Author's Note: As of June 27th, 2016, the entire fanfic has been rewritten. That means this chapter, all that came before it, and all that follow it now contain different content that they did previously. You are strongly encouraged to go back and reread the entire fanfic from the beginning, as the revised continuity may confuse you if you jump in part of the way through.
Stone falls. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Her hand reaches out to him. He smiles. The light of the fire dances upon his face. Stone crashes. A hand grabs her shoulder. Fire rages all around her. Darkness closes in. In the distance, a faint light emerges.
Thorn woke up in a cold sweat, panting and clutching her chest. She was having dreams again. About the day Fone died. She couldn't bear to think about it. But as much as she avoided it during the day, at night the memories always came back to haunt her. It ate her up inside. Thinking that for the entire time they knew each other, he… loved her. And she never knew. She just took his friendship for granted for so long, and then he was just gone. He saved her life and died. She couldn't bear that weight. Losing someone she didn't even know she loved because she was careless.
She sat up and looked around. She was still in her tent. Not wanting to fall asleep any time soon, she got up, put on her ragged cloths, and stooped out of the tent. Outside was a vast sea of tents, crates, and torches spanning the vast interior chamber of the rat creature temple. A hundred or so humans milled around the chamber doing various menial tasks. She walked over to the corner of the temple they were using as an armory, picked up a sniper rifle from the makeshift rack, and made her way up the stairs, . She was almost to what was left of the entrance when Phoney walked out of the shadows behind her.
"You're up early. I thought you were taking the day off." He asked. She sighed. He had been keeping tabs on her, didn't want her doing anything irrational.
"I'm heading out for target practice. I could use something to clear my head, sharpen my nerves." She replied.
"We only have so many bullets left from the cache Jigafta raided. So until he gets back with more, we're not to use the guns for anything stupid." He said sternly.
"This is war, Phoney. I've got to be at the top of my game." She started for the entrance again. Phoney grabbed her arm.
"I lost Fone too, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to go waste resources taking out my frustrations on some rocks."
"Oh, so now you give a damn about him? Or me, for that matter?" Thorn sneered.
"That's not fair. I've always cared about both of you."
"If I recall correctly, the last thing you said to your cousin was that the two of you weren't family anymore. If that's your way of showing someone you care, you are in serious need of an attitude adjustment."
"You're one to talk. You've always been concerned with yourself and only yourself. You've always tried to do everything on your own power. And now that you've finally realized how much Fone cared about you, how much he sacrificed for you, you can't handle it."
"You think you know me? You think you know what I've been through?" Thorn laughed. "You've never loved anyone in your life. How could you possibly understand my pain?"
"I understand perfectly. Perhaps more than you ever will." Phoney's gaze turned menacing, and he got right up on Thorn's face. "I saw my parents charred, broken bodies carted away in bags from a pile of rubble when I was ten. Smiley was shot to death saving my life from a person I thought was my friend. I saw Fone get crushed trying to save you. And the crowning achievement was…" His sentence faded into nothing. He stopped glaring at Thorn, and his gaze became distant and unfocused. "Ana." He backed up and brought himself back to reality, slowly. "Just don't do something you'll regret." He muttered before turning around and walking solemnly back into camp.
Confused and uncomfortable, Thorn walked out of the temple and clambered her way up the rock faces to a small cliff facing out toward the valley. She could see everything from her perch. The village, or what was left of it, sat smoldering in the distance, and the lights from Atheia were barely visible on the horizon.
She crouched down and leveled her rifle against her shoulder. Looking through the scope, she adjusted the instruments on the side and took a shot at a tree branch. She missed.
"Damn." She muttered as she readjusted and tried again. Her shot another miss. Eventually, after several tries, she managed to hit the branch. Her practice proceeded in the same manner. After a few hours, just when she had finally started shooting more hits than misses, the upside-down looming face of a large cat blocked her view. She scurried back in shock as Roque Ja bounded off of his perch above her and onto the edge of the cliff with an impossible amount of grace.
"There's no reason to be alarmed, my Queen" He laced the last two words with as much ire as he could muster, "I'm not here to kidnap you this time. I found something along the foothills that I thought might interest you."
"What might that be?" She asked tentatively. She still didn't trust him, even after two months of his watchful eye keeping the camp safe. He still sent a slight chill up her spine every time he spoke. Like he might get bored and decide to rip it out of her back.
"I spotted a vehicle leaving the Elm residence only an hour ago. It has since made a beeline directly for the location of the camp." Thorn decided to see for herself.
She crouched down and picked her rifle back up. Looking though the sights once more, she swept the area he described to her until she spotted the dust trail of a vehicle edging along the foothills of the mountains below her. She focused on it with her scope, and the side of one of Glaian's APCs came into view.
"How did he find out we're here?" She muttered to herself as she lowered the rifle. She turned to Roque Ja. "Why did you feel the need to tell me about this? Why not just go directly to Phoney about it?"
"Oh, I already did. He sent a team to intercept it not long after I told him. If you hurry, you might get there before them."
"Why would it matter if I got there before they did?"
"Because, as it passed, I smelled the scent of frightened humans. And something else which might surprise you. And I'd like to be around to see your first impression when you find out what it is." With those words, he disappeared back over his perch.
"What does he think I am, some form of amusement?" She muttered to herself as she proceeded to where she had spotted the APC.
In a few minutes she was in position above the APC's path. She lay down prone and brought the sniper rifle's scope up to her face. Right as she reacquired the APC in her sights, an explosion erupted in front of its path. A team of humans, all brandishing assault rifles, led by X'lish came out of the tree line and surrounded it. X'lish spoke.
"Alright." She shouted at the vehicle. "Send the humans out first, or I'll put a bullet through the driver side window."
"Alright, alright, no need to be pushy." Shouted the driver. He sounded strangely familiar to Thorn, like a ghost. The passenger doors opened and out poured almost a dozen frightened human children, a teenager she vaguely recognized as Tom Elm, and a raccoon.
"Now send out the driver. Slowly. Hands raised." Shouted X'lish.
"If you insist." Shouted the voice. Then out stepped a ghost. Thorn's heart stopped in her chest. It was him. Fone. "But was all this really necessary? There's no one else in there. I just came by to say hello."
"Get on the ground!" X'lish shouted. He begrudgingly did as he was told.
"X'lish, I'm hurt. Don't you recognize me?" He asked as she tied his hands behind his back.
"I'm not really too good with faces. I would apologize, but you'll be dead in a second anyway, so it doesn't really matter." She lined up a gun against his head. This snapped Thorn out of her daze.
"Wait!" Thorn shouted as she stood up from her hiding place. "Don't shoot!" She skid down the slanted rock face and ran up to X'lish.
"Queen Thorn." X'lish said, more than a little surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"Get away from him, you idiot!" Thorn shouted at X'lish as she bent down to untie Fone's restraints. "That's Fone. Phoney's cousin." X'lish looked from Fone to Thorn back to Fone.
"I'll be damned." She said as recognition dawned on her. "It is you. Everyone said you were dead. My deepest apologies." Fone stood up. A palpable silence hung in the air between him and Thorn. A million thoughts raced through both of their heads.
"We've got movement!" One of X'lish's men shouted. "Six more of those… things on the horizon." X'lish turned to the awkward couple.
"I know you two probably have a lot to talk about," She said, "But right now we've got half a dozen vehicles trudging up that path, and they'll be on our asses in ten minutes unless we haul them the hell out of here." She turned to one of her men. "Lace the APC with charges. When they get close, blow them to hell." He nodded, and pulled some plastic explosives out of his bag. She addressed the rest of the crowd. "The rest of you get these kids to camp. Thorn, you and Fone go with them. I'll stay behind and stall for as long as I can." She saw the concerned look they gave her. "I can handle it, I promise. I'm an assassin, remember? I kill without people noticing me for a living." She walked over to the APC and took the charges from the man fumbling to activate them. He joined the rest of his unit and they ran off carrying the kids with them. Fone and Thorn looked at each other, and took off after the pack, leaving X'lish behind.
"Wake up!" A voice shouted as water splashed over Nibet's face. She slowly opened her eyes and stared at the man looming over her. At first, she didn't know where she was. Then she remembered being kidnapped, and immediately began inspecting the area around her, internally on the edge of panic but externally exuding an air of calm. She was in a dimly lit room, probably a basement of some kind. A lone Bone stood in front of her. It took her a moment but she recognized him as Secretary of Defense Julius Freeman, supposedly killed during the destruction of the Capital. She instinctively tried to lurch at him out of the chair she was sitting in, but she was jerked back into place by the ropes binding her.
"Took you long enough." He muttered under his breath. Nibet glared at him. "But now that you're awake, we can get down to business. First we need to get that crystal out."
"What the hell are you talking about?" She asked him, trying as hard as she could to loosen the restraints by straining against them.
"Don't play dumb. Glaian implanted a tiny blue crystal into your back left molar. We're going to take it out." He grabbed a pair of plyers from a table next to him. Nibet began to panic as he wrenched her mouth open with his free hand. She attempted to bite down and free herself, but his grip was too string. Slowly and methodically, he gripped her molar with the plyers and began to pull. Pain coursed through her whole body, and she began wracking herself furiously to try to dislodge him, prevent him from tearing out her tooth.
Eventually he got it free though, and withdrew his hand from her mouth, along with the tooth. He placed the tooth on the table, and pulled out a small hammer. He smashed the tooth with it vigorously, the first attack shattering it and revealing a small blue crystal. He continued to attack the crystal until it too shattered. This took several minutes.
As soon as it did however, Nibet received visions. Memories, clouded and at war with her more recent ones, but memories none the less. And the more she received, the more she knew they were the correct ones, somehow removed and replaced by a false set and a false personality to match. Julius gave her a few minutes to process this revelation, and then he resumed their conversation.
"Feeling better?" He asked sardonically.
"What did you do to me?" She asked staring up at his smirking face.
"I just gave you your life back. Everything Glaian and Archibald stole from you. What is it you saw, exactly?"
"I saw… the past. Receiving orders from Secretary Deyavara to insert myself into Glaian's camp as a spy. Receiving the call almost a year later to stop Faldr from dueling Glaian. Then a short time later being cornered by Glaian in a hallway. Him pulling out that small blue crystal from his pocket, and then me waking up a completely different person. What was that thing?" She could tell from his expression that he was itching to give the answer.
"I'm not really sure. Neither were Glaian and Archibald. They found at least a dozen of them, along with a really big one, in a temple out in the desert some fifteen years ago."
"The chrysalis they keep talking about?" She asked, her curiosity piqued by this new revelation.
"Exactly." He replied before continuing his lecture. "The writings in the temple refer to them as nightmare eggs. The one in your head was comparatively small. They're made out of the same compound as is found in a person's dreaming eye, I'm sure you've overheard Glaian and Archibald discussing those, and they have the ability to steal from a person recently acquired memories and even entire chunks of their personality. How far back into a person's memory it pulls is relative to its size. The one they hit you with was designed only to affect your memories of when you were in his camp, but not your skills as an assassin. This deficit leaves the target open to suggestion as they try to fill in the gaps. They used this to imprint upon you some false memories about how you idolized Glaian and some other bull to make you easier to control."
"Is that also why Secretary Deyavara tried to kill the President? Did they get to him as well?" Nibet's pre-wipe sentiments started to return to her. Her complete hatred of the Order, as well as her loathing of Glaian and his crusade, began to manifest themselves.
"They did, I think. I'm not really sure on all the details, but his change was much slower than yours so no one would notice." He then began thinking aloud to himself. "Honestly I have no idea why they did it though. If Archibald was already a traitor, then why convert Daniel as well? Maybe it was to get Phoncible to trust him more, or perhaps Glaian just has a sick fetish for the theatrical."
"Hey!" Nibet derailed his train of thought and pulled him back into reality. "How did you find all of this out?"
"I got suspicious after Daniel was killed, so I snuck away from the meeting and began to dig into Archibald's files. I managed to crack his last encryption right before I heard him kill Victor and the other members of the cabinet. I downloaded his databases to an external hard drive and ran to see if I could help. But by that time the army had already extracted the president, and I had to move fast to get out alive. I barely made it, but I did. After that I spent a lot of time looking into Archibald's files in secret, and about a week ago I joined Glaian's crusade using a fake ID. I knew I had to find you and start building a force to tear down Glaian's army from the inside. We may be the only ones left who can put things right."
"That's not entirely true. The President is still alive. He leads a strike force of humans and some of my former colleagues. They're stationed somewhere in the northern half of the valley, though we don't know where exactly."
"I thought the President was dead."
"Glaian declared that you were dead. He has a habit of doing that to put momentum behind his cause. I wouldn't be surprised if there were still more than a few members of the government left, despite what Glaian keeps saying." Julius chewed on this thought for a moment. Nibet interrupted him. "Could you untie me from the chair please? It's getting a bit uncomfortable."
"I can't do that just yet. I don't trust that the old memories have righted themselves in your mind yet."
"I'll help you kill Glaian. I'll help you find the President too, I swear." Julius didn't look convinced. "He took away part of my life. Not a big part, but a damaging one. Made me kill my best friend, my sister's husband. He made me sacrifice my ideals for him. And he made me worship him. When I get my hands on him, I'll take out every agonizing second of these past months on him. Trust that."
"I'd trust it more if you told me some about how his camp is laid out, and where the weak points are."
"I can do more than that." She smiled, thinking of the pain she would inflict upon Glaian when she found him. "I can tell you when to strike. He's making another broadcast tomorrow night. There he'll christen his new group of generals to fight Admiral Satranik Haenkos and what's left of the Republic's military. If we strike him then, it'll be a major blow to his cause. It'll show weakness in his defense and in his ability. That'll be more damaging than killing him."
"I like the way you think."
"Going to untie me now?"
"Not quite. First I need you to lay out the rest of this plan for me. Then I'll untie you."
"Fine. First step: we need more allies. Last I heard, Glaian had a small force besieging some humans at Old Man's Cave. If we free them, they'll definitely be of use somehow. And while gathering allies is on the table, we need to contact the President. If both his forces and ours attack at the same time, we might take his whole empire down in one fell swoop."
"Mr. President, are you there?" A voice crackled over the radio waves. Phoney jumped up from his chair in the central tent and ran over to the communications console to reply.
"Jigafta, I'm here. And I really hope you found some good stuff, because the generators are almost out of fuel."
"Yeah, we hit the motherlode. We stumbled upon a whole supply convoy this morning. Ammo, food, fuel, weapons, batteries, and everything else we'll need to keep ourselves going for another few weeks. We're just finishing up loading everything onto the gunship, so we should be home in time for lunch."
"Thank God." Phoney replied. "Did you happen to find anything… high end?"
"Nope. No mech suits, no plasma missiles, no new prototypes, no nothing. Just more supplies. I'm honestly a bit baffled as to what's been staying his hand this long."
"Well, good job anyway. Just be cautious with the landing. X'lish's team had to intercept an APC about ten minutes ago, so we think Glaian's onto our location and might be watching the area. Don't de-cloak until you clear the reflector screens, got it?"
"Yeah, yeah. We'll be home soon. Oh, and tell Thorn we managed to snag a transmission from one of their communicators. It appears that her Grandmother is still alive and holding out in Old Man's Cave."
"I'll tell her. Fly straight." The radio transmission cut off. Phoney turned to face the rest of his inner circle: Caydmar, Rankyne, and Sybron Brook. "What do you make of this new information?" He asked them.
"It seems to me that, since Queen Rose is still alive, there is a chance that the Dragon Council still survives as well. We should make every effort to reestablish contact with them in order to better plan a counterattack." Said Syrbon Brook.
"I think that'd be a stupid idea." Said Caydmar candidly. "Glaian's been pulling his punches this whole time. He could move his entire army into the valley and slaughter everyone but us in an afternoon if he wanted. He's biding his time. Probably until we show ourselves. We can't try making contact without knowing it won't expose us."
"We may already be exposed." Scoffed Rankyne. "His vehicles have arrived at our doorstep. I say we take advantage of his lack of coordination and resources at this moment and attack him directly."
"That wouldn't be a good idea. In a straight up fight, he's got us outmatched and outnumbered. We'd be walking to our graves."
"Well at least we'd be going to our deaths honorably, instead of shriveling up slowly like father did! Like you would have us do!"
"Do you want to hash this out right now?" Asked Caydmar. 'If you've got something to say, say it to my face!"
"Enough!" Roared Phoney. "This isn't happening now, do you understand? I'm not having a family counseling session in the middle of a war meeting because the two of you can't keep it together!"
"You call this a war meeting?" Laughed Rankyne. "This isn't anything but a den of cowards. I'm going for a walk. Come and get me when you feel like fighting with some honor." Rankyne stormed out of the tent. Caydmar began to follow him, but Phoney held him back.
"Don't." Phoney shook his head. "Let him clear his head. He'll be back eventually." Caydmar sat back down. Phoney resumed the meeting. "It'd be… misguided to assume that Glaian will allow us any breathing space to contact aid. That being said, he hasn't even moved any troops into the valley in several days. He's left the rest of his army at home. Why?"
"I would imagine controlling a lot of resentful people from far away must take an amazing amount of military presence." Said Sybron.
"Exactly. That's where all of his missiles are. Aimed at his own people. We can use that. He won't need them to fight us, but he won't be expecting us to know he doesn't have them either."
"He's not that stupid though." Caydmar chimed in. "He'd have some squared away just in case he needs them."
"So we find those, wherever they might be, and his greatest defense becomes his worst nightmare." Sybron said enthusiastically.
"Finding them will be the problem though." Phoney replied. "I can have the Dragons start taking a look when they get back from their operation, but I doubt we'll find them without asking Glaian himself, or one of his commanders. But that isn't what I've been considering. Why does he need all of his missiles to control the people? He runs a convincing bluff. All he'd need is some smoke and a few dozen missiles, and he could have the whole country quaking with fear."
"Perhaps he's afraid of an uprising?"
"I don't think the Bones would have the strength to mount a revolt that would require plasma cascades to put down. I've got a hunch that he isn't fighting on just one front."
"Do you think some of your military still remains?" Asked Caydmar.
"Like I said, it's just a hunch. But if any of the Chiefs of Staff survived, they'd be putting up a strong defense. And getting human aid to boot. If there's anyone we should contact, it would be them."
"That's all well and good." Sybron mused. "But if Glaian is indeed onto our location, then like you said we shouldn't take such risks as contacting the outside for help."
"Phoney, we're coming in, and we brought company." Crackled one of X'lish's squad members over the radio. Phoney smiled to himself. Finally, something to look forward to.
"Have faith Master Brook." Phoney said exuberantly as he began to exit the tent. The others followed him. He walked towards the entrance. "X'lish's team should be back by now, and then we should know exactly how much Glaian knows about our location. And what moves we can make next." Phoney and company arrived at the entrance just in time to see X'lish's squad rush around the corner and into the entrance.
Phoney was slightly taken aback when human children and a raccoon poured through the entrance after the team instead of prisoners. He was even more shocked when Fone and Thorn ducked in. He stopped them, and gave Fone an extremely abrupt hug.
"Where's this coming from?" Fone asked as Phoney held him out at arm's length. "I thought you hated me?"
"We can hash out our differences later." The corners of Phoney's eyes glistened. "Right now, I'm just glad you're alive." Phoney let Fone go, and the three of them stood in an awkward silence for a moment. "So…" Phoney rubbed the back of his head. "I've got about a million questions right now. First off, how are you alive?"
"Phoney," Replied Fone. "I've had one hell of a week. Get me something to drink, and I'll tell you two the whole story."