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  Awakenings

  Knights of Salucia – Book 2

  C. D. Espeseth

  Awakenings – Knights of Salucia –

  Book 2 © C. D. Espeseth 2019

  https://cdespeseth.com

  @CDEspeseth on twitter

  All rights reserved

  Edited by:

  Ann Harley at ProofStudio and Collin Espeseth

  Cover art by

  L1 Graphics at 99 Design

  This would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my family and my loving wife, Claire.

  You inspire and strengthen me beyond measure. This book is dedicated to them.

  With special thanks to Graeme Elliot, Don Espeseth, Nicole Espeseth and Barry Mudry. Your suggestions and insight have made this story so much better.

  Contents

  Maps …………………………………………………………………………………………. 5-

  1 - Awake

  2 - A Dream Come True

  3 - Past Instructions

  4 - Singing

  5 - Inquisition

  6 - A Different Type of Training

  7 - Siphoning

  8 - The Presence

  9 - Band Practice

  10 – Interview

  11 - Opportunistic Tunnels

  12 – Penance

  13 - Retraining

  14 - Nothing Serious

  15 - Fathers

  16 - Banking

  17 - A Step From the Nest

  18 - Council Duty

  19 - Evidence vs Patterns

  20 - Work Placement

  21 - A Breakthrough

  22 - A Talk and Reunions

  23 - Family Ambitions

  24 - Festival of Bones

  25 - Justified Anger

  26 - Fallout

  27 - Games of Chance

  28 - Compulsion

  29 - Symbiosis

  30 - Failure

  31 - Trust in the Will

  32 - Keef’s Tavern

  33 - A Fire Within

  34 - Recognition

  35 - To be a Knight

  36 - The Path to be Taken

  37 - A New Presence

  38 - On the Rooftops

  39 – A Child of Hunsa

  40 - Changing the Game

  41 - No More Running

  42 - Symbiote and Promises

  43 - Pursuit

  44 - The Weight of History

  45 - The Raven

  46 - A Brother’s Burden

  47 - The Narrows

  48 - Translation

  49 - A Meeting of the Blood

  50 - Birds in Caves

  List of Characters by Storyline (as they appear)

  Wayran and Matoh

  Jonah

  Thannis

  John Stonebridge

  Adel and Naira

  Echinni and Kai

  Historical Characters

  Gods

  1 - Awake

  I’ve designed a virus that interacts with the keys I’ve developed. The virus is epigenetic in nature and is carried in the host’s bloodstream. The goal is for the virus to copy the host's semantic memory so that when a key interacts with the host’s blood, the virus will be uploaded to the key and therefore the memories within the virus shall be stored within each key.

  - Journal of Robert Mannford, Day 225 Year 17

  Jonah

  Dawn, Kenz

  Jonah awoke.

  His eyes opened, and he stared up at cracked plaster. His mind tried to push to the surface through what seemed like pain-inducing molasses. Memories slowly began to take shape through the difficult haze.

  Jonah rolled his head to the side and looked out the window beside his bed to see the sun already high in the sky. It was nearly noon. The hubbub of the city outside was a constant buzz outside the window. He sat up on his elbows to look below and watched as dozens of labourers started taking seats outside on the benches of the open-air eatery. A workforce of Kutsal soldiers were shoulder-to-shoulder with Dawnish citizens, many of whom had been beggars or homeless within the holy city only months before.

  As he watched through the window, his memories organised themselves, and he began to remember.

  He had been Ja’ Al Ona Hashi, the grand duke and general to the empress’s army, even more, he was the Dokan, the chosen warrior of the empire. He had lived in Eura City, the capital of Kutsal Empire.

  Ja’ Al Ona had fallen in love with a girl named Ilene Herimachi, and it had been wonderful, yet love was not allowed in his empire. No, love was a silly thing compared to the survival of the species. The continent of Eura was a harsh place, a barren land filled with barren people. If someone was found who was fertile, it was their duty to reproduce and to do so with as many partners as possible in order to ensure survival.

  Jonah was one of the Blood, one who was fertile, and not only that he was a Hashi, part of the Royal Blood, and they had maintained their fertility for hundreds of years.

  Yet, it had all began to feel wrong.

  How could love be a sin? He remembered thinking as he and Ilene had hidden away from as many prying eyes as possible.

  They had tried to start a family, and the trying had broken Ilene so that when they finally had given birth to a wonderful little girl, Amber, Ilene couldn’t accept it.

  He had killed her, the woman he had shared his heart with, the woman he had dreamed with, and the person he had loved beyond any other. Killed her just as Ilene had killed their baby girl, Amber. Fresh tears ran down his cheeks as he no longer had a barrier against the pain in his soul.

  Jonah held his aching head in his hands and wept.

  “You’re awake,” a familiar voice said from the door.

  “I am,” Jonah said, not looking up. He took a deep breath, and more memories came.

  The grief and pain had broken him back in Eura.

  The murders of Ilene and his daughter had been covered up. Ja’ Al Ona had been disgraced and then exiled to the outer provinces to rule a small mining village, but the sinister rot of his depression had already taken hold of him by then, and he had felt his mind begin to slip.

  That was when he and Branson had made the trip to Tin City and found Mesmerist Pranav. The mesmerist had made him sleep, and he had asked to have his memories taken away.

  “No one I am aware of can make you lose your memories. Not without serious harm, but what I can do is help you forget for a short while,” Mesmerist Pranav had told him. She had smiled, and Jonah had paid the woman. He was already losing his mind, but at the time, he hadn’t cared what the consequences were.

  He had awoken as Jonah Shi, a fictitious combination of memory and fantasy insulating his mind against the terrible pain in his soul. He thought himself to be a disgraced royal who wanted a simple life where he could settle down with Ilene, who he had believed was still alive. Branson, who now seemed his lifelong friend rather than royal manservant, had then found them work soldiering in the outer provinces for nearly half a year before they learned of Prince El’ Amin’s daring expedition across the great Barrier Sea.

  He had been happy, but it had been a lie, and he had forgotten the face of his daughter while he was the old Jonah, and he never wanted to forget her again.

  He heard Fin step inside and close the door. “Are you all right, Jonah?” Fin asked.

  “No, not really, I…” Jonah trailed off as he looked up to meet his frien, but as he looked at Fin, he began to notice things which he hadn’t before. The big man looked different, moved different, yet at the same time he also knew that was how Fin had always moved, it was just that he had never connected the pieces before. Jonah’s eyes could now see the layers he had ignored since his mental break. A thought was trying t
o push its way through the treacle in his mind.

  “Thank you, for carrying me back,” Jonah said.

  “It was nothing, I had to get you out of there.” The big man grinned and dipped his head. A yellow lock of hair drooped onto his forehead. “I’m glad you’re all right.” Fin hesitated. “Are you all right?”

  There it was again. A little niggle in the back of Jonah’s mind. Something was off here.

  A cold sweat broke out on Jonah’s skin as Fin looked him in the eye, and something clicked together in Jonah’s mind.

  “You never stopped being a logistics officer, did you? No one ever really leaves Ninth Division,” Jonah said.

  Fin cocked his head slightly to the side, then shook it in slight amazement. “No, they don’t,” he sighed. “Why couldn’t you have stayed locked away inside that innocent and humble man, Ja’ Al Ona?”

  Fin lowered a talon-like knife from behind his back which made Jonah’s breath catch, but now Jonah once again saw with his old eyes: the eyes of a prince, the eyes of an intelligent and observant man who had been locked behind a cloud of grief within his mind. Now, he saw all the signs of a top predator standing in front of him.

  Fin had been playing them all along. Gone was the happy-go-lucky and slightly buffoonish soldier, and in his place stood an extremely competent and very deadly man.

  “I would have been happy.” Jonah smiled. “I think, staying as the man you set sail with from the old continent.” Jonah’s grin faded, and he nodded in appreciation. “You played your part well, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a better performance.”

  Fin tipped his head in acknowledgement. The cold and passionless smile on the big man’s face only reinforced the knowledge that Jonah was face-to-face with one of the best spies in the Empire. A true professional.

  Fin had been one of the few people Jonah would have called a real friend. Yet that person had been a lie, but then again, so had he. Could two lies be friends? Jonah wondered to himself. He thought they probably could.

  The speed with which Fin hit him was incredible.

  The training deep inside Jonah kicked in on instinct and his hands trapped Fin’s knife hand with the bed sheet. He tried to twist the linen to wrench Fin’s wrist back, but Fin was much stronger, and Jonah still felt sluggish from whatever chemical cocktail Branson had used to knock him out.

  Fin’s elbow slammed into his head, and his vision went fuzzy, then a punch to his jaw knocked him unconscious.

  ***

  A few seconds later, he gasped and was surprised as he came to.

  “I’m not dead?” Jonah swallowed and felt the knife-edge against his throat. Something warm trickled onto his clavicle and rolled onto the bed. “Why?”

  Fin was looking down at him, and oddly, the professional mask had suffered a strange moment of doubt.

  “I’m not sure,” Fin grunted, obviously struggling with what he was meant to do. The knife hand actually shook. “You’re ... different than I expected,” Fin said. “How much of Jonah is actually part of you, Ja’ Al Ona?”

  “For one, you can drop the Ja’ Al. I walked away from that title. You can call me Ona if you like, but I think I prefer Jonah.” And to his surprise, he found he spoke the truth. The man he had been in this new land was something he did not want to let go of. The persona was someone he wanted to continue being.

  Fin was studying him carefully, the terrible hooked blade rested against Jonah’s throat, but Jonah could see the would-be assassin’s mind whirring.

  “All of Jonah was part of me, the parts I wanted to be, the idealist romantic who used to see the beauty of the world around him, he was the part of me who fell in love with a beautiful young woman, who wanted to get married, who simply loved to float in the emptiness of his mind as he shot his arrows.”

  “So, who are you now?” Fin asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Jonah said. “There is darkness in me which I’ve ignored for too long. I killed Ilene, my true love, because she murdered my daughter. Ilene had lost her mind and thought our baby a demon. It is a darkness which broke me, and my mind is trying to put the shards of who I was back together again.”

  Fin nodded but didn’t move back. The knife still hovered above his throat. All Fin had to do was twitch, and the razor-sharp hook of his blade would tear through Jonah’s throat.

  “This would all be a lot easier to figure out if we didn’t have to worry about you sneezing and accidentally ripping my throat out with that thing,” Jonah said as his eyes dipped towards his neck.

  “I’m sure it would,” Fin said. They both heard footsteps hurrying up the stairs.

  Fin narrowed his eyes at him. “Branson is already on his way up. If you want him to live, answer me this honestly and quickly …” Fin let the knife cut just a bit deeper. “Would you use the Sinu Padan against those who try to stand in the Empire’s way?”

  “How do you even know about–” Jonah gasped in pain as the tip of the knife poked into his skin.

  “Answer, quickly now,” Fin snapped.

  Jonah knew this was his last chance but was done faking who he was for the sake of others. If he were going to die, at least he would die speaking the truth.

  “No, I would not. Even if it meant the Empire was about to be obliterated, I would not unleash them. I know the story of Didenrah, and unlike the rest of the zealots running our glorious empire, I believe there is a limit to what we should be willing to do to ensure the Empire’s survival.” Jonah closed his eyes in dismay as he knew why Fin must be asking. “They are being sent over, aren’t they? Our bare-bones excursion is being resupplied.”

  The door burst open.

  “Fin, what are you-!” Branson’s old eyes filled with anger. He saw the blood leaking out onto the bed and charged. “You bastard, I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

  Fin jumped off Jonah and spun through the air, his knee met Branson’s chest in mid-jump and Branson crashed to the floor gasping for air.

  “Stay down, Branson,” Fin said. “He’s not dead yet, and I don’t want to be forced to kill your old ass. Jonah and I are having a conversation is all.” Fin stood above Branson as he tried to draw in a breath.

  Jonah sat up, trying to piece together what Fin’s game was. He rubbed his temples and used the bed sheet to wipe the blood from the shallow wound on his neck.

  His head throbbed, and a glut of old memories swam through him.

  He looked at Fin and knew he needed to re-establish the balance between them. The new clarity of his vision helped him formulate a plan, to see a possible way forward. There had been a reason he was Dokan, the champion of the empire. He felt his body and mind once again remember the gifts which he had been chosen to receive.

  “Jonah.” Fin’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to face him. The hooked blade ready. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Defend yourself,” Jonah said to Fin. His body felt strong as he remembered the technique of cleansing his body of drugs. His breath came slow and calm as he forced his mind and body into readiness. He held out a closed fist and covered the top of it with a flat hand.

  “I said–,” Fin began.

  Jonah cut him off with a feint. Hundreds of years of training which had been passed on from generation to generation through the Ceremony of the White Spear now coursed through his muscles and his mind once again.

  Jonah recognised the defensive stance Fin offered a thousand times before, knew the movements which may come from such a stance. Jonah and the ancestors who spoke within his blood had countered this style a thousand times and more.

  Fin’s blade went up, and to his credit, Fin did not attempt a killing strike with the terrible weapon.

  This was good, but also a mistake.

  Jonah did not have to think, he simply moved with razor-like precision. The calming void within his mind returned, and Jonah now remembered why he loved archery so much. It reminded him of these moments of harmony.

  Fin’s knee droppe
d, and Jonah slid forward under the blow that would have ripped into his shoulder. Both of his hands shot up and out. One hand caught Fin’s wrist, twisting and numbing the hand holding the blade, the second extended hard fingers which knifed up into a nerve cluster in Fin’s armpit.

  “Gods-damn …” Fin twisted awkwardly then choked as Jonah spun beneath him, slamming his hip into Fin’s as he pulled down on the trapped wrist. The big assassin went sailing over Jonah’s smaller but stocky body while Jonah maintained his control of Fin’s wrist.

  Fin hit the floor with a thud, and Jonah was surprised to feel an excellent attempt at an escape almost immediately, yet he executed the counter without thinking, simply feeling the movement and using its energy to increase the leverage on Fin’s wrist.

  Jonah’s open palm shot down, slamming into Fin’s ear as he yanked up on the trapped wrist, pulling and twisting Fin’s arm tight until his elbow locked. His knee applied pressure to it. “I can break it if you don’t stop. You have made your play to try-”.

  Fin’s leg shot up, and Jonah readjusted his grip to maintain the hold by wrapping a leg around Fin’s extended arm. Jonah thrust his elbow into the ankle joint of the foot which snapped towards his face.

  Fin grunted in pain as his foot went numb.

  “No more. Submit now. I remember it all now. You didn’t kill me when you could have, and I want to hear why.”

  Jonah waited for Fin to nod.

  “If you ever pull a knife on me again, or lay a finger on Branson, I will kill you. If you tell anyone what you know about who I am, I will kill you.” Jonah was not making threats, they were simple facts.

  Fin nodded, and he slowly tapped twice signalling his submission. Jonah could see the shock on his face as the assassin realised that most of the myths about the Dokan had proven true.

  Jonah released Fin’s wrist and stepped away, turning to help Branson up. His bare left foot picked Fin’s knife up between his toes. He flicked his foot towards the wall and the hooked blade sunk into the wood of the bed beside Fin’s head. “Put that away,” Jonah said.

  “It is you, Ja’ Al Ona,” Branson said, trying to bow as he was helped to his feet.