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Then I walked away, heading back to the area where the strategists were splitting into their teams, clearing my mind and preparing to kill my Little Void.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nova
“I would love to see another planet. If I could pick which one, it would be planet three-six-one. That was the planet where they had wings. Sometimes I wish that I could turn back time and stop us from destroying the planet. Imagine what we could accomplish if we worked with them instead of against them.”
-From the journal of Nova Tershetta, 9263 AS
Our arrival on planet nine-three-four was like a fire suddenly erupting. The area was beautiful. Large homes built to reach the sky had been stacked one by one with paved paths separating the rows. Trees were sporadically growing, towering buildings in the distance seeming to touch the pink and purple streaked sky. But it’s loveliness was quickly stolen, because the second we shadow walked in, chaos ensued.
Screams coated the air in agony and magic tainted it in death. We were the monsters in the night, creatures much like the ones these people had probably heard bedtime stories about.
We were relentless as we slaughtered, and they stood no fighting chance.
I packed my bag with any and all elixirs, poisons, and tonics we had concocted, praying to the stars that all I would have to do would be to supply those in need.
Unfortunately, the second that the alchemists landed we were immediately ordered by a strategist trainee to join a group of combatants that they then shadow walked us to, the fighters cutting down innocents left and right in this denser, more guarded area.
My heart stuttered, maybe it even stilled, as I stared at the carnage. They looked much like us on this planet, though I noted that they seemed smaller by a significant amount, as if they were stunted in their growth. Even their children were tiny, the people grabbing them not looking to struggle as they ran and screamed, begging for mercy. To which they would find none.
Breaths coming faster, my palms began sweating, and I bit so hard into my lip that I felt one of my previous cuts reopen. My mask had been secured upon my face, Captain Zade having ordered we all be given them back to wear during this battle, and it was suffocating me.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t mindlessly kill. I’d always thought that I was just like them. Had believed that I was capable of being an elite. Oh, how quickly the truth came to light.
They had been right all along. Iwasa mistake, because when push came to shove, I could not do the stars’ bidding.
Backing away, feeling as if the world were closing in on me, I felt blood rush to my head. I had to get out of there. I had to run. I had to dosomething.
I couldn’t kill. I couldn’t maim. I couldn’t even fight them. I couldn’t do this.
“Nova!” I heard the sound of Talon screaming my name, but still, I only stood there, looking around frantically for some way out. For some chance at, what, redemption? Who knew. I had been just as much a part of this as any of them. I had planned to kill these people too.
“Nova!” he screamed again. This time I saw him as he ran toward me. His mask and cloak hid so much of him, but I feltas if I knew him so well by now that I could pick him out of any crowd no matter what he wore.
He was running so fast that he had no other option but to shove people out of his way to get to me. I didn’t move toward him. In fact, I wished he would never come near me again, but he did. He always did.
Soon he was in front of me, his hands gripping me by the neck through my hooded cloak. “Nova, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
All I could do was shake my head, my panic rendering me speechless. Motionless. Stars, I wasn’t even sure I was breathing anymore.
“What is it then? What’s wrong?” I couldn’t speak, but he knew. Of course he knew. Talon understood exactly what I was even if he pretended not to. “You can do this, Nova. Look at me. You can do this.”
I shook my head so quickly back and forth that my brain felt like it rattled. Useless, pathetic thing—my mind.
Around us, gore piled up.
“It’s them or you.”
Again, I shook my head, this time softer. What did I care if I died? I was so sick and tired of fighting every day, every hour, every minute, every stars-damned second to survive. What was the point?
“Nova, it’s them or it’s your family. You can’t save anybody if you don’t live past today. Do you want your family to survive? Do you want to give them a good life? Then do this now, because this is what the stars want. Do we understand it all the time? No. But this is what they gave us magic for in the first place.” Abruptly he let go of my neck with one of his hands, using one of his blood-soaked fingers to point at a group of screaming people. “It’s these people or your family. Choose.”
That snapped me back into reality, because he was right. If I died now, so would my family. If I died now, it meant that I forced haya down their throats for years for nothing. It meant that I joined the elites for nothing. It meant that I gave up my soul for nothing. Everything I had ever done would be for absolutely nothing if I didn’t fight now. So perhaps it made me a monster, but I nodded, summoning my chains of shadows.
Fate was an odd thing. The stars rarely cared about the future. But fate, with its confusing and strange plans, did.
So, when I took a step forward and was immediately blocked by a dark figure, my first instinct was to thank fate for preventing my downfall. Then I locked gazes with him, grey eyes storming with clouds of rage and violence, and I knew fate wasn’t saving me.
