she had ever called mother. Elara had always sensed someone from the order at the edge of her awareness. Even in that obsidian cell, she could feel a tenuous connection to the women of the temple in the Enchanted Forest. Of course, there it had been nearly overwhelmed by the emotions of the other prisoners. Now, it was simply absent. The magnitude of her loss sent a shiver through her soul, and she felt unbidden tears touch her face.
Alone. Not only were her friends and sisters gone, but her goddess was absent as well.
She sucked in a deep breath of the putrid air, wishing for some hint of home, only to remind herself of the many lessons from her training.
“Have pity for others, but it has no place in your actions,” Mother Nightbloom had instructed. “Do not waste time pitying your circumstances. Do something about them!”
Her years as an initiate had prepared her mind and body for the trials of being an acolyte. Her years as an acolyte had honed powers that mere mortals could only imagine. She had reached the final trials to be anointed a priestess five years earlier than most expected to achieve that rank. She would not be deterred. She focused inward, seeking the place where she felt the peace of the goddess.
Elara reached out once more, focusing on the memory of the power granted to her. She resisted the urge to strain for it, opening herself and waiting until she felt the lightest of touches on her awareness. The power was there, but faint like an echo in her mind. Still, she willed that trickle to manifest. She felt the soft caress of cloth on her skin and opened her eyes.
It was not the full gown of a priestess as she had envisioned, but a short dress of blues and greens. At least it covered her nakedness. She felt drained from the effort but forced herself to stand and move away from the stench of the bins hiding her from the main street. A crate of some strange material was a few steps farther down the alley. She sat, exhausted, but determined to try once more to weave the moonbeams.
In your light, I soften. In your shadow, I listen. In your presence, I am unafraid. The acolyte's prayer would help her center herself.
Calm washed through her. Then a new sensation intruded. A longing, not for the goddess, but for a man. She relaxed her mind, trying to understand who the man was. It was not the magician who had raped her before casting her out. Of that, she was certain. She shuddered at the thought of the evil man’s touch, even as she realized she could feel his seed leaking from within her. She needed a bath.
No, the man she sought was not a magician, but someone of power from this world. She knew she needed to find him. A man, but she could think of no name, no face, no way of identifying him. She only felt the compulsion to search.
A geas!
She sat rigid, shoulders trembling with the effort not to explode.
She knew of spells to impose a geas. Only the highest priestesses were allowed to use them, but she knew the signs. The flames of her anger flared. Had her goddess truly forsaken her? While she wanted to resist the pity welling up in her throat, her loss was all-consuming. For the first time since being raised as an acolyte, she cried with the nearly silent sobs of her childhood.
Alone and abandoned again.
Chapter Four
Finn could hear the agents in the stairwell high above him. He kept his steps light as he hugged the wall and avoided exposing himself should they look over the flimsy railing of this escape route. His shoes were sturdy and laced tight, with rubberized soles that absorbed the light sound of his footfalls. He pulled the hood of his canvas work coat up over his head, careful of his glasses, hiding his dark, wavy, unkempt hair. He needed to trim it to the close-cropped cut he usually kept. For now, he let it grow out, just in case he needed a hasty haircut to alter his appearance.
He'd heard the splintering door above him. Whether the pursuit was police, Homeland, or off-the-books mercenaries, he dared not slow down.
He had two options at the ground floor. One door led back into the building’s maintenance area; the other opened into the alley between the structures. The alley left him exposed until he reached the street, but the maintenance wing offered only a single exit, and the service elevator was almost certainly being monitored.
He reached the ground floor and stopped, listening. How much time did he have? The slap-slap-slap of leather on stairs gave little sense of distance, but he guessed they were at least six or seven floors above him. The exit was in the middle of the alley. If he was lucky, he could make the corner before they reached the floor.
He eased the door open. He had carefully oiled the hinges of doors along all his escape routes days ago and bypassed alarms. Finn glanced at his phone. No active surveillance in the area. The agents should have deployed drones or spy-cams around the building before trying to catch him. Maybe they didn't want a record of their actions. Finn filed that away.
He slipped through the door and closed it carefully. No loud bangs or thuds telling his pursuers which way he had gone. He tapped an icon on his phone and felt the electronic contact in the doorframe release. If they opened the door, the alarm would sound. It might convince them to resume their search inside.
“Now just make it to the street,” he said softly.
He stepped around the garbage dumpster and jogged toward the end of the alley. The road he was heading for was on the far side of the building from their entry point. Once there, he could turn south and be down on the subway in half-a-block. In the subway, they could never follow him. He just needed a crowd to mingle in. Activate his phone, then surveillance would be fuzzed for twenty yards around him. They'd have no hope of tracking every anonymous face in the crowd. Hop a train, kill the jammer in a tunnel, vanish.
He heard the soft sobbing and slowed to locate its source. No one was around. Then he saw her. She shimmered as if coming into focus in the night.
Her silver hair shone in the thin light of the alley. She was sitting on a milk crate, with her knees hugged to her chest, wearing a light silky dress of blue and green hues. He noticed the silver anklets set with small jewels and moonstones. She would not have them long, if she stayed around this part of the city.
She looked up at him as he stopped his flight. Her silver hair cascaded around her shoulders, framing her sharp features and piercing emerald eyes. The delicate curves of her face were accentuated by the high cheekbones. She had been crying.
“Are you alright?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder.
“No,” she said in a flat tone, as if it should be obvious she had problems.
Finn sighed. He didn’t have time for this. He couldn't leave her in distress.
Maybe it's a simple issue.
“Look, I want to help you, but I’ve got my own problems. Do you want help or not?”
She nodded and stood. She was almost his height. “I need to find a man I don’t know, in a place I’ve never been, and my goddess has abandoned me. Can you help?”
He shook his head.
Drugs, or a crazy woman?
He was on the run for his life and stopped to help a crazy woman. It didn’t matter if she was beautiful and mysterious. She was going to get him caught and killed, or worse.
“Possibly,” he said, the word out before he'd decided. He knew he could solve most challenges, given time to think. “But I can’t do it here, and I can’t get caught here. If you come with me, I promise to try to help. Will that work?”
The security alarm shattered the quiet. The woman jerked toward him and flung her arms around him before he'd processed the movement.
Chapter Five
The alarm startled Finn, sending a surge of adrenaline through him as time seemed to slow.
Should he duck and hide? The movement would attract attention, which he wanted to avoid. If he ran, they would surely follow. In a split second, as he sensed a head emerge from around the edge of the door, he decided.
He leaned forward and kissed the strange woman in his arms. She stiffened, as if to fight him off, but he wrapped her tightly in his arms, praying she would relax and not struggle. He felt her shoulders ease, as if responding to his prayer.
Her grip loosened and she raised her fingers to the back of his head. Her lips were soft, inviting, even as the alarm blared around them. No footsteps that he could hear.
Then the door slammed shut, and the alarm stopped, leaving the night eerily quiet in its aftermath.
Finn dropped his arms and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, hoping she wouldn't slap him.
The woman looked at him with … something. Anger? Longing? Appraisal? He wasn't sure what she was thinking but was glad she only nodded.
“We need to be going,” he said. “They may come back.”
“Why are they after you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“Long story,” he said. “They're after me because I’m after some bad people. I’ll tell you more later.”
He turned her toward the street and took her hand in his, glancing down at his phone clutched in his other hand. Still no warnings of surveillance.
Street, then turn left, he thought. Half a block to the subway. I can spoof the ticket gate, so no risks there. I’ll jam the cameras once we are on the platform. Depending on the trains, we’ll see how long we stay. Maybe the first train, possibly the second.
He knew every train made the agents' search coverage expand exponentially. At this hour, any station would be busy. The subway was perfect to get lost in. They might revert to the surveillance feed, but his phone would thwart that. He caught her out of the corner of his eye, admiring the calm, careful movements of his companion. She was beautiful and so graceful, as if every movement was planned and practiced until it was perfect. He had never seen someone like her.
Colleen had been the last girl in his life, and that was over three years ago.
Then he realized the problem she would create. If the agents had seen her, she would stand out on surveillance footage. Her striking silver hair would be a beacon on any surveillance feed. Finn would either need to keep jamming their view and risk creating a moving bubble of obscurity that would lead them to his neighborhood, or find an alternative before they entered the subway. He would not leave her behind. He'd given his word to help her.
Finn stopped her just short of the street.
“Here,” he said as he slipped off the canvas jacket with its soft fabric hood. He held it open for her. “We need to make you stand out less. If we’re going to get away, I need you to wear this and pull up the hood.”
She nodded and slipped her arms into the jacket. The teasing sight of her smooth skin barely covered by the thin, silky fabric of her dress sent a rush of lust through him. Finn forced those thoughts away, even as he still felt the press of her lips. It had been too long.
“Zip it up,” he said, reaching to pull up the hood.
She shook her head, fumbled with the zipper and opted to button the jacket instead. Then she gathered her silver hair in one hand and made a simple twisted braid before tucking it inside the hood. Even in a drab work jacket, she looked spectacular.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re going out to the street and to the left. The subway is only a half block away. Hold on to my hand so we don’t get separated.”
She nodded and took his hand.
“I’m Elara,” she said softly as he stepped forward.
Finn stopped. He looked at her and smiled. “I’m Finn.”
Can he help me?
Will he?
Elara opened her goddess-given senses, letting the unnerving sights swirl past her, absorbed more than noticed. The cacophony assaulted her ears as they descended smooth stone stairs into a bustling cavern filled with people moving with purpose.
Finn waved his hand device at the standing cage blocking their path and then pushed her through in front of him. She panicked for a moment but forced the fear down. Her feet stuck to something on the floor, and she flinched at the press of bodies and smells of the people hurrying on their way.
I need his help.
Down another set of stairs, then into a long tunnel with a broad platform lining a lower portion. This must be the subway Finn had mentioned.
Why not just call it a tunnel?
An unfamiliar sound reached them from down the tunnel, like a distant rush of water. A moment later, a light appeared, followed by a moving string of metal and glass boxes. The contraption stopped by the platform and doors slid open. No handle, no latch, nothing she could see that moved them. People emerged from the metal beast, and then others on the platform pressed inside.
Elara's stomach dropped as she watched the door close. In all the realms of Elysia, nothing like this existed.
Where was she?
At least I'm not alone.