NovaForge by Scott Toney Read Free Book Online

Riad, near Julieth. “I sense something foreign within me.” He looked to Julieth as he spoke. “An essence? I don’t remember what happened.” He turned his focus toward Riad. “You say I caused it, when the people fell. How could that be? What is happening to me?”
    “You did not control it then?” Riad asked. “Did you feel anything?”
    The boy held his shoulders with his hands, as if he were cold. “I was so afraid, and then… then I felt this surge of something leaving my body. That was when you all fell.”
    Riad looked to Ivanus. “It could be that his fear is a trigger.” His metallic hand rested on the table, gears moving in his arm and minute noises coming from its workings, in the otherwise silence. “It will not go away,” he told Bayne, “but I could teach you to control it.”
    “He wants to use you.” Julieth put a hand on Bayne’s. “We do not know him. He might sacrifice you if it suited his means.”
    “I would not let him do that,” Ivanus interjected.
    “No, no it is alright.” Riad took another swig of his drink and set it down. “She does not speak false. To destroy Samuel I will sacrifice myself, or any of you, if it will save this world from his possession. What I offer you is control of your ability, and a purpose to serve and direct your ability toward. I will use you in the end. My hope is that you will not die, but I cannot promise that. You are not a boy to me. Any person with the abilities given by an essence is no longer a child in my eyes.”
    Julieth’s heart raced. Bayne had always been a strong-willed child, doing what he chose to do, and not necessarily what he was directed to. Would he choose to go with them? She was not his mother, and could not stop him.
    “What will we do?” the boy asked.
    “At first we will need to fully understand your ability, as well as Ivanus’s. Then we must harness them and plan, before attacking Samuel. We will need help, and I know of some who would be willing to join our side. I do not know how to attack, but before we reach that point we must decide.”
    “I will join you,” Bayne said with certainty.
    “You can’t mean that, after he’s admitted he will use you with no care for your life?” Julieth spoke.
    “And what would you have him do here?” Riad held out his arms, motioning around the broken, charred structure.
    Julieth stood to gain leverage on him. “We should remain and defend our people in case Kaskal is attacked again. We did not have people with symbiotic essences in Kaskal before, but now that Bayne and I have them and these abilities we can protect the city.”
    “Samuel is amassing his armies and taking control of all he comes near. Would you wait here for him on his own terms? Already he sent me. What more is to come? By my side, you can learn your abilities well and we can try to stop him before it is too late.”
    He is right, Julieth conceded in her thoughts. But how can we fully trust him when we barely even know him? What will happen to our people if we leave?
    Ivanus smiled across the table, and when she met his eyes he looked away. What was he seeing?
    Bayne ran a hand through his hair, touching the back of his neck and then setting the hand on the table once more. “I will go with you, with or without Julieth, I will go.”
    She realized what she needed to do. “I cannot leave you. Riad is right. It seems something needs to be done about Samuel before he arrives at Kaskal’s gates. I will join you.” She looked at Riad, gauging a look in his hardened eyes. A scar ran over the flesh near his glowing cybernetic eye that she had not seen well as they fought. “But I control where I go and what I do. I control my fate.”
    “There is something in the catacombs beneath the city we must get before leaving, something I sense will be important to us,” Ivanus said before Riad had the chance to respond. “I see it and yet do not fully understand it. It calls to me. There are creatures down