Broken Cipher: Fated Touch Book 3

Chapter 2

2

The darkness was cold and suffocating. I couldn’t breath. Panic overtook me, and I jerked awake in a cold sweat, gasping for air. I sat up and clutched my chest as my eyes swept the area. The ground was under me, not slamming into my bones, and a comforting fire crackled nearby. I lay atop a pile of our coats and the stars twinkled above me.

“Bad dream?”

I whipped my head around and found my grandfather seated on a log near the fire. A thick stick was in his hand and he used it to push a fresh log into the greedy fire. A folded handkerchief was draped across his lap.

I couldn’t meet his eyes as I ran a hand through my hair and shook my head. “I-I don’t know. It. . .it felt so. . .so-”

“Real?” he finished. I nodded. “Maybe it was.”

I cringed. I knew what that meant. “Another vision.” I shut my eyes and shuddered. “This one felt more like a nightmare.”

“What did you see?” he wondered.

I looked down at my lap and shrugged. “I don’t know. A futuristic city, I guess. It had clean white walls and tiled ground. There were a lot of platforms that went down to a city in the center. This man and woman came up and a bunch of guard-looking people started firing laser guns at them.” I paused and frowned. “Or were they firing at me? Was I that woman?”

Sage arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

I shut my eyes and clutched my head. “I-I don’t know. I was her, and yet I knew I was me.” I shook myself and opened my eyes. “But what happened? Where are we?”

“On the outskirts of the graveyard,” Sage told me as he kept a steady gaze on my person. “You fell into a shallow coma and we moved you over here. Bee and Caius are out searching for some medicine to help with your breathing. It was dangerously shallow.”

I pressed my hand against my chest and felt the slow beat of my heart. “What-” I looked up at my grandfather. “What did I touch?”

Sage grabbed one edge of the handkerchief and drew the cloth aside to reveal a rusted old revolver. The revolver.

My jaw hit the ground and I pointed at the weapon. “That’s the revolver those two were carrying!”

Sage set the fire stick against the log and stood. He joined me on the pile of coats beside the fire and looked into my eyes. “Was this city floating above the clouds?”

My eyes widened. “Yeah, it was! Do you know where it is?”

He shook his head. “No. I know where it was. The city you’re describing was one of many that crashed to the ground over five thousand years ago.”

I nodded at the gun. “Then. . .then that revolver let me see that far into the past?”

He set his hand on top of the gun and nodded. “So it would seem. Perhaps your powers are growing, or perhaps the memories contained within this weapon are more potent than those you’ve touched before.”

I wrapped my hand around my throat and swallowed the lump there. “And more real. I. . .I really felt like those lasers were going to hit me.”

Sage pursed his lips as he studied my pale face. “Perhaps you should rest some more.”

I snorted. “How can I get rest when I just went through my own death?”

“It was only a vision,” he assured me.

I lay them palms up in my lap and stared at them. They trembled. “I-I wish I could believe that, but this. . .this one was different.” I raised my gaze to his curious one. “This was someone’s memories. Personal memories. Not just watching some object being set down or dropped. I could feel the woman’s emotions flowing through me.” Unbidden tears streamed down my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around myself and stifled a sob. “She was so angry and in so much pain. And-” I shut my eyes.

Sage wrapped his arms around me and leaned in close. “And what?”

I looked up into his soft eyes. My voice was hoarse and whispered. “Grandpa, she watched her lover die. It-” I couldn’t stop a little sob from escaping my trembling lips. “I felt like I was watching Caius die.”

Sage pursed his lips as he studied my face. “You truly care for that ragged dragon, don’t you?”

I choked on a laugh through my tears. “Where have you been for the last month?”

He smiled. “Sailing along on a river named Denial, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you are safe among us, and especially among a dragon who loves you. This dragon may be a little uncouth, but once a dragon has found someone whom they love they remain faithful to them.” He paused and frowned. “He has returned your affections, hasn’t he?”

I snorted. “And if he didn’t?”

“Then I would be forced to send him away on a rather large and violent tornado.”

I patted his shoulder. “Then I’m glad to say he has returned my affections, and then some. He says I’m supposed to be his ‘mate.’”

Sage arched an eyebrow. “I see. That explains the quick budding of this relationship.”

“I wish I could see. Is this ‘mate’ stuff something heavy or just another form of friends-with-benefits?”

“It’s quite serious. In the custom of dragon shifters, they consider a mate to be their wife,” he revealed.

I stared ahead and blinked. “Wow. Not even any ceremony, huh?”

“Only if they deem it necessary for legal purposes,” Sage admitted.

I ran a hand through my frazzled hair and shook my head. “Who knew when we started this mess that I’d be married in a month?”

“You could back out,” he suggested.

I looked up into his steady gaze. “What would happen to Caius?”

Sage sighed. “I hate to admit, but once a dragon has found a mate the relationship is generally a life-long affair. They will have no other.”

I clutched my chest as the familiar pangs of that terrible, wrenching loss came back to me. “So he’d. . .he’d be alone?”

Sage gave a nod. “He would, and dragons live for a very long time.”

I looked up and glared at him. “You just had to mention that, didn’t you?”

He grinned. “What are grandparents for?”

“You’re supposed to be there for comfort and support,” I scolded him.

He draped his arm across my chest and his soft, teasing eyes swept over me. “You don’t need comfort because you’re stronger than you know, Jane. As for support-” A twinkle slipped into his eyes. “By what you’ve told me I may no longer be the man you want to turn to for that.”

I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. “I’ll always need you, Grandpa.”

He chuckled as he returned the hug. “I am glad to hear that, pumpkin.”

“Jane!” I looked up just as my grandmother crashed into both of us. She yanked me from my grandfather’s grasp and wrapped her arms around me in a bone-crushing hug.

“Hi, Grandma,” I squeaked.

Caius came up to stand by her side. He looked like he’d aged ten years as he studied me. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better,” I assured him as I grasped his hand. His hand shook in mine so I gave it a squeeze. “I heard you two were out looking for some medicine.”

Bee pulled us apart and sighed. “And we didn’t find it because that mean poggy ran off with what few herbs we found. But we found this.” She dug into her pocket and drew out a root that could generously be described as nightmare-inducing. The roots were all knotted around one another and there were pock marks in the beet-like body that made it look like a screaming face. The grassy top looked like a shock of long, while hair. “It’s a mandrake.”

I was hit with a powerful odor of sulfur and leaned back to save myself from losing my lunch. “Is that supposed to help me?”

She smiled at me. “Of course it is, silly. It’s full of wonderful vitamins and minerals-”

“And diarrhea,” Sage spoke up.

She wagged her finger at him. “You behave, Mr. Storm Sage. Now I’ll cook it in a stew and we’ll all have a good night’s sleep.”

“Only because the plant has much the same effects of the mandrake in our own world in that it is used as a sleeping draught,” Sage informed me as my grandmother went about her preparations.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Caius spoke up.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” I answered as I watched Bee prepare the pot.

Caius knelt beside me and examined me with a stern, careful eye. “I’m serious, Jane. Are you okay?”

I returned my attention to him and smiled. “Yeah. I just had another of those visions again.”

“A new riddle which we’ll venture to solve tomorrow in Perdico, weather permitting us to get that far,” Sage assured us.

“Why there?” Caius asked him.

“The extensive libraries of the capital of the Libritain Empire are sure to have some answers to the riddle of this strange weapon,” Sage mused as he studied the revolver in his lap.

My eyes settled on the revolver, and hot flashes of the terrible memories it held came back to me. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself. “Are you cold?” Caius asked me.

I shook my head. “No, just remembering what I saw when I touched that thing.”

“What did you see?” Caius wondered, and I recounted the tale.

By the time I was done even Bee had paused in her poison preparations to listen. She sighed and shook her head as she stirred the pot. “How terrible for that young lady.”

I bowed my head and nodded. “Yeah. They were trying so hard to survive and neither of them made it.”

“It sounds like they were trying to rob the place,” Caius commented.

I looked up at him and arched an eyebrow. “While it was burning?”

He shrugged. “Some thieves aren’t particular about when they steal.”

Sage returned to his seat on the log and poked at the flames. “An impressive floating city would certainly have been a tempting target during its demise.”

I turned to my grandfather. “Did this world really have that much technology and then lose it?”

He nodded. “Yes. The lost cities of the sky are considered the Atlantis of this world. They were rumored to have been built on a technology reliant upon an ancient power source that was lost with the fall of the last great metropolis and buried under several millennia of magic.”

“So magic wasn’t around then?” I wondered.

He paused and furrowed his brow. “I believe so, but there are so few writings from so far back that the state of the world is hard to grasp. As far as I know magic has always been in this world in both its forms.”

“Forms?” I repeated.

He waved his hand at the question. “Oh, the usual. Black and white, though the first is called darcane and the second is ladia.”

“So you’re magic is ladia?” I guessed.

He nodded. “Yes. Ladia is the essence of the elemental magics while darcane deals more with potions.”

“And curses,” Caius added as he took a seat beside me.

“Darcane does have that bad reputation,” Sage agreed.

“Food’s ready!” Bee chimed in as she lifted the ladle out of the pot. A thick slime oozed off the deep spoon and plopped back into the kettle.

Sage cleared his throat. “That’s very well and all, my dear, but what about the shrooms? We should serve them before the main course.”

She frowned and Midge, ever perched on her shoulder, chirped at him. “But there won’t be any room left in your tummy after all those solicia shrooms.”

“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Sage assured her.

Bee swung around with the dripping ladle in hand and shoved the spoon in his face. “This is good for you, now just open wide-”

He leaned back and wrinkled his nose at the sulfuric smell. “I would rather rphpm!” Bee had shoved a most of the ladle into his open mouth. My grandfather turned his head to the side and spat out as much as he could.

Bee glared at him and tried to shove the rest of the stew into his sputtering mouth. “Now you take your medicine, Storm Sage!”

“I’d rather die!” he pronounced.

While one grandparent tried to murder the other Caius grabbed the shroom bag and set it between us. He took out a large one and held it out to me. I took it and inhaled the deep smell.

A quick bite and my taste buds reveled in the pepperoni pizza-like flavor. “This is really good,” I spoke through a mouthful as Caius munched on his own meal.

“Some of the best I’ve had thanks to your grandmother and her tracking pog,” he agreed.

“So why are they called solicia shrooms? And why’d we have to go looking for them in a cemetery?” I asked him.

Caius paused in his eating and cast his gaze onto the fire. His expression softened as did his voice. “My mother once told me it was because the shrooms grow only where the dead have found peace. Their souls rise from their graves to the heavens and the shrooms grow from the energy they leave behind.”

“Nonsense!” Sage choked out as he fell back over the far side of the log to escape my grandmother. He peeked over the top and scoffed at us. “The shrooms merely prefer loose soil that’s found several feet below the ground, and what better place than a graveyard to find such dirt?”

My grandmother’s shadow fell over him. She put her hands on her hips and a few drops of stew dripped out of the tipped ladle. “My stew is not that bad that you can’t eat more of it.” Midge chirped in agreement.

Sage’s eyes flickered to the little bird and a devilish grin slipped onto his lips. “Why don’t you feed some to your bird? I’m sure he could use the vitamins.”

Midge’s eyes widened and he let out a few chirps. They were interrupted by my grandmother shoving her smallest finger, doused in stew, into his little beak. The little bird choked and danced across her shoulder before it stood up and stiffened. Midge fell backwards off her and landed on the ground like a rock.

“Is he dead?” I whispered as my grandmother stooped and nudged his stiff body.

Bee dropped her hand and sighed. “No, he’s only taking a little nap.” She lifted up the ladle and pursed her lips. “I suppose it is a little strong.”

“‘Potent’ would be the right word,” Sage quipped as he resumed his seat atop the log.

Bee tossed the ladle back into the stew pot and turned to us with a smile. “Well, how about we have shrooms for dinner, instead?”

Sage nodded. “An excellent-” He stiffened and his eyes widened before he slid off the back of the log. I leapt to my feet, but the sound of snoring comforted my fright.

Bee clapped her hands together. “Well, I suppose that’s more for the rest of us. Pass the bag, will you, Jane?”