VALEN
VALEN DROPPED TO the ground and crawled blindly, feeling as if the world had sprouted claws and the sand around him had begun to turn into stone.
He had to get back to Arcardius.
He couldn’t go back to Lunamere.
The festival began to fade from his sight. An image of cell doors took its place, stained with the black burn marks of electric whips.
The sky disappeared, replaced by the image of a cold, unbreakable stone ceiling.
Every gunshot was like a whip lashing down on Valen’s back.
There were a thousand feet running past him, flashes of bodies sprinting past, tangled up in explosive screams as bullets ricocheted through the crowd.
He couldn’t see the Marauders. He couldn’t see Dex.
A soldier sprinted up to him, clad in armor, the Xen Pterran crest splayed on his chest.
The soldier lifted his rifle. Time slowed. Valen saw the soldier’s gloved fingertip stretching toward the trigger, and in Valen’s mind, he saw it all as if he were lying on cold, frozen stones, darkness closing in around him like a dense fog, the flash of a blue whip about to rip into his skin.
Valen lifted his head, forced his lips to stop quivering as he looked to where he thought the man’s eyes were, beyond his mask, as his finger reached the trigger.
“No!” Valen shouted. “No! Not me!”
He closed his eyes and waited for the shot. But instead, a body brushed past his.
Valen opened his eyes, and the soldier was gone.
You have to move, Valen, his mind begged him.
He crawled forward in the sand, closing his eyes when his hands felt the sticky wetness of blood, ignoring the press of his skin against someone else’s, clammier and colder than it should have been.
He begged himself to stay focused, to stay present, but the world was spinning, a planet cast free from its axis, and he couldn’t keep himself in control.
He found a booth empty of its keeper, a severed tentacle arm splayed on the dirt floor. A smear of blood pooled across the suction cups. Beside it a golden droid lay motionless, torso blasted open and silver liquid oozing out.
Valen was about to crawl inside and hide himself in the darkness when a scream rang out with his name.
“Valen!”
He turned to see her.
Androma Racella, cutting through the chaos like the sharp edge of a knife, her blades swinging as they took down soldiers. Her crew followed behind her, Dex’s white constellation tattoos seeming to squirm across his skin as he ran, Breck hoisting an Adhiran man over her shoulder. The pilot, Lira, screamed and sobbed as she followed, her skin illuminated by bright purple scales, smoking in the night. In front of them, the smallest crew member held a stolen rifle in her arms.
One shot. The blast of a light bullet soaring from the chamber.
A Xen Pterran dropped in front of them, and Gilly leaped over his fallen form, dropped to a knee and aimed again.
Another shot, a second bullet set free, a whistle that soared just past Valen’s head.
Behind him, a body dropped.
All Valen could hear was the hiss and crackle of Andi’s blades. With each soldier who fell in their way as Andi came to get him, Valen winced.
“I am Valen,” he whispered. “I am Valen, I am Valen.”
Again, he saw the world flash from bleeding stone walls to the terrorized Adhiran desert and back. He shut his eyes and rocked back and forth, back and forth, until a hand gripped his shoulder, trying to shake him from his trance.
“Valen!”
Andi’s voice, but behind that the sound of explosions, gunshots, more screams. Her crackling swords like Lunamere whips that wanted a taste of his burned skin.
Hands ripped him from the ground, forced him to his feet. He opened his eyes to see Andi staring at him, blood splatters staining her face, her hair. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t make out her words.
Instead it was the pounding of his heart, the echo of his labored breathing, that he heard.
Andi smacked him across the head. Sound flooded into his ears.
“We have to run!”
A fleet of ships was closing in overhead. Each ship was like a living corpse, born from the ashes of Xen Ptera’s past, visible by the light of the moon and the raging fires.
Some of them were mostly old scattered parts of ancient warships. Burn marks and dents and patched-up holes littered the black metal.
But on the side of each one, a single golden symbol stared at Valen like a watching eye.
The Solis family crest. A sharp, dagger-like triangle.
They accompanied the face smiling at Valen from his mind.
A queen of death and darkness, seated upon a throne of the galaxy’s bones.