The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft
HIS HEART, HER HEART

CH HIS HEART, HER HEART

Later that night, Yurieth overheard Adamos and Fleur in his father’s study talking. They were discussing the manifestations of the Dark Oracle as they drank tea in front of the fireplace.

She was saying, “I pray you are correct. They have already tried to revive her using my body in the future. I... I will not... I cannot... be indwelled again.”

“Little Flower, you are stronger now. You will overcome her easily if they try again,” Adamos reassured her.

"Adamos, I am afraid, I won’t have the strength. My family is so far away.” She sounded so small and timid, completely opposite the person Yurieth knew who carried herself with calm confidence. In this moment she wasn't the warrior oracle who killed and tortured Xelusians without hesitation or apparent remorse.

Adamos hugged her, “We will always be with you, daughter. You have love, it will shield and strengthen you.”

“My lord, Kaleth isn’t here to strengthen me. He can’t share his power with me through our love, he’s just a babe.” She choked slightly on the words, and Yurieth felt something like a sword cutting her to the core of her soul. The pain left behind when a sealed one was lost. It made him shake with its intensity, because he was sealed to her now.

“What of Yurieth? He loves you as much as his brother did and will,” Adamos pointed out.

“He doesn’t love me, it’s just because we are sealed. He fights it with everything he is and curses the moments when it overcomes him. He avoids me like I have a disease since Kaleth was born.” She sadly responded.

Part of Yurieth’s heart ached that she thought that he didn’t love her. It wasn’t safe for either of them to have feelings for each other in this turbulent time, the warrior in him knew this and it wasn’t honorable to desire something meant for his brother.

“Do you love him?” Adamos asked and she nodded.

Yurieth watched her, assessing her for truth, what she said next shocked him.

“I think I loved him before I came here, Adamos. I might have even loved him before the war was over, I... he... We shared things but losing Kaleth hurt both of us so much. Neither of us were ready to let go of him. Yurieth struggled because they were so close. And I... I was angry Kaleth had died, because he knew he would die, and he didn’t tell us. I was angry with you too.” She confessed. “Hate is an easier weapon to yield than love. And fate is cruel to hope.”

Adamos kissed the top of her head, calling her the strange name only he used. “Ahhh, Daisy, my little flower, you are the daughter of my heart, only you understand the burden I will bear. I wish more than anything that it would not be, but it will be because you are proof that it already was.”

Fleur made coughing sound or perhaps it was a sad laugh, then said, “I have to let a world die, so a new one can be born. I could make your journey so much easier, so much shorter with my tech, but everything must be as it will be.”

“Everything must happen as it happened,” Adamos corrected and they sat in silence.

They remained silent for a period of time. Yurieth waited, it was the way of oracles to spend times in contemplation.

“Adamos,” Fluer said quietly. “I can feel the darkness in the city, I can feel it reaching toward me. It will come for me again. It will send more of its servants.”

“Perhaps we can use it to our advantage.” Adamos suggested. “We suspect there are royals who serve it.”

Fluer tipped her head in a contemplative gesture, which made Yurieth shake his head in disgust, she was willing play his father’s game. He turned, and leaped from the building to the trees, in moments, he was over the wall of the family’s estate and moving through the city like a ghost.

Regis carried three tankards of ale into his father’s sturdy. Regulus was sitting behind a large ebony wood desk that Yurieth had carved for him. Yurieth was standing by the window staring beyond the royal palace of Aetheria at the tower of Xelusia. He was revealing how the blind oracle used her oracle light like a mage would use his magic.

“She used her light in a way I have never seen an oracle use their light. Regis and I saw her cast a glyph as a shield when she fought the shadow and as a stepping stone, but in the marketplace, she cast a very small and compact disk that struck and wounded like a weapon. And she was cruel in a way I never imagined an oracle could be.” Yurieth accepted his ale and took a large gulp. “Regulus, she is always gentle and sweet, even to hostile creatures, but to that Xelusian Berserker... She hated him and the use of blood magic with a passion that rivals my own. Fluer tortured him with a glow of her hand. She burned his ink from his flesh and mocked him for resisting, saying she knew how much it hurt. After the Berserker told her that they wanted her to restore the siren queen, I killed him. She wasn’t surprised that I did it either. She asked the other if he wanted to revive or be forever dead. She promised to kill him either way, then gave him a message to give his prince and killed him. She was merciless in a way that...” He hesitated.

“In a way,” Regulus finished for him, “That reminded you of yourself.”

Yurieth remained silent, still staring at the obsidian tower of his former enemy. “What do they want with her? She’s an oracle, she cannot be seduced by the Darkness, she cannot become the Dark Queen. She revealed to me that she and I overcame the entity in the future. She told Father it happened before, in the far future, and she resisted,” he wondered aloud then he turned and sat down in the chair across from Regis. “I still think she is hiding much from us, from my father.”

“Of course, she is,” Regis chastised him, “She’s from the future, she cannot risk the timeline by revealing too much.”

“The only things she isn’t hiding is how much she desires for your father’s project to succeed,” Regulus reminded. “And how much she cares about you, Yurieth.”

Yurieth snorted in disagreement but his mentor pressed him, “How do you feel about the blind oracle, Huntsman?” Regulus and Regis both watched him with inquisitive hunter’s eyes, Yurieth could not lie because those eyes knew him too well and missed nothing.

Yurieth took a deep breath, “She is everything I could ever want and more. I know that I love her, but I do not trust her. And I will not delude myself to follow her blindly around.”

“She’s not Demona,” Regis pointed out. “She won’t try to use magic to seduce you or bend your will to control you like a siren.” Regis took a drink and continued, “You have too suspicious of a nature, brother. She is only keeping what she knows safe, and all oracles keep secrets. You grew up with them, you know this.”

Yurieth shook his head in disagreement, “No, this is different. There are things that I saw in the flashes of her memories when I healed her. Memories she tried to keep hidden about the war in the future. Horrors that make the nightmare that was the rule of the Xelusian Blood Mages seem like a fitful daydream.”

“Are you serious?” Regis asked.

“There are battles for entire worlds... Monstrous creatures unlike any I have seen, and vast numbers of necromanced warriors that fight against the defenders of Aetheria and their allies. They are so few that she knows them all by name. Every Aetherian over 100 who is able to fight does, and even their allies have children in their army.”

“Every Aetherian?” Regulus asked.

Yurieth nodded, “She fought beside my brother and his son, and Abrieth and I, against these undead hordes. That is why she wields a sword the way she does. Decapitation is the fastest way to dispatch the enemy. A pair or trio of warriors fighting in tandem were expected to overcome dozens of the enemy. Even the small children were taught to use a sword and bow in defense starting at age 30.”

The Guardian and his Huntsman son stared at Yurieth in disbelief, but Yurieth just shrugged his shoulders. “She has memories of teaching large classes of young people sword basics, they call it Kata.”

“Kata? Wait... the short staff dancing that she does for exercise is sword training?” Regis looked impressed.

“Evidently... When she fought today, it was the same movements only much faster,” Yurieth revealed.

“What of the starships many times larger than the one Adamos and Odini are building? What of the starship fleet she has spoken to the Odini about?” Regulus asked, changing the subject back to the fleet of Fluer’s time.

“The Seeker, her ship… the one she told us about is the size of the Summer Castle and can travel hundreds of times faster than our fastest vessels. In her memories, I have seen two giant ships the size of this valley. They also use some kind of shimmering wall that jumps the ships between places in what she calls the overworld, and if they don’t have these gateways, then they use the engines that can propel the ships at many times the speed that light itself travels. Her ship can make the 3,000-year journey to sanctuary in less than six years.”

“How is that possible?” Regis gaped.

“They sleep for the bulk of the journey. The healing beds they created can practically return the dead to life and they have machines that can med bones in hours instead of our normal healing in days. They can even replace lost limbs. Her knowledge of engineering systems and how things interconnect is amazing. It is like she can see the entire ship build before the first weld is made.” He looked at the last of his ale watching the bubbles and thinking about the days he had helped her program and how he had seen things in her mind. “She sees the program coding the same way she sees magic, as something to be manipulated and controlled, calculated to achieve the maximum outcome she desires.”

“You speak with such reverence to her skills. How can you not wish to be with her, Yurieth?” Regulus had leaned forward, and his chin rested on his folded hands, his pale green eyes demanded an honest answer.

“She is my brother’s wife... When I come out of the time of imprisonment that preserves Abrieth, Serapha and I until her age, he still lives. I cannot love her, it isn’t honorable.”

“But what about being loved by her after she is widowed, like now?” Regis inquired softly.

Yurieth couldn’t answer, he wanted her love more than he had ever wanted anything. But he hated how futile it seemed to love someone, lose them and then not be able to remember it later. He hated wasted effort. “She says we will not remember this time after we are rescued. I do not see the point in loving her until after the war ends.”

“You cannot deny yourself love forever, Huntsman,” Regulus chided. “And she does not seem like a meek female who will let love the thwarted by a little thing like time.”

Regis laughed at his father’s statement and Yurieth just half-smiled. Fleur was definitely a force to be reckoned with. She was something that had never existed, a warrior oracle...

Yurieth stood quietly saying, “Thank you for the discussion, Regulus, and for the ale, Regis. I have to get back. I am taking her back to the worksite tomorrow morning.” He glanced out at the Tower beyond the palace again.

Regulus followed his gaze and his brow wrinkled in contemplation. “Do not worry about the Xelusians, Yurieth, I will find out what they want with your little oracle. In the meantime, let yourself feel loved.”

Arriving back at the compound, Yurieth watched Fluer standing on the balcony of her room in a simple white nightshift. She looked so young and innocent. Then she turned her blind eyes in the direction of the Towers of Xelusia. Holding out her hand, it trembled as thought sensing the vibration of something he thought only he felt coming from that place.

“You won’t win, not in this time, and not in the future. I won’t let you, Dark one. Just like last time, the Light will snatch success from your claws in the moment of your victory. Chaos has lost and Life has won, as it was, as it is, and as it always will be. Light without end, ahmehn.” Her words started harsh, but ended sounding like a prayer. She uttered an ancient word that meant “all shall agree”, then turned and went inside.

Yurieth remained sitting on the roof, thinking about her words. His honor vowed to help her defeat the Darkness, but when his heart begged to love her, he silenced it. War was returning and there was no place in war for those who had a heart.

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