Chapter Ten: Betrayal and Battle
When Luther woke in the morning, there was a heavy feeling of dread in his chest. It was strange, considering the sun was shining and he had Alanna tucked against him, breathing softly, the sun lighting up her curls where they fell against the pillow and his shoulder.
If anything, he'd thought he'd be more content than he had been previously, but that was not so.
Something was about to happen. He couldn't say how he knew that, but he just felt it in his bones, in his heart, that something was going to happen and it wasn't going to be good.
"Mmph," Alanna mumbled into his arm where she was curled against him with her face pressed to his skin. "Why are you awake?"
That, at least, brought a smile to his face. "Why are you?" he asked, deflecting her question so he wouldn't have to explain the worried feeling. He could tell that this whole thing was taking a toll on Alanna. She seemed quiet and a little withdrawn sometimes, usually when she didn't think he was going to notice, and he wanted to ask her what she was so concerned about, but he didn't think he could do that without revealing how lost he was himself.
"Dunno," she replied, snuggling closer to him with a yawn. "I think I had a dream, but I can't remember it."
"A bad one?"
She hummed thoughtfully. "I don't remember."
She didn't seem distressed, so he was going to take that as a good sign. Instead of dwelling on whatever was making him feel so unsettled, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.
"What do you want to do today?" he asked.
Alanna sighed softly. "I'm not sure. I really should probably get some work done. I have bills to pay and all, and I haven't made anything to sell since I've been back."
Her words were devoid of the excitement that Luther had come to associate with her talking about her work, and he frowned. "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it's fine. It's just that lately it's been...I don't know. Harder to get excited about—”
She was cut off by the sound of his communicator buzzing on the nightstand. Luther glanced at it and then down at Alanna. "I should answer that."
"Probably."
"I'll make it quick."
Alanna slipped off to the bathroom to wash her face and handle her morning ablutions, and Luther sighed. He did hope this would actually end up being quick, but he wasn't going to hold his breath. The feeling in his chest never lied.
When he answered the call, the orange man was there on his screen, smiling thinly and looking entirely too pleased with himself.
"Hello, Luther," he said, voice as annoyingly smug as it had been the first time Luther had heard him talk.
"You," Luther replied. "How did you get this frequency?"
The man waved a hand. "I have my sources. Did you know that my employer rewarded me handsomely for finding someone who could help us? He was very proud of what I accomplished."
"Congratulations," Luther said. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"There is, in fact. One of our agents, I believe you know him, actually, is in your area now, and we would love to set up a meeting."
"Why should I meet with him?"
"Well, I assumed you wanted to know who had betrayed you. And he's dying to gloat a little, you see. He's terribly pleased with himself, and since he's done good work so far, we're inclined to indulge him."
He was being toyed with. That much was obvious. There was a gleam of amusement in the orange man's eyes, and it was clear that he was delighted that Luther didn't know who had betrayed them. It was also clear that he knew that Luther wasn't going to refuse this meeting. He wanted to, oh yes, he wanted to tell this orange monstrosity to take his meeting and shove it somewhere uncomfortable, but he didn't.
He knew that this was important, and if Queen Varen found out that he had turned down a chance to get to the bottom of this, she would use his head for decoration in the palace when he got back.
Not literally, but he knew that whatever she did do to him would be terrible.
So he sighed and lifted his chin, looking as defiant as he could manage. "I will agree to this meeting," he said.
Infuriatingly, the orange man just smiled. "I thought you might. I will send you the location coordinates and you two can have a lovely chat."
The man waved his fingers, and then the screen went blank.
"Well?" Alanna asked, coming back into the room from the bathroom. "What did the queen have to say?"
"What makes you think it was her?"
"She's the only one who ever calls you. Except for Clio, I guess. Was it Clio?"
Luther shook his head. "No. And it wasn't Her Majesty, either."
Alanna frowned at him. "Then who?"
He filled her in while he got out of bed and hunted for his clothes. What did someone wear to a meeting with a traitor? A weapon, most likely, but Luther didn't want to walk into this already geared up for a fight.
"He's a bold little creep, isn't he?" Alanna said once she had the full scope of what was going on.
"Yes," Luther agreed. "But I cannot deny him. Queen Varen will want to know who has betrayed us, and I can't deny I'm curious, as well."
Alanna started pulling her clothes on, too. "Can't blame you for that. So what's the plan? We just show up and start asking questions? Are we trying to capture this person and take him back to the queen or what?"
Luther froze in pulling on his belt, looking at her. "'We'?"
"Well, yeah. I was going to go with you."
"Alanna, no," he said. "You can't come with me."
"And why not?"
"Because it will be dangerous. I don't know who this traitor is, but I just have a feeling that this isn't going to end well."
"Oh, well, if you have a feeling," she snapped, annoyance flashing in her dark eyes. "Luther, I know things are different where you're from, and I know you can take care of yourself just fine, but even you have to know how dangerous it is to go do this alone. What if it's a trap?"
"I've already considered that. I can handle it."
“This is ridiculous,” Alanna said. “You can’t just—”
“Alanna, you cannot come with me,” Luther said, voice sharp and short. “Stay here.”
She glared up at him for a moment and then huffed, flopping onto the bed. “Fine,” she grumbled. “But if you mess around and get yourself killed, I’m going to go back to Lin-Vayel, get Clio to help me invent something to bring you back, and then kill you myself.”
Luther’s lips twitched in a smile. “Consider me warned,” he said. He leaned in to kiss her, relieved somewhat when Alanna kissed him back. “I will be back soon.”
They hadn’t set up a specific time for the meeting, but Luther knew he wouldn’t have to wait long. There had been too much gloating over that call, and he knew that they would want to do this as soon as possible.
He found his way to the meeting spot (an out of the way thicket of woodland, up on a hill and away from most of the noise of the city), and only waited for about two hours before the telltale sounds of shuttle thrusters alerted him to the arrival of the person he was there to meet. He drew himself up tall and kept his expression shuttered, waiting for it to land.
When it did, another few minutes went by before the doors hissed and then lowered down into a staircase, letting the traitor walk out.
Luther was actually underwhelmed when Jalal came stepping out of the craft. On the short list of people who he'd assumed could turn traitor, Jalal had been near the top of it.
It was clear that he was waiting for some kind of reaction, so Luther kept his face impassive. For a traitor, he didn't even know how to disguise his emotions, and Luther was filled with a sense of peace. It would have been much worse if someone competent had been behind all of this, but it was Jalal. Luther could kill Jalal without having to think too much about it or even really break a sweat.
He kept his posture straight and waited for his fellow warrior to get close.
"Well, well," Jalal said. "What a surprise running into you here."
Luther sighed internally. "I don't see how it is, considering you already knew I was on Earth and you came here specifically to see me."
"Well. That is true. But maybe it's a surprise for you to see me here."
"Not really."
Something in Jalal's face faltered then, and Luther awarded himself mental points. He'd served alongside Jalal for long enough to know how he operated. He wanted to be the center of attention. He wanted to be the best. He wanted to show off and be admired, and if you took that away from him, he got desperate. This wouldn't be hard.
"How did you know it was me?" Jalal asked, face going hard.
"I didn't," Luther said. "But I'm not surprised that it is you. You always were too ambitious for your own good."
"There's no such thing as being too ambitious," Jalal spat. "Ambition is what keeps the world turning. It's people like you who are the problem."
Luther arched an eyebrow. "People like me? Tell me, Jalal, who are people like me?"
"People who get complacent." He spat the word like it was something dirty. "Who are satisfied to stagnate. The queen says go dig up some old treasure and you hop to like a good little servant, and you don't even skim off the top."
"That's what this is about?" Luther asked. "You have a problem with me not taking things?"
"No!" he snapped. "I have a problem with all of it. We have power, Luther. Even you know that. We're a part of the sea itself just about, and we spend all our time running and fetching for the queen. And for what?"
"So we can know where we came from."
"Who cares about where we came from?" Jalal demanded. "We're not going back there, are we? Are we all suddenly going to start living underwater again if we figure out how to build a city? No. We're not. We're going to stay where we are and keep collecting old junk until we die. Or at least you will. I'm done with that life."
Luther could understand his frustration. He was content with the way his life went, but someone like Jalal craved action. He'd been almost giddy when they had been attacked on a dive years ago, and—
Wait.
Something occurred to Luther just then, and he tilted his head, looking at Jalal. "That dive we were on together. The one where you got hurt when we came upon those bandits."
"What about it?"
"You know who they were, don't you?"
Jalal looked surprised and then tried--and failed--to shut his face down before he gave anything else away. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Luther laughed, a short bark of mirthless laughter. "Oh, Jalal. They have sent the wrong person to do this, I think. You're lying. You know exactly what happened that day."
"I don't know anything!"
Anger boiled in him, and he closed his eyes. It was harder here, so far from the sea, to summon his power quickly, but even this water heeded his call, and he thrust his hand out, a thick jet of water splashing from his hand to hit Jalal right in the center of his chest.
Jalal went sprawling back onto the ground, and Luther advanced on him. "Tell me the truth," he said, voice soft, even in anger.
"Fine," Jalal spat. "Fine. I know what happened. They were there looking for the Heart of the Sea."
And...that was not at all what Luther had been expecting him to say. In fact, Luther had no idea what that meant, even.
"The what?"
"The Heart of the Sea," Jalal repeated. "It's...I don't know what it is, but it's something they wanted. They think it's the source of our power."
And suddenly, several things dropped into place. The orange man had said that his boss was a collector, and he wanted their power. This man thought that there were...hearts or something that granted them the gifts that they had.
The 'Heart of the Sea' was quite possibly the most ridiculous name he had ever heard of before, and Luther couldn't help the true laugh that spilled out of him at that.
"You're serious," he said. "You're working for people who think that there is some magical--what, crystal or something? That gives us our powers?"
Jalal lifted one shoulder and slowly got to his feet, keeping a wary eye on Luther. "Well, it has to come from somewhere, doesn't it?"
"It comes from the sea," Luther said. "The sea itself. We are extensions of it and nothing more. It's not something that they can take."
"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't," Jalal said. "But either way, they want it."
"So they sent you to come and take it?"
"No," Jalal said. "I...I don't know why they sent me."
Luther didn't think he'd ever seen the man look so confused before. Clearly he'd had some idea in his head about what was going to happen when he confronted Luther, and none of that was going according to plan. Luther almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
"Let me tell you what I think, Jalal," he said. "I think that they sent you here because they wanted me to kill you. I think they know that you're useless to them now that they've used your information, and they want to get rid of you. They're hoping I'll do that for them."
"That's not true. They want me to kill you. They have to. Once you're out of the way..." He trailed off.
Luther laughed again. "Once I'm out of the way, what? What am I in the way of? You think this source of our power is here on Earth and that I'm defending it?"
"Maybe," Jalal said. "Maybe you found it on a dive and the queen sent you here to hide it."
"The queen sent me here to take Alanna home. Which the people you work for well know since they're the ones who sent her to Lin-Vayel in the first place." Jalal didn't seem to know what to say to that, so Luther sighed. "Let me tell you how this is going to go, Jalal. I'm not going to kill you. There's no reason for me to. You're no threat to me. What you are going to do is tell me where these people are and what their plan is. And then you're going to go home. You're going to throw yourself to the queen's mercy and hope she sees fit to spare you on the count of your idiocy."
Jalal looked afraid for all of three seconds and then he started laughing. Something dark and dangerous filled his eyes, and Luther took an involuntary step back.
"Oh, Luther," he said. "Luther, Luther, Luther. You see, that's always been your problem. You've always been this self righteous, play by the rules, 'yes, Your Majesty' little kiss up. You'll do whatever she tells you to do and never even question it, and that's your mistake. You think I don't know how the queen thinks by now?"
"Seeing as no one knows how the queen thinks, I'd say you have no idea," Luther said.
This was not going the way he'd expected it to go, and he was unsure of how to proceed from here.
Jalal laughed again. "Please. She's easy. She's been sending us down there, looking for treasure for years, Luther. You think she cares about the history of our people? All she wants is power. She's ambitious, too. How could she not be, she's a queen. And she always thinks someone is trying to attack us. With the Heart of the Sea or whatever it's called in her hands, she could be unstoppable. So she sent you down there and you got it. But then, a human shows up and throws a problem in the plan. Someone had to send the human there, but who? And what do they want? She already knew what they wanted, and she knew the best way to keep it from them."
"What?"
"Oh, you think I don't know? If they attack Lin-Vayel looking for it, they won't find it. And why would they think to look here on this little nothing of a planet? Why would anything special or powerful ever be here? It wouldn't right? Except it is. Because you're hiding it. You're keeping it safe for the queen until she calls you back with it. But you're never going to make it back to Lin-Vayel, Luther. I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to take the Heart and take it back to my boss, and he'll reward me with everything I've ever wanted."
"You're insane," Luther said. "I don't know who's been filling your head with these lies and stories, but you're crazy to believe them. There is no Heart, and the queen didn't send me here with anything. And you couldn't kill me if you tried."
Perhaps not the smartest thing to say to someone already on the edge of madness, but Luther was angry now.
"Oh, please, Luther. I could kill you right now if I wanted to. But I knew you weren't going to cooperate. I knew you'd be all noble about this, defending the queen's lies. So I have a backup plan."
He walked back towards the shuttle and pressed his hand to a touch pad on the side of it. The tinted windows cleared, revealing the inside of the shuttle and--
Luther saw red.
There in the cockpit was Alanna, bound and gagged and spitting mad from the looks of it. She was struggling fiercely, and Luther could only imagine how upset she was to have been kidnapped a second time.
"Let her go," he growled, and his tone brooked no argument.
"No,” Jalal said. "Not until you give me the Heart. If she's so important to you, trade for it."
"There is no Heart! You're stupid for ever believing there was one. Now let her go, or I will kill you."
He didn't have his trident on him, but that was fine. He didn't need it for this. He was boiling mad, and the power was rising in him like steam in a kettle. The sea inside of him echoed his rage, and he knew that when he called the power, it would come to him, with all the force of his anger.
"You can't kill me," Jalal said. "But I can kill her. Is being the queen's pet really more important than your precious human there? Hasn't she suffered enough?"
And that was the final straw. Luther drew his arm back and made a fist before slamming it forward. A tide of water followed the motion, flowing down his arm to rush forward and slam Jalal against the side of the shuttle hard.
Luther spared a glance for Alanna, who was watching with wide eyes. He hoped she wouldn't think less of him for this.
He let Jalal get to his feet, eyes narrowed as he watched him.
"You're not faster than me," Luther said.
Jalal snorted and then lashed out with his own burst of water, which knocked Luther off of his feet. He took a moment to clear his eyes, and then Jalal was rushing him, dagger in hand.
Luther knew this about Jalal already, though. He never took the time to wait and see how things were going to play out. He rushed in blindly, and he made mistakes.
It was one of these mistakes that Luther planned to exploit.
Jalal slashed at him with the dagger, and Luther tried to keep out of the way of it, using water to deflect and shield himself, not attacking, waiting.
One lucky slash caught him on his arm, ripping through his shirt to the skin. It stung, but Luther ignored it in favor of watching Jalal. This wasn't the kind of fight he enjoyed, Luther knew that, and sooner or later, he would get bored with it.
When it happened, Luther was ready. Jalal laughed and he took a step back. He held Luther's eyes, and then he melted.
It was a foolish thing to do on this planet. In the pure sea water, it was hard enough to remember how to reform without help. Here, where there were all manner of runoffs and contaminants, it would be nearly impossible.
They were on a hill, and below it was a road. It was mostly deserted, which was why they had chosen this place to meet, but Luther had been here long enough to know that even deserted roads had access to the sewer system.
When Alanna had explained it to him, he'd found it disgusting to even contemplate the amount of dirty water underneath them, but it would be even worse to be one with it.
Too bad for Jalal.
He melted, and Luther acted. He directed the next burst of water at the puddle that was someone he had once fought alongside and called an ally.
With one powerful jet, he sent the whole torrent of it streaking down the hill where gravity and momentum did the rest. He didn't look, but he could feel it as it was sluiced into the storm drain and then down into the sewer.
Luther shuddered. What a waste.
He knew what he'd done would weigh heavily on him, but for now there were more pressing matters to attend to. He had to contact the queen and let her know what had happened. They needed a plan of attack. They needed—
An angry sounding thump from the shuttle caught his attention, and Luther swore when he remembered that Alanna was in there, still helpless and angry.
He quickly went to remedy that.
"Twice, Luther! That's twice now that I've been kidnapped and shoved into someone's space ship."
"I know," Luther said, sounding weary. He had a headache, but Alanna had earned a bit of ranting, he thought. He felt guilty enough for letting her get taken, and was baffled that she probably actually would have been safer with him. “What happened? How did he get you?”
She folded her arms, irritation in every line of her face. "I went to take the trash out, and he was waiting for me. I recognized him, and...I might have started laughing.”
“Why were you laughing?” Luther asked, bewildered.
“Because it was so absurd and completely unsurprising that he was the one who betrayed you,” Alanna replied, which Luther had to smile about because she was right. “I mean, of course it was him, he’s such a….” She trailed off and shrugged. “Anyway, what is it about me that just screams 'grab me and take me to space'?"
"I don't know. Although, to be fair, Jalal wasn't going to take you to space."
"Oh, no, you're right. He was just going to kill me if you didn't cooperate. He told me all about his stupid plan on the way to the meeting spot. Idiot. What happened to him?"
Luther sighed. "He melted."
"That thing where he turns to water?"
He nodded.
"And then you..."
He could tell from the look on her face that she understood what he had done. "He isn't dead. He's just..."
"Floating in the sewers."
"Yes."
She looked at him with no readable expression on her face, and for a terrible moment, Luther thought she was going to judge him for what he'd done. After a moment, she just shrugged. "He probably would have tried to do worse to you, and he kidnapped me, so. I'm not going to cry for him."
"Good."
"What did the queen have to say?"
Luther winced at the memory. He'd called Queen Varen with the news while Alanna had been in the shower earlier. To say she had been upset was a very large understatement. Even Prinna had seemed concerned for how angry their queen was at the news that one of their own had betrayed them. And for something so foolish, at that.
"She said many things," he said. "We know what they want now, but unfortunately, we are still in a rough position."
"Because you don't know where they will strike?"
He nodded. "Jalal was meant to find out whether or not I had this so called Heart of the Sea. Since he never reported back to them, I'm unsure what they will decide."
Alanna bit her lip. "I don't want to be the downer here, but...if this guy is as desperate for the power as he seems, then don't you think..." She trailed off, looking unsure.
"What, Alanna?"
"Don't you think it'd be smarter to strike both places? I mean, say he assumes you have it. You're just one guy. They know from Jalal that Queen Varen only sent you to Earth, so they know you're here alone. It's not a big use of resources to send enough men to take you out and then send the bulk of their forces to Lin-Vayel."
Luther swore. He'd been doing that a lot lately. "Curse it to the depths, you're probably right."
"Does the queen have enough people to fight?"
"Yes. Just because we aren't actively at war all the time doesn't mean we can't defend ourselves," Luther said, sounding snappish even to his own ears.
"I didn't say it did," Alanna said.
He sighed. "I'm sorry. Jalal just...nevermind. No, Lin-Vayel will be fine. The other leaders will send people to help if need be, and everything will be fine there."
"And here?"
Luther sighed. That was a very good question.
"We can send warriors to you, Luther," Queen Varen said. "We will not leave you to fight alone."
"It could be a waste of time, Your Majesty," Luther said.
"A waste of time?" Alanna opined from next to him. "How is saving you a waste of time?"
"Because the planet needs to be protected."
"There are hundreds of warriors on this planet to defend it," Varen said. "There is no need for self-sacrifice, Luther."
"I'm not being self-sacrificing," Luther argued. "I'm trying to be practical."
"Practical?" Alanna asked, and her voice was high and incredulous. "How is this practical? What if they don't stop at threatening you? What if they come after the entire planet?"
"They won't have enough people for that," Luther said. "Unless they have an army, and if they had an army, they wouldn't have needed to bother with sending Jalal."
"Alanna does have a point," the queen said.
"Your Majesty, I—”
"Your queen is speaking, Luther," Varen said sharply, and Luther fell silent with a sigh. “I will send warriors to you,” she continued. “If they come for you there, then you will fend them off. Is that understood?”
Luther could see that arguing with her was more than pointless, so he just nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
From there, things moved quickly. They didn't have a formal plan of attack, but they had enough of the bones of one to make due. The queen was sending warriors to Earth, and she sent out the call to the other leaders that their planet and way of life was being threatened. She would have plenty of back up if they wanted to take the fight to Lin-Vayel.
Clio managed to trace the call that had come to Luther's communicator, and discovered that the orange man was on Earth.
It was unsurprising, considering Jalal had been there, and no one would trust him with a solo mission on a different planet. They came to the conclusion that it was most likely that the main forces were on Earth.
"What do they want with Earth?" Alanna had wanted to know.
"It's collateral damage," Luther told her. "No one will cry if a few humans get lost in this struggle."
Her eyes had flashed irritation. "Humans will cry."
"I'm not saying they're right to treat it like that," he said. "I'm just telling you their motivations for doing it here."
Alanna didn't like it, but then she didn't like any of this. It wasn't going to be all out war, but there was no way to tell how big this fight was going to end up being. The orange man and his employer wanted something that didn't exist, and there was no way that they could convince them that they were chasing something they would never have.
That kind of blind zealotry never led to anything good, and if their warriors were as fanatical as the orange man was, then this could get very dangerous, very fast.
With the help of the warp paths, Varen's fighters arrived inside of a week. There were more of them than Luther had been expecting, and they showed up in a battle cruiser, armed and dangerous. The queen had placed them under Luther's command, which was surprising, considering he was hardly the most senior warrior there, but no one seemed to have a problem with it.
Luther met with a couple of them when they arrived, finalizing the battle plans. Jalal was gone, but it was likely that they were still being watched somehow, so he didn't even bother to issue a challenge to the orange man. He knew that when the time came, there would be someone to fight.
Before they could make a move, though, the orange man reached out again.
"This is folly," he said, still looking so placid through the communicator screen. "You cannot hope to defeat us."
"There isn't a choice," Luther said. "You are on a planet that doesn't belong to you, pushing a conflict over something that doesn't exist and wouldn't belong to you even if it did. There is no other option."
"People will get hurt," the orange man warned. "Innocents."
"Innocents have already been hurt. This will put an end to it."
He tutted, shaking his head. "So confident. Jalal was like you, and look at what happened to him."
That actually made Luther laugh, though it was short and mirthless. "I happened to Jalal," he said. "And we are nothing alike. Believe me."
Luther drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was it. He hadn't been training for it, or even preparing at all, really, but then, he hadn't felt the need to.
If he couldn't win this battle, with the might of some of Lin-Vayel's finest on his side, then he didn't deserve to call himself a warrior.
Just because they weren't a war mongering people, didn't mean they couldn't defend themselves, and Luther and the rest intended to prove that on this day.
The orange man and his people would come, and they would show them what came from trying to steal from them.
A hand touched his, and Luther looked down to see Alanna standing there, an apprehensive look on her face.
"This seems dangerous," she murmured.
That made Luther smile. "Battles usually are."
"I know, just... Please be careful. I know you're doing this for my planet and for me, really, but please don't do anything too reckless. I want you back in one piece."
Luther nodded. He was resolutely not letting himself think about the fact that after this, he wouldn't have much reason to stay here anymore. Instead he would be called back to his home to report to the queen and do damage control there. He'd have to leave, and he probably would never see Alanna again.
It was a sobering fact, but he didn't let it distract him.
"I promise I will be fine," he said.
"Don't do that."
"Why?"
"Because, you can't control that. If you promise and then you don't come back, I'm going to be pissed off, and you know it."
He smiled at her and then pulled her closer so they were as close to face to face as it got with their height difference. "I'm promising anyway. I want to see your face and hold you and kiss you and imprint you in my mind before I have to go back to Lin-Vayel."
"Oh," Alanna said softly. She went onto her toes, and Luther met her halfway, kissing her hard and wrapping his arms around her.
She had come to mean so much to him in a relatively short time. She had quite literally crash landed into his life, and he didn't want to let her go. He wanted to whisper 'come with me' against her mouth and tell her all about how good things could be if they were together on his planet.
But he had a battle to fight and things to do. There was no time for this now. He needed to focus.
"Be careful," she said again, mouth moving against his.
"I will," he murmured back. "And you stay safe. I don't want to see you anywhere near the fighting."
Alanna nodded. "I'll keep my distance."
"Good. I promised you once that I would keep you safe, and I mean to keep that promise as well."
"I think you were promising to keep me safe from water," Alanna pointed out.
Luther made a face at her. "I will keep you safe from everything that would harm you for as long as I can," he said firmly.
Alanna smiled in a way that said she had already known that about him and was pleased with it. He wanted to hold her for longer, keep her there beside him, but he had to go. The others were waiting.
Trident in hand, he strode to the door and then headed out.
"Luther."
Queen Varen really did live to make things difficult for him at times, didn't she? Standing in front of him was Amon, Jalal's brother, and while Luther could agree that he was one of the best, he was also probably carrying a large grudge against him for what had happened to Jalal.
"Luther, look at me," Amon said. "I am not here to seek revenge or anything like that. What Jalal did... He betrayed us all. You did only what you had to, and you used his over confidence against him. I am not angry with you."
That seemed too easy, but Amon was honorable, and Luther had to take him at his word. He strode forward and held his arm out, and the two of them clasped wrists in a gesture of solidarity and camaraderie.
The others were in place, as well, and Luther recognized most of them. They were strong fighters, good fighters, and Luther knew they were in good hands.
"On your command," Amon said, saluting him.
Luther saluted back. "I thank you all for being here," he said. "This is not your planet, and these are not your people to defend. As we speak, our fellows on Lin-Vayel are probably under attack, and you all could have stayed there to defend your homes and your families. But you are here, and I appreciate it more than I can say. The Earth need never know that there are those out there that would put them in danger just for the sake of a fictional piece of treasure. Let us make sure they never need to find out."
The others lifted their weapons with a cry, and it was a thunderous moment. Luther didn't mind that they didn't fight like this often, in fact he preferred it, but he had to admit there was a rush to this right now.
The company moved out.
There was no preordained meeting spot for this battle, but Luther had a hunch that he knew where it would take place. He led the warriors under his command to the place where he had all but destroyed Jalal, and there was the orange man.
He was even less pretty to look at in person, and he seemed to be frantically hunting for something in the underbrush of the trees.
Luther stood there for a moment, watching, hand raised, signaling for the rest of the warriors to wait a moment. Finally, he cleared his throat, smiling at the way the orange man startled. His eyes went wide, and his mouth opened, making him look like a sea creature.
"What are you doing here?" the orange man snapped. He looked past Luther to the warriors behind him, all hundred of them, and his skin paled. "What is this?"
"You seemed like you were ready for a fight," Luther said. Ever since Jalal had completely played him at the beginning of their interaction, Luther was working on being less sure that he knew what was going to happen. It looked like the orange man was here alone, but for all they knew there were soldiers hidden amongst the trees. "So we brought one to you."
The man glared. "You never do know when to leave well enough alone, do you?" he snapped. "You're not going to win this."
"I think that's a matter of opinion," Luther said cooly. "What are you looking for?"
For a moment he was sure the orange man was going to spit curses at him, but he didn't. "Where is Jalal's body?" he wanted to know.
That threw him.
"His...what?"
"His body. You killed him, did you not?"
"What do you want with his body?" Luther asked, ignoring the question.
The orange man smirked at that. "My employer has a new idea for how to harness your power. It involves the corpse of your friend."
That sounded perfectly horrible, and Luther narrowed his eyes. "You're an idiot," he said. "There is no way to 'harness' our power. And Jalal has no corpse. He is one with the water now." It was more or less true, anyway.
Now the smile was turning into something more sour, and the orange man sighed. "Why can nothing ever be easy?"
His eyes flicked to the side, and Luther followed them to see a flicker of movement in the trees. His lifted his hand once more, signaling the others to be on their guard.
"It doesn't matter if Jalal didn't leave behind a body," the orange man said. "I can get what I need from one of yours. Now!"
He shouted the command and waves of soldiers, all armed with blasters, came pouring out of the trees. They looked like mercenaries instead of a proper army, and Luther could tell from a glance that his warriors outnumbered them.
They were also trained and not in it for the money or whatever these mercenaries were there for, and he wasn't worried. Still, he was on his guard, and when their opponents started to advance, Luther gave his own signal.
For a moment, the air was filled with the scent of the sea, as the hundred warriors summoned their power and drew their weapons. The rest of them could take care of the mercenaries. Luther was going for the orange man.
Around them, it was chaos. Weapons clashed, and blaster beams sizzled through walls of water, hastily thrown up in protection. Luther walked through the main mess of it, heading for the orange man who was trying to run away.
"Where are you going?" he asked, voice pleasant. "Don't you want to stay and watch? Lend a hand to fight? For someone who's so proud of the results he can get, you aren't a very hands on person."
The orange man turned to glare at him. "You know nothing about me," he spat.
"I know you are a coward," Luther said. "Which seems to be all I need to know about you. Where are you off to? Running back to your boss?"
"I am not running," he snapped.
"Looks like running to me. And I am not going to let it happen. You see, I have a problem with you. You've ordered the kidnapping of someone I care for very much more than one time. She doesn't like being kidnapped."
The orange man rolled his eyes. "You and the human," he said, making it sound like it was something dirty. "I will never understand that. What can a human do for you? You have all of this power, the might of the sea under your skin, and you waste your time with some human woman who could never hope to match you."
"I don't need her to match me," Luther said, spinning his trident in his hand. "I just need her to be with me."
"Perhaps I'll kill her, then," the man said, and his eyes were wild. "Or give her to my employer as a gift. He does so like pretty packages. Little bundles that he can tear open."
The rage rose in him quickly, and Luther raised his trident, lashing out with a wall of water that seemed to come from out of nowhere. It smashed into the orange man, sending him reeling, and then it pinned him to a tree.
"You will not touch her," Luther growled.
"It's not becoming, you know," the orange man said. "Having such an obvious weakness. It makes it too easy to grab up the thing you want to keep and do bad things to it."
Luther had a white knuckled grip on the staff of his trident, keeping his anger and concern in line. He knew that Alanna was probably fine. She hadn't been taken again. She was at the house, probably fretting about him. The orange man was just trying to rile him up, and it was working.
He thought about the sea. He thought about the way the waves hit the shore, the sound they made, the smell of it, the feel of the salty spray on his face. He thought about the sun setting from the hill he liked to sit on, and he thought about Alanna with him, her hand in his as they watched it get dark around them.
And then he was calm. He held the trident in a much looser grip and then leveled it so it was pointing at the orange man's throat. The gleeful look he'd been wearing melted away, leaving him wide eyed.
Luther watched impassively as he tried to struggle to get away from him, but the water held him firmly.
"I will not play your games," Luther said evenly.
He could see the moment that the fight drained out of the man. His eyes went dull, and his posture went loose. "You can kill me if you want," the orange man said. "It doesn't matter. The man I work for will never stop until he gets what he wants. He will never back down until he's triumphant, and he will destroy anything that gets in his way. You killing me here will just save him the trouble of doing it."
Whoever this man was that was pulling the strings of all this, Luther didn't want to meet him. "What is your name?" he asked, wanting to at least know that much before he made his decision here.
Around them, the fighting continued, but neither of them were paying much attention to it.
"Cythel," the orange man said. "I am called Cythel."
"Cythel," Luther replied. "Goodbye."
Instead of jabbing the trident forward, Luther moved the water, bringing it up until it covered Cythel's face, blocking any hope he ever had of breathing. He struggled, of course, drowning was a terrible way to die, but for what Cythel had done, Luther thought it seemed fitting. He felt remorse for his actions, and he sent a prayer for the departed to the depths and then dropped the wall of water when it was clear that Cythel moved no more.
He raised his voice without looking at anyone. "Your leader is dead," he said.
Mercenaries were a fickle lot, which was why only those who were desperate or rich chose to deal with them. They only responded to money and the promise of more of it, so when it became clear that Cythel had fallen, the ones who were still alive fled the field.
They were victorious.
It turned out, that there wasn’t even a need to protect Lin-Vayel. The fighting there had been minimal, and barely worth mentioning. As predicted, no one on Earth even noticed that there had been an entire battle on their soil. There were a few mentions of odd puddles of water being found in strange places on the internet, but it was nothing that was given any second thought, really. They waited for a full week to make sure that there wasn't going to be any backlash from the humans or retaliation from whoever the orange man had worked for, but nothing happened.
"That is how we know we did it right," Luther said with a smile. Alanna had seemed...diminished somewhat in the days following the battle. Luther knew she hadn't been hurt, but she wasn't the same as she'd been even right before the fight, and he was fairly sure it had to do with him leaving and her not wanting him to.
He didn't want to, either.
Well. That wasn't strictly true. Luther had had his fill of Earth now. It was too dry and too loud and the air smelled bad. The food wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything like what he had on Lin-Vayel. He wanted to go home, but the thought of leaving Alanna behind made him feel ill.
She was his, in his mind. He wasn't sure how she felt about that at all, and he could only imagine that she wouldn't be too pleased with him claiming ownership of her like that, but...well. He wanted to keep her with him for as long as he could.
Which wasn't going to be much longer, since Queen Varen wanted him home as soon as possible.
"We have much to do here," she'd said, which was basically her telling him to get on a shuttle at the soonest possible moment and say goodbye to Earth. And Alanna.
She was in the kitchen on the day when he could no longer put off bringing it up. She washed dishes and stared out the window absently, and when Luther put his hand on her shoulder, she jumped, startled.
"I'm sorry," he said, giving her a smile. "I just wanted to speak with you for a moment."
Alanna nodded, putting a clean plate in the drying rack. "I want to talk to you, too."
"I'll have to leave soon," Luther told her. "In the next day or so. I don't want to, but..."
She smiled. "You don't really like it here. I know that."
"No, but I am in no hurry to leave your side."
"I want to go with you."
Luther stared at her for a long moment, unsure if he'd heard her correctly. "You want..."
"To come with you. This is my home, it is, but I...it just hasn't felt the same since I came back here. The only thing that made it better was having you with me, and if you leave..." She shook her head. "So, I was thinking that I could go with you. You once told me I could stay while I was there, and I know it's different than going back once I already left, but if you'll have me, and if you think Queen Varen will be okay with it, I'd like to go with you."
Luther didn't even need to think about it. He didn't even need to run it by the queen. He knew what he wanted. "Yes," he said. "Yes. Come with me. Be with me. Stay with me."
Alanna's nervous expression faded, replaced by a bright smile and a look of elation. "Really?"
"Really. For as long as you want to."
When she threw herself at him, he caught her up and kissed her. He kissed her cheeks, her mouth, her nose. He wanted to throw her down and kiss her everywhere else, too, but he held himself in check.
There would be time