Burning Bridges

Chapter Sixteen: "For Luck"

The next forty-eight hours were controlled chaos. As Riku's attack revealed, these people were not fighters. Few even knew how to craft weapons from glass or stone, much less how to use them. Sky and Max did their best to give a quick course—which ended with everyone just learning to throw the heavy weaponry—and Jules worked on stretching her wings out. They were sore from disuse and she'd definitely need them tonight. Tonight. Just a few hours before they made the hour-long trek to Gitsuno, the capital city where the Cathedral was. Adrenaline had her both excited and terrified.

Around sunset, Asa came knocking at Jules' door saying he had something to tell her. Frowning, she followed him into the room he shared with Max and Sky, who were already there.

"We've been talking," he said, making it seem as if they were about to deliver bad news.

"We're the only four with any sort of fighting experience," Max continued, sounding far less depressing. Possibly even a little excited. "The Cathedral isn't super well protected, but there are some guards. Asa can get us in undetected, but they'll find us eventually. The others will deal with the guards while we go after the Elders."

Four Elders against the four of them wouldn't have sounded too awful if the Elders weren't all Castrealms.

"I also thought you should know something about the Elders' power," Asa said, all depressing again. "They were not born with it like I was. Casts are born—randomly—and in order to maintain the theocracy, the Elders steal it from children who are too young to know what to do with it."

Jules sat heavily on one of the beds. She'd already had to rearrange everything she thought about Casts and their abuse of power. But to accept that it wasn't their power in the first place?

All she managed to say was, "I didn't know it could be forcibly taken."

"I told you I was raised away from my family. They make people think that it's best to tell the Elders when their children are Casts, that the Elders will teach them and raise them to become governors like your grandfather. Sometimes they do, I suppose. When one official is getting old, they must find someone to replace them. They do teach us, too. I didn't learn everything on my own. But they steal from us. Slowly, over time. They want to see if our magic will replenish itself, if we can be used as an unlimited power supply."

She almost didn't want to ask. "And can you?"

He smiled at her. "Let's just say, my magic has only grown since leaving them."

It was a frightening thought. Perhaps their Elders were frauds, but Jules wasn't so sure Castrealms weren't divine in some way. What else could explain a magic that could replenish? They must only lose their magic fully if they transferred it willingly. Now was not the time to ask.

"So what you're saying is they're very powerful, but you're more powerful and can kill them all with a flick of your wrist?" She said hopefully.

"What I'm saying is that they collect Cast children every year and steal their magic," Asa said. "When I left, they lost their power source but that doesn't mean they haven't found another."

"Well, shit," Jules said.

"Yup!" Max said cheerily, clapping his hands. "Ready to go get ourselves killed?"

——

Despite an hour of stretching and not binding for two days straight, Jules' wings still hurt when they finally touched down a half mile from the Cathedral. Asa led them to a stream and through a door under a bridge. Jules felt like a spy. She might've been excited if these weren't possibly her last few minutes alive.

Crashing water echoed through the tunnel's strangely high ceilings, though the tunnel itself was dry. It connected to a larger series of tunnels the Elders dug as emergency escape routes. The twelve of them took ten minutes to reach a door made of glass rods encased in stone. The other residents would take on any guards they came across, throwing stone and glass, bashing them with their wings, doing anything to keep them from Asa's group.

"Do what you have to," Asa said. "This isn't heroic. We aren't martyrs. We go down swinging."

They nodded, and Jules expected to find the hall swarming with guards the moment Asa pushed the door back, but it was empty. The Cathedral was like a larger version of Jules' home, with taller ceilings, whiter walls, more lavish decorations. But it was the same brand of too-damn-much.

Immediately, Asa stalked off toward a staircase at the end of the hall. Max and Sky followed, but Jules went to Sakura first, holding the stone pendant in her hand.

"For luck, right?" She said.

Sakura pulled her own necklace out from under her shirt, smiling. "For luck."

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WC: 799

Total WC: 19705