AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good,” Loridas says, voice raspy. “Now give an old man back his dignity.”
With a wave of his hand, Pittacus restores Loridas’s Legacies. The Elder changes shape again, still old, but not disconcertingly so.
“How many Legacies have you mastered with your Ximic, Elder Lore?”
Pittacus rubs the back of his neck, looking modest. “Dreynen makes seventy-four. Never bothered learning it before. Didn’t think I’d ever need to use it.”
Dreynen, that’s my Legacy, one of the few I share with my grandfather, which lets us take away Legacies by touch or by charging projectiles.
“Impressive,” Loridas replies, turning his attention back to the object spread out on the table before him. “Ximic is the rarest of our Legacies, Pittacus. The ability to copy and master any Legacy that you’ve observed. It is not a gift to be taken lightly.”
“My Cêpan used to give me lectures about that,” Pittacus replies. “I understand the responsibility that comes with power. I’ve tried to live my life with that in mind.”
“Yes, and we are fortunate that Legacy found you and not someone else. Imagine, Pittacus, if your friend Setrákus found a way to duplicate your power. To make it his own. Or grant it to anyone he chose.”
Pittacus grits his teeth. “I won’t let that happen.”
Loridas holds up the object he’s been working on. It looks like a rope, except the braided material isn’t similar to anything I’ve ever seen on Earth. It’s thick and sturdy, about twenty feet long, and one end is knotted into a complex noose. The noose portion of the rope has been molded and hardened, one edge razor sharp. Loridas demonstrates tightening the noose and, when he does, the lethal edge makes a shink sound.
Pittacus makes a face. “A little old-fashioned, don’t you think?”
“It has been centuries and you are young, but this is how we once punished treason. Sometimes, the old ways are best. It is made from the Voron tree, a plant almost as rare as you. The wounds caused by Voron cannot be healed by Legacies.” Loridas motions Pittacus over. “Come. Let me borrow that Dreynen of yours.”
Pittacus walks around the table and rests his hand on Loridas’s shoulder. I can’t see it happen but I can sense—Legacy can sense—that Pittacus uses a Legacy-transferring power just like Nine has, granting Loridas use of his Dreynen. Loridas concentrates on the noose. It begins to emit a faint crimson glow, exactly like when I’ve charged an object with my leeching power.
“You will have this charged with Dreynen now, in case he takes your Legacies before you can take his,” Loridas explains, carefully swinging the sharpened edge of the noose. “Collar him with this and—”
“I know how it works,” Pittacus interrupts.
“It will be quick, Pittacus.”
Pittacus takes the rope from Loridas, careful not to touch the charged noose. He clenches the rope tightly, his expression grim and determined.
“I know what I must do, Loridas.”
And we—the ones watching him here in the future—we know that he screws up big time.
Setrákus crawls across the canyon floor, smeared with dirt and ash, his face and head covered in small cuts. In the background, a team of Garde commanding all kinds of different elements lay waste to his Liberator. The machine belches huge plumes of black smoke as it begins to collapse. The bodies of his assistants litter the ground. They weren’t killed by the Garde, though. No, something sinister and black seeps from their pores even in death.
“I’m not the one who’s crazy . . . ,” Setrákus says, spitting blood into the dirt as he drags himself away from his dig site. He doesn’t look back when his machine explodes, although a look of almost physical pain does cross his face. “The rest of you, all of you—you’re the wrong ones. You don’t understand progress.”
Pittacus follows along behind Setrákus. The noose dangles from his hands. His strong jaw is set and determined, but his eyes are glistening.
“Please, Setrákus. Stop talking.”
Setrákus knows that he can’t escape, so he stops trying to crawl away. He rolls over onto his back, flat in the dirt, and looks up at Pittacus.
“How can I be wrong, Pittacus?” Setrákus asks breathlessly. “Lorien itself gave me the power to dominate other Garde, to strip their Legacies as I see fit. That’s the planet’s way of saying that it wants me in control.”
Pittacus shakes his head and stands over his friend. “Listen to yourself. First you decry the way Lorien gives out its gifts at random, and now you claim that your Legacies are destiny. I’m not sure which thought I find more disturbing.”
“We could rule together, Pittacus,” Setrákus pleads. “Please. You are like a brother to me!”
Pittacus swallows hard. With his telekinesis, he loops the noose around Setrákus’s throat. He crouches down so he’s straddling his fellow Elder, his hand poised on the thick knot of rope that will tighten the noose.
“You went too far,” Pittacus says. “I am sorry, Setrákus. But what you’ve done . . .”
Pittacus begins to tighten the noose. He should do this quickly, but he can’t quite bring himself to end things, not yet. The sharpened edge bites into Setrákus’s neck. My grandfather gasps at the pain, yet doesn’t fight against it. There’s a sudden knowledge in his eyes, a resignation. Setrákus leans back. The noose bites deeper into his flesh. He stares up at the sky.
“There will be two moons tonight,” he says. “They’ll dance on the beach like we used to, Pittacus.”
Blood darkens the ground beneath my grandfather. He begins to weep, so he closes his eyes to hide this.
Pittacus can’t go through with it. He pulls the noose from around Setrákus’s throat, tosses it aside and stands up. He doesn’t make eye contact with Setrákus. Instead, he peers off towards the Liberator and Setrákus’s research area, watching as the entire place is put to the torch. He believes in his heart that this means it’s over. He believes that Setrákus can come back from this, that he has realized the error in his ways. He still sees his old friend there, lying in the dirt. He doesn’t know the monster he will become.
The Liberator is a long way off. No one back there notices when Pittacus uses telekinesis to drag one of Setrákus’s already-dead assistants across the dirt towards them. While Setrákus watches, wide-eyed, Pittacus uses his Lumen to set the body on fire until all that remains is a charred and unrecognizable corpse. When it’s done, Pittacus looks away.
“You are dead,” Pittacus says. “Leave here. Never return. Maybe one day, you can find a way to heal what’s been damaged, here and inside you. Until that day comes . . . good-bye, Setrákus.”
Pittacus takes the burned body with him and leaves Setrákus there in the dirt. He stays perfectly still, letting his blood pool from the circular wound carved into his pale neck. Eventually, he wipes the tears out of his eyes.
Then, Setrákus smiles.
We linger in that canyon as the years begin to fly by. The ash from the battle is blown away, the scorch marks fading from sunlight. The remains of Setrákus Ra’s machine erode, eaten away by the red dust and the winds that whip through the mountains.
Every year, when there are two moons in the sky, Pittacus Lore returns here. He stares at the wreckage of the Liberator and considers what he did. What he almost did. What he didn’t do.
How many years go by like this? It’s hard to tell. Pittacus never ages thanks to his Aeturnus.
And then, one day, as Pittacus stands in the very spot where he should’ve killed my grandfather, an ugly insectoid ship cuts across the sunset and zooms down towards him. It looks just like an older version of the Mogadorian Skimmers that I’ve seen so many times. As the ship lands in front of him, Pittacus lets flames curl over one hand, the other encased in a spiky ball of ice.
The ship opens and Celwe steps out. Unlike Pittacus, she has aged. Her once-auburn hair now gray, her face deeply lined. Pittacus’s eyes widen when he sees her.
“Hello, Pittacus,” she says, self-c
onsciously tucking strands of hair behind her ears. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“Celwe,” Pittacus breathes, at a loss for words. He takes her in his arms, she hugs him back and they linger for a long moment. Eventually, Pittacus speaks. “I never thought I’d see you again. When Setrákus Ra—when he—I didn’t expect you to go into exile with him, Celwe.”
“I was raised that we Loric mate for life,” Celwe replies, not coldly.
Pittacus raises a skeptical eyebrow at this but says nothing. Instead, he looks past Celwe towards the old-model Skimmer. “That ship. Is it . . . ?”
“Mogadorian,” Celwe replies simply.
“Is that where he’s been hiding all these years? Where you’ve been living?”
Celwe nods. “What better place than one the Garde are forbidden to travel to?”
Pittacus shakes his head. “He should come back. It has been decades. The Elders have erased him from the histories, his name forgotten by everyone but us. I truly believe after all these years that his crimes could be forgiven.”
“But the crimes have never stopped, Pittacus.”
That’s when he notices it. The telltale black veins running along Celwe’s neck. Pittacus takes a step back, his expression hardening.
“Why have you returned now, Celwe?”
In answer, Celwe turns back to her Skimmer. “Come here,” she says and, a moment later, a timid girl, no more than three years old, peeks out from the Skimmer’s entrance. She has Celwe’s auburn hair and Setrákus Ra’s stern features and suddenly I’m reminded of Crayton’s letter. Setrákus Ra may call me his granddaughter, but I’m actually his great-granddaughter. There’s no denying it now—not just because Legacy knows, but because I recognize myself in her—this child will grow up and give birth to Raylan, my father.
