Chapter Eleven

Aegeus heard a loud crashing sound coming from the direction of the tank that Pyra had been locked into. Eden gasped, staring at the tank as the sound continued.

"Stop that!" Ryan shouted. "I could destroy your family in a matter of seconds."

Aegeus realized that the Denynso was kicking the front of the tank. Unfettered by the chains that were holding Aegeus, Pyra was able to smash his enormous boots against the glass. Aegeus heard the other warriors starting to chant. Their voices started low, but started to grow, getting louder and more intense as they filled the room with the sound of their powerful chant. Aegeus knew these chants. He had heard them many times before. These were the chants of the warriors as they marched into battle.

The rhythmic, haunting sound swelled beyond the forcefield, hammering down on them, punctuated by each of Pyra’s hard kicks. Aegeus felt the words in his chest, felt them become a part of his heartbeat as it pumped blood through him. He grunted in time with them, yanking against his chains in time with Pyra’s kicks. He saw Eden appear in the corner of his vision and turned enough that he could see her grasp the baby close to her chest and rush away from Ryan, pushing up against the forcefield again. She knew what the chanting meant as well. She knew the energy, adrenaline, and aggression that was building in the warriors. They had given up on trying to control themselves and were going back to what they knew, what they were born to do and to be. Their chants were unifying, they were fuel to their leader and to each other, they were a call to war.

Ryan looked around the laboratory, his face getting red as he shouted at the men to stop. The more he shouted, however, the louder that the chants became and the harder Pyra kicked against the glass of his tank. Eden rushed back toward the table where Ryan had placed Lysander in the basket and grabbed the basket. She disappeared from view again and Aegeus heard scraping like furniture being moved before she appeared again without the baby in her arms. She let out a yell that was very much like the Denynso battle cry and rushed toward Ryan. Seemingly startled by the sudden approach, Ryan moved out of the way, but Eden continued to approach. Her hands shot out in front of her and tightened around the scientist’s throat.

They clashed, caught in a struggle that only made the chanting of the warriors stronger. Aegeus roared his support, the thrill making his body tingle.

"Don't kill him. Keep him alive. We'll need him in order to save the others,” Pyra commanded her.

Eden lifted Ryan from the ground, putting her Denynso strength on full display, and threw him across the room. Aegeus heard the sound of shattering glass and saw Pyra run into view to gather Eden into an embrace. Aegeus cried out as the coat that the scientist had been wearing lifted up away from his body where he lay among the shards of glass, just in his field of vision. No one was standing near it, but the fabric was moving as if it were being shaken. Aegeus looked around frantically and noticed one of the men behind the forcefield staring at the coat and realized that man was manipulating the garment with only the power of his mind. That could only mean one thing…that man was part Valdician.

The thought was horrifying, yet none of the warriors or the others with them seemed bothered by the action. They either didn’t know what gave him the amazing capability, or they knew that he was born from the line of the Valdicians and could manipulate things with his mind, but didn’t care. Aegeus didn’t know which was more unexpected, or which he would prefer. Finally, the jacket shook just enough that the control pad that Ryan always kept tucked in his pocket slipped out and skittered across the floor. Eden scooped it up and pressed buttons until the warriors stumbled forward. The forcefield now gone, the group of people that had been crowded at the door streamed forward into the lab. They rushed directly toward Ryan, who scrambled to his feet, seemingly somewhat unsteady on his feet, but desperate to get away from them.

"Stop!" Pyra shouted at all of them, holding up his hands to underscore his command. "He stays alive until I say otherwise."

The group closed in around Ryan and Aegeus could hear him scream, but he was only focused on Eden running toward him. She stopped in front of the tank and flattened her hands against it. Aegeus felt suddenly wary of her, untrusting of this unexplainably blended creature and her past link to Ryan. He bared his teeth at her, growling even through the desperation and pain that he was feeling. He knew that she was his only hope. The invasion of these people was what he had been waiting for since the day that Ryan took him from Uoria, but he struggled to truly believe that she would help him. The reality was that he was still Klimnu to all those who looked at him, and even though Ryan had told them who he was, it didn’t mean that they would believe him, or even that they would find any meaning or value in that relationship. The truth, as painful as it was for him to admit and as much as he didn’t want to even consider the possibility, was that it had been so long since he had left Uoria and his family behind that it was possible Maxim and Kyven didn’t even remember him. Even if they did remember him, they might not have any feeling toward him, or feel angry and betrayed that he was gone. If that was the case, they might only see him as another of the creatures that they thought that they had eradicated.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Eden said, leaning closer toward him. "You're going to have to trust me."

He thrashed against his chains again, but Eden didn’t show any sign of fear. Instead, she looked at him with something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in countless years. Compassion.

"I know your son," she told him. "Maxim."

Aegeus felt his body still. For a moment it was as though his heart was no longer beating and his mind was no longer moving. Finally, reality rushed toward him again.

"Where is he?" Aegeus asked.

He could see her face twitch slightly when he spoke and knew the sound of his voice was crawling across her skin, chilling her the way that the voice of the Klimnu had always done to him. But she still didn’t react. She remained absolutely calm, looking into his face openly as if showing that she wasn’t afraid of him, that she wasn’t going to walk way.

"If Ryan is to be believed, he is with the others on Penthos."

"We need to get to him."

Eden reached for the controls on the tank and Aegeus felt a boost of hope within him. That tiny spark faded when a woman with silver hair and lavender eyes grabbed her and turned Eden around to face her.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked, sounding terrified and appalled at Eden’s actions. "Ciyrs and Elianna came for us. We need to leave. Now!"

"Not without him," Eden said, pointing back toward his tank.

"What?" Loralia asked, not even bothering to look at him.

He could hear in her voice that it hadn’t even occurred to her to think of him as anything more than one of the creatures that Ryan had entrapped, another of the brutal enemies of Uoria whose destruction should be celebrated.

"This is Maxim's father," Eden said calmly, guiding the other woman, needing her to understand. "He has been held captive since the battle when everyone thought he was killed."

The other woman’s face changed. She stepped up to the glass and flattened her hand against it as if trying to touch him. Aegeus met her eye and saw a tear trickle down her pale cheek. Emotions that he had kept locked within him for so long started to bubble up again and Aegeus sagged against his chains, no longer feeling the anger and aggression that fueled him earlier.

"How could he do this to him?" the woman whispered, her voice sounding fragile and on the verge of breaking.

"What do we do with him?"

The shout from the warrior brought Aegeus’ attention back to the crowd that had gathered around the scientist. He realized that he could no longer hear Ryan’s screams, but he knew that he was still alive.

"No! I told you, he stays alive until I tell you,” Pyra said forcefully, wanting to make sure that his followers heard him and heeded his every word.

Out of the corner of his eye, Aegeus saw Eden reach for the controls again and he watched as she input the code that she must have learned during her time working in the lab with Ryan. Aegeus wondered what she thought of the tanks when she had worked there, if she had ever seen them used and if it ever occurred to her to question their presence. He knew that she probably didn’t. The truth was that Ryan, as power-hungry and cruel as he was, was a well-known scientist who was tremendously respected in his professional circles. Those who were chosen to work with him generally followed exactly what he said without question and even if they did wonder about his motivations or what he was planning for any of his projects, they wouldn’t dare say anything or resist his orders for fear they would lose their positions.

Until Eden.

"He deserves exactly what he has done," the silver-haired woman said.

She took a compact from around her neck and Aegeus drew in a breath. This woman was what he had suspected her to be. She was one of the beautiful, powerful people who walked into battle alongside him when he crossed the battlefield the day that he ended up in Ryan’s clutches. She was Irisa.

In an instant she had used the compact to reflect the tank that was around Aegeus so that it surrounded Ryan, entrapping him. Ryan slammed himself against the glass, but he wasn’t large or strong enough to even begin to compromise the strength of the glass.

"You can't reflect people?" Eden asked.

Aegeus knew the answer. It was a conversation that he had had with the Irisa who walked with him into battle. Though they called them the Silver Warriors, that wasn’t entirely true. These people were gentle and peaceful, seeking calm and cooperation before war. But when they were faced with threats, they were willing to step up and do what they needed to. When they discussed how they were going to get Aegeus from the battlefield and back to his war room, though, they were clear about not being able to conceal him or reflect him in any way. They could only conceal those things that were around him in or order to protect him.

"No," Loralia said.

"Why?"

"Because if I did, what would happen if, even for a moment, you stopped believing in yourself? Which one of you would disappear?"

Eden didn’t reply, but the look on her face was enough. She could feel the impact of what the Irisa woman had said, and knew even more now the intensity of what Ryan was not only capable of doing, but what he had already done. She reached for the chains on Aegeus’ wrists and her face dropped. She looked at the cuff on one wrist and then on the other, then glanced over her shoulder.

"Gyyx, help," she shouted toward the group that was still milling in the middle of the laboratory.

Another of the Denynso warriors rushed toward her. He didn’t ask what Eden needed. He could already see. The tremendous man reached forward into the tank and grasped one of the chains. His enormous hand was close to Aegeus’ wrist, the rich blue hue standing out in stark contrast to the translucent, grisly whiteness of his own mutated skin. In two swift movements, the warrior yanked the chains the rest of the way out of the walls of the tank.

Aegeus was free.

****

It was worth it.

It was all worth it.

All that he had gone through. All that he had suffered.

It had all been worth those first few moments of freedom. Even though he was instantly cast into chaos and felt hesitation and uncertainty even more than he had when he was trapped within the various chambers and cages of the facilities, those first moments when he felt like he could breathe without being watched, measured, or evaluated were precious.

Everything beyond those moments had been worth these moments now.

The fear and uncertainty as they ran through the laboratory building, trying to find their way beyond the University and to Penthos. The days spent hiding in the basement, unsure of what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to go. The sickening reality that came when they found the others who had suffered under Ryan’s hands and freed them.

The pain.

The excruciating pain that he had endured when he offered himself over to the Denynso healer Ciyrs and his human mate Elianna and asked them to heal him, to bring his physical form back to what it had been before Ryan had transformed him was still bold and unshakable in Aegeus’ mind even now. It had been some of the greatest pain that his body had ever felt, and yet he had welcomed it. He knew that for every moment that he suffered that pain, it was another moment that he wasn’t going to have to live in the body that Ryan had manipulated and broken. If that pain was his penance, he was more than willing to endure it so that he could see himself again, so that he could fight again, so that he would have the chance for his family to look at him again and see the man they had loved.

That was all worth it now as Aegeus braced himself against the bitingly cold winds that whipped around him and forced himself forward through the deep, drifting snow toward the cavern in the distance. The feeling of his wife’s hands on his skin and her lips on his was fueling him now, warming him all the way to his bones and to the depths of his soul, protecting him from the chill. The sound of his son’s voice, a voice that had at first seemed so strange and heavy with the years that filled it, but was now familiar and comforting, kept him strong and determined, reminding him of who he was and the model that he wanted to be for the men his children had become.

With each step that he forced himself to take through the thigh-high snow, Aegeus told himself to be grateful for all that Ryan had put him through. The experiments to test how much cold he could withstand had made him stronger, enabled him to push away the chill even as it stung on his skin. Those hours that he had spent exposed to the bitter temperature, not knowing what was happening to him or why had at first left him feeling vulnerable. Then he had learned to internalize them. He knew that Ryan had wanted to see him suffer, and so Aegeus committed to himself that he wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Rather than showing his cold, Aegeus remained stoic. Rather than showing the uneasiness and even fear that came from never knowing how long he was going to be made to suffer the cold, he showed nothing. These long stretches became easier with each passing time and now Aegeus felt that he was better able to handle the cold that he faced as he crossed through the snow and ice. Ryan hadn’t tortured him. He hadn’t destroyed him. He had trained him.

Aegeus was strong again. He was himself again and he was prepared to move forward, to finish what he started so long ago.

The wind whipped up around him, sending shards of ice through the air to bite into his skin. It was as though they were guarding the cavern ahead of him, trying to prevent anyone from getting closer. As he approached, he hazarded a glance up to see how much further they needed to go and noticed the dark silhouette of a person in the gap of rock. The image gave him new strength and he pushed on, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself to protect his body from the assault of the ice and snow.

Finally, he was only steps away and he could hear the breath of those around him deepening as they pushed forward through the last short distance. He lunged forward and felt himself move beyond the falling snow and swirling ice into the dry warmth of a cavern filled with the glow of a raging fire. He straightened and looked at last into eyes that he thought that he would never see again. They were older now, worn and filled with sights and memories that he would never be able to overcome, and yet they were the same.

Casimir reached out a hand toward Aegeus so their palms flattened against one another in traditional Mikana greeting.

“Aegeus,” Casimir said. “My friend. You have finally returned for me.”

To be continued…