NovaSiege

  The dark priest, Samuel, is dead, but at what cost?

  In a time of darkness the young boy, Bayne, has bonded with Samuel’s essence. The minds of all who connect with the essences are tested as an undefeatable evil reaches its tendrils through their minds. Beasts roam Solaris’ landscape, preying on its starving inhabitants.

  Can the remainder of the Julieth’s league overcome the voices within them and the beasts plaguing the land, or will they be devoured in their struggle?

  Is the boy Julieth once loved like a son forever lost?

  As the temptation of godhood, power and hate tempts all people bonded with essences, who will overcome the control and who will embrace what is whispered to them as destiny?

  An enemy hand opens as their final hope. Can it be trusted?

  Breakwater Harbor Books presents by Scott J. Toney

  Sci-Fi

  NovaForge (Nova Trilogy #1)

  NovaSiege (Nova Trilogy #2)

  NovaDark (Nova Trilogy #3)* to release in June 2016

  Fantasy

  The Ark of Humanity

  Eden Legacy

  NovaSiege

  Scott J. Toney

  Breakwater Harbor Books, Inc.

  Scott J. Toney and Cara Goldthorpe, Co-Founders

  www.breakwaterharborbooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Scott J. Toney

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover by Bradley Wind

  Author email – [email protected]

  First Printing, June 2015

  NovaSiege is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real people or places (past or present) is strictly coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to Cara Goldthorpe, a fellow author who stood behind my work from early on and who has read, helped in editing and highly supported my books as they publish. She helped provide the confidence to delve into the published world and is a co-founder of Breakwater Harbor Books by my side. Goldthorpe is a brilliant author and I greatly look forward to her first published release!

  From Meridia and Meridisia to the beyond!

  Acknowledgments

  Ivan Amberlake. As my editor, I couldn’t do this without him. A brilliant mind and a phenomenal fellow author. NovaForge was dedicated to him. A man couldn’t ask for a better friend to write beside. If you haven’t read his books yet, I suggest you pick up his book, The Beholder, immediately after finishing this.

  Bradley Wind, my cover artist. This is the fifth cover Wind has designed for me. His talent is immense and I am honored to have his artwork for the covers of my books. I look forward to seeing what covers are to come in the future.

  A great thanks to my fellow authors at Breakwater Harbor Books. It is an honor to create and publish beside such talented authors.

  My beautiful wife, Laura, supports my writing and my quirks so fully and loves me just the way I am. I couldn’t ask for more. She is my other half and her strength and love are the wind in my sails.

  Annabel and Benjamin, you thrill me, teach me and enrich me daily. I am home during the days with you now and I value this time so deeply. May you enjoy this and all my books when you are old enough to read them. I love you more than you will ever know.

  CI

  Chapter 1

  Beady, moist eyes watched the winged woman intently in the moonlight as she landed and came toward the were-beast. It had followed her and her company since leaving Kaskal, always at a distance, waiting for its time. Its tongue lapped its mouth, saliva dripping from its maw.

  She kicked up plumes of sand as she quickly approached. “You are the one who spoke to me when we fled the underground. Why are you here?”

  The beast sniffed the air, its ears perking in the wind. “I come for what was taken.” It neared her, its clawed hands flexing. “And if you will have me, I come to serve.”

  Julieth reached a hand toward its face, almost touching the fur of its cheek, and then suddenly stepped away. A shiver of fear crept through her… and yet somehow she trusted the thing. After we fought the beasts in the caverns beneath Olan he met me in human form. He did not attack me. Surely if his desire was to kill me he would have already attacked. She extended her wings in the wind, prepared to instantly flee. “What was ‘taken’? Why do you follow us?”

  “It is only the essence that I follow.”

  “The essence?” Julieth stepped back, her muscles tense.

  “Your companion is a thief.” The beast’s eyes watched her wildly, glimmering.

  She suddenly realized what he meant, reaching a hand within her tattered clothes and fondling the wooden box Ivanus left with her when he journeyed from Gest. It made sense now. When the beast first spoke to her it said ‘Kaskal’. “The essence was yours. Why did it not bond to you?”

  The beast went to all fours, stalking around her as its shoulder bones rotated. “My species first came from another planet that the essences devoured, a great distance from Solaris. Just as the essences came here, so they came to Railk. But on that planet the essences could not bond with its inhabitants. Something in my species’ blood resists the bonding. Instead the essences bonded with the planet’s spirit itself, using it against my kind and opening itself for their consumption.”

  “You speak as if this is not your history.” Julieth kneeled, her wings blowing in the wind behind her. The thing peered into her eyes, steam rising from its snout.

  “The effects of Railk’s destruction maddened most of my species, all but one. That ‘one’ is the beast who infected me. The beasts you faced in Olan have distorted minds. They can only breed ruined souls. I was a man of Kaskal. My alpha, Faiyror, discovered me long ago when I was almost within death’s realm. He salvaged what was left of me by making me as he is.”

  “You look like the others, but are so different. I cannot just return the essence to you. My companion entrusted it to my keeping. The essences are far too dangerous to allow more into the world. Surely, with your knowledge, you understand.” She reached to a dagger strapped to her leg, slowly unsheathing it.

  The beast stood on its hind legs, measuring her with its gaze. “Understood.” Tense silence held between them as Gest’s people shouted and cheered in the distance. Colored fire explosions webbed the sky in the night’s festivities. “I do not wish you harm. The reason I kept the essence was to keep it from mortal hands. If you welcome my allegiance and allow me to remain near you and the essence, then I will not force it from you.”

  Julieth’s grasp eased on the dagger’s hilt. “I’ll accept that compromise, and if you prove yourself trustworthy then I welcome your alliance, wherever that may lead us. If you are an enemy of the essences then I believe we have much in common.” She glanced back at Gest’s moonlit walls. “You must understand though that they will not trust you. If they see a beast approaching, even if you are with me, they may very well attack. You must come in the daytime as a beggar, while you are in sunlight and in human form. I will offer to share the chamber adjoining mine with you and then you can never go where people can see you in the shadows or at night. In time I will explain what you are to them, but with so much changing in Kaskal I fear now is not that time.”

  The were-beast stood once more on its hind legs. It held out its arms, looking up and down their forms. “Ever since I have changed I have avoided humanity. I understand the need for secrecy more than anyone. I lived for many years beneath Kaskal and none of you knew of me or of the rest of my clan.”

  “There are more there?” She was suddenly fearful for the people she left behind. No, she thought, if I trust this creature and they are his brethren then surely they are to be trusted as well.

  The beast eyed her warily. “Yes, dozens, rescued from death by this infection that taints us.”

  Julieth laid a hand on his back, feeling the c
oarseness of his hair. “One day I will speak with the people of Gest. You will walk the streets amongst us and be accepted.”

  “You have faced the mind-crazed beasts that share my similar bloodline. Humanity should not trust my visage. When they do I will fear the consequences. But a night in the moonlight, when I can walk among men as myself, would be lifting to my soul.”

  “It will come in time.”

  The beast lowered to all fours and turned from her, lumbering into the night. “Tomorrow I will come to Gest as a man. Do not betray me.”

  “Wait.” Julieth thrust her wings, lifting into the air and flying quickly before him. “What is your name?”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Ragoor.” As he spoke it the reflection of a shooting star moved across his large, moist eyes. The light of that reflection allowed some of the human color of his irises to pass through them. It was brief, but let a trace of his true human nature show through.

  “I am Julieth.” She held out her hand. Ragoor stood and brought a deformed, clawed hand out to shake her own. The flesh of his inner hand was cracked and pocked, sending shivers through her body. A claw braced on the center of her wrist where a vein quickly pulsed. “Ragoor, you have my word.”

  He didn’t speak again, only shook her hand and then went low to the desert, kicking into a run and moving quickly away in the night.

  Julieth thrust her wings and lifted into the sky, curving and moving higher and higher in the moonlight until Gest was but a speck below. A burning sensation seared her back where the essences scarred her flesh. She put any thought of them from her mind though and breathed in the cool night air. There was nothing she could do to change it. The essences were a part of her. Gest is becoming a place of warmth, and Solaris and its people are healing. Time is what it will take... time, and I’m sure more blood will spill as well, but in the end when Samuel is defeated and the planet’s soil is rich once more there will be health and rest. Then, I will search for a way to sever their connection. She caught a current of wind and allowed herself to freefall, dropping through the sky and then pulsing her wings as she neared the earth. She glided feet above the ground until she neared Gest’s walls and hovered for a moment before letting her feet touch the soil.

  That night in her structure she lay awake staring at the ceiling above. Only her wings lay between her and the ancient stone floor. Ivanus, she thought, come back to me. Keep Bayne and Andral safe.

  *

  Sunlight streamed in ribbons through the rusted metal roof of the structure as Julieth awoke, her head pounding and her body in a cold sweat. She had a nightmare but could not remember it. Bayne... something about Bayne. She rubbed her temples and stood. Ragoor. The thought struck her. I need to be in the streets when he arrives. She went to a stone basin in the back of the room and cupped water in her hands that had been brought from the lake. With a thrust she doused her face and then dried herself with her garments.

  She walked out into the streets to find them bustling with life. Venders traded fruits for crafts and weaponry. Julieth passed a group of youth laughing and running in and out of the groups of adults, bumping them and laughing as they ran by. Life if so beautiful. I wish I could have had more moments like that in my childhood. She neared a fruit tree as she walked and reached up, twisting and plucking a purple fruit from its branch before bringing it to her lips and savoring its juices.

  Moments later she neared the front of Gest where she saw Elias, the city’s leader, standing on the gate wall above her. She was about to call to him, to pass the time while she awaited Ragoor, when someone placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to find a dark-haired man about her age and height looking steadily at her. “Ragoor?” she asked.

  “Thank you for not betraying me.” He smiled.

  Chapter 2

  The wind sawed over Solaris’s arid land, howling like a tortured, dying creature being torn apart in the night. Julieth, though warmed by the heat of a crackling fire nearby, was chilled to the spine by the sound.

  It had been months since she last saw Ivanus and the others leaving Gest’s gates, venturing into the thankless expanse. Rumors grew by displaced citizens searching out Gest that Samuel killed more and more, amassing his forces.

  Bayne, Ivanus, they must all be dead. How do we stand against such evil? She turned a twig with a leaf on it in her hand, watching the moonlight refracting off its veins. A tree with white blooms thrashed in the harsh wind close by. So much life blooms around us and yet we can do nothing to clog the sea of blood coursing across our world. I feel it bludgeoning Gest’s gates, reaching for me.

  As she closed her eyes a deep chill crept over her, a sharp cold starting with her palms bracing the ground, and then seeping up her body.

  The wind tonight… it has never been so cold.

  But it was not the wind. Thick frost marked the earth, spreading and climbing the rust-walls nearby and the trunks of trees, coming from below. It ascended her flesh, its sparking white form glistening in the moonlight. Cracks slowly formed in the ice sheen, and then the ground moaned as a section of earth a distance from Julieth cracked in on itself and then fell into a dark void.

  Julieth opened her eyes while hearing shouts of terror, stripping her of near sleep. Shadows thrashed through her sight. An entire shack dropped through the earth, disappearing from her view. “Mother!” a girl shrieked.

  Ice flecked from Julieth’s body as she moved. “What is happening? Ineal! Help!” she shouted, running towards the screams. A sudden thrust of wind punched her wings, beating her flat to the earth.

  She breathed erratically, her arms punching through frozen soil as if it were a shell. The arms of a beast ripped through the earth below her, clawing at her form as the earth’s shell cracked away and they both fell into a dark void.

  “Ragoor!” Julieth screamed, panic surging through her as pain burned in her skull. The beast which had pulled her down climbed her body, clawing at her flesh and weighing her down as she beat her wings, trying to fly out of the darkness. Its talons reached around her back, shredding a wing and sending blood spattering. They dropped quickly and Julieth punched the beast’s rocklike hide, and then kicked it hard, somehow managing to separate it from her. Its bloodshot eyes stared hauntingly at her as its form disappeared in the black. Other shouts of Gest’s people pierced the air around her.

  She struggled frantically, her one usable wing beating hard, spinning her madly until her legs punched against the rock below, dislocating joints as the rest of her body smacked the surface.

  Her consciousness pulsed as chunks of land crashed around her.

  Plummeting bodies beat against the stone.

  Moments passed.

  The earth that had fallen from above was cold as it lay about her flesh. An eerie silence hung in the air as swirling soil choked Julieth’s lungs. Ragoor... she thought, wondering if he betrayed her.

  Howls suddenly rose up in the chamber around her, first just a few, and then a great chorus descending upon her as the cries and moaning of wounded humans sang in time with the creatures’ baying.

  Julieth gripped at the rock floor, her fingertips dragging across it as she struggled to push herself up. The essences are healing my body, she thought. No matter how many times she experienced the essences’ ability to heal her she was always in fearful awe. Muscles reformed on her back where the wing tore and mucus-like ooze seeped from her wounds as tissue reformed to tissue. Her knees throbbed and she could feel her muscles repairing their torn ligaments.

  Pop! Pop! The fleshy sound of her kneecaps grinding back into place sent shivers through her.

  Nearby a man pleaded for his life before something silenced him, splicing through flesh.

  Julieth brought herself to kneel, pushed her legs against the ground and then pumped her wings into flight. A beast howled close by, leaping for her and ripping her backwards, clutching her legs with its claws and dragging her down. As she thrashed back to the debris below, the thing thrust a taloned
hand against her chest, drool dripping on her neck from its maw.

  “This one is mine,” it growled. “Back off!” It thrust its head upward to another close by.

  “You have no claim!” The second sank a claw into her wrist as the first beast swatted at it, sinking its claws into its flesh and fur. The second leapt for the first, knocking it back.

  Julieth pushed herself to her feet and began to run as the two beasts fought, one choking the other. Another beast leapt from the darkness, thrashing against her back and forcing her down.

  Let us in. Let us free you, the voice of one of the essences bonding with her spoke in her mind. You can be so powerful.

  “Let me be!” Julieth shouted as she watched other beasts nearing, pinned to the stone. She shut off her connection with the world around her in effort to keep the essences from her mind. All was lost.

  “No. She is mine. Do not touch her,” a harsh, intelligent voice spoke nearby.

  She looked up, expecting to find Ragoor, to realize the depth of his deception. Instead she saw a were-beast twice his height. The thing’s snout was muscled and its eyes sunken deep in its skull. It was unlike any other beast she had encountered. The other beasts backed away from her quickly, lurching on all fours from her sight.

  “Never touch what is mine.” The thing came to her, lifting her as she thrashed. It dug its fangs deep in her shoulder. Red filled her sight as a burning pain encompassed her flesh. She convulsed into unconsciousness.

  *