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  Divine Born.

  The Spirit Callers Saga #5

  OJ Lowe.

  Text copyright © 2018 OJ Lowe

  All Rights Reserved

  The events and characters depicted within this book are all works of fiction. Any similarity between any person living or dead is coincidental.

  First Published 2018 as Divine Born.

  Contents.

  Contents.

  Chapter One. Amidst the Eye of the Storms.

  Chapter Two. The Prisoner.

  Chapter Three. Midnight.

  Chapter Four. The Legend.

  Chapter Five. Frewster’s Story.

  Chapter Six. The Glove and the Slipper.

  Chapter Seven. The Broken Man.

  Chapter Eight. Escape from Withdean.

  Chapter Nine. The Aerius.

  Chapter Ten. Wrath of Angels.

  Chapter Eleven. Stadium Showdown.

  Chapter Twelve. The Final Tale.

  Chapter Thirteen. Assault on Graham’s Field

  Chapter Fourteen. Subtractor.

  Chapter Fifteen. Long Lost Secrets.

  Chapter Sixteen. Coppinger’s Wrath.

  Chapter Seventeen. No Escaping Destiny.

  Chapter Eighteen. New Lord Rising.

  Chapter Nineteen. First Shots.

  Chapter Twenty. Out of the Frying Pan…

  Chapter Twenty-One. Only Children.

  Chapter Twenty-Two. The Cycle Stays the Same.

  A Note from the Author.

  Also, by the Author.

  About the Author.

  Chapter One. Amidst the Eye of the Storms.

  “We have one directive that takes precedence above all other. The Aerius. Find it. It’s in Premesoir. The Thunder Mountains. However long it takes, we must find that ship and its precious cargo.”

  Directive from Claudia Coppinger to the recently promoted Captain Svalbard of the Eye of Claudia.

  She sat, and she waited, lost in her own thoughts. It was, rather worryingly, becoming a more frequent occurrence these days. Amid the buzz of activity and thoughts that her mind had become, it felt like she was the only one to whom she could truly listen. Not the case, of course. Domis had his uses as a tactician and a blunt instrument. But could he truly know the depths of her mind? She felt that he fell too short in that department. A shame, to be sure. He could never know what she knew, feel what she had felt. They were worlds apart. Always would be. She loved him like a son, he was about the only man in the kingdoms she’d give the time of day to. But it wasn’t enough. Ditto Rocastle… That man she’d cheerfully have set on fire given half an excuse. Ever since he’d lost his leg, no since she’d taken his leg for his insubordination, he’d been sulky and withdrawn. She’d not let him leave the Eye ever since then. Couldn’t trust him, not in public. His obsessions were unbecoming. More than once she’d considered having Domis remove him from the whole equation, yet her hand had been stayed in that regard. Rocastle did have his uses. His Angels had taken to the Quin-C final to wreak havoc and they’d managed that considerably well. He’d trained them to hate, inflicted his own petty angers at the world on them and now they were all ready to be set loose when the circumstance arose.

  When. When she was ready and not before. The pieces were all coming together now. She had Mazoud running the house over in Vazara, a house filled with people who were growing to love her more and more. She’d done more for the kingdom than any other person, alive or dead, certainly more than that fool Nwakili who’d always peered down his nose at anyone shorter or weaker than himself. His death had been more than necessary; it had been delicious. She’d taken a hot, sandy kingdom that for too long had been raped of its resources by the other four kingdoms who’d bundled it into an alliance with them, a forced marriage of the worst sort, and she’d made it fertile. Treat somewhere like a cesspit long enough and it won’t disappoint you.

  She’d given hope to those who had none. More than that, she’d made sure they could sustain themselves. Food. Water. Healthcare. Despite the trade embargos that had already been thrown up across Vazara, something she knew would hurt the newly minted Four Kingdoms Senate more in the long run than it did the Vazarans, all this stuff taken for granted elsewhere was coming in. She’d needed the people for that, people who knew how to smuggle. This had been part of her thinking in approaching all those criminal masters those months ago and though most of them had been apprehended, their top people remained with her. The word from the top hadn’t changed, they were still very much with her. That they’d been snatched off this very station had rankled as an insult. It wasn’t one that she’d allowed herself to be drawn on though. What was in the past couldn’t be changed. Circumstances had conspired against her for that to happen and it was vital that it wasn’t permitted to happen again.

  Claudia Coppinger didn’t like to think about what might have been. In a way, Unisco’s intervention had been a blessing. Had they not found out her plan and attacked her where she was supposed to be strongest, she might still be playing cautious. She wouldn’t have Vazara, that was for sure. That potential conflict that had been brewing between Mazoud and Nwakili for years might finally have spilled over into open war and she wouldn’t have been able to intervene as easily. Those two had hated each other bitterly. Nwakili resenting the Vazaran Sun’s power, Mazoud hating Nwakili’s guts and that he’d actually had the nerve to oppose Mazoud’s plans on general principle.

  She certainly wouldn’t have had the chance to grandstand at the Quin-C final, she knew that much. Claudia dragged back the sleeve of her shirt, looked at the small dull-coloured stone embedded within in. If she touched it, tapped it with her nails, it didn’t even feel like a foreign object.

  That day, she’d felt it. When every eye around the five kingdoms had been on her and what she’d gone on to do, she’d felt the stone flare with every emotion that had been felt about her. If they’d feared her, she’d felt drunk off that feeling. There had been those who’d admired her and respected her around the kingdoms, those who’d thought she had the right idea. She’d felt them all inside her, their belief coursing through her. For so long she’d wondered what it was like to touch divinity and now she’d been granted the chance to find out first-hand. It had been everything she’d expected and more, leaving her breathless in the heat of the moment. Given she’d pretty much been off her head given everything that was pumping into her system, it was amazing she’d been able to survive long enough to get away. A lucky shot, she might have caught one in the head in the shootout and that would have been the end of it.

  Except that wasn’t going to happen. Something was changing in her, she couldn’t say what or why, but she knew that the days of normality had left her long behind. She’d never been natural before, had always felt different to everyone else. Most aspire to greatness. She knew that it was her right, it would not be something that might come to her, but only a question as to how. Somehow, she’d known and now that it had come true, she was realising for herself just exactly how right she’d been.

  The stone had been in her wrist ever since she’d walked through that doorway in Hoko, since Wim Carson had ripped a hole in reality using the Kjarn and she’d slipped through it. The memories of that trip were hazy at best, thoughts that died out halfway through her head, a lot of bright lights and a deep encompassing voice that spoke in words that made no sense to her in hindsight. Sometimes the pictures came, sometimes the memories flowed and other times they made no sense, broken bits of thought that broke around her brain. All she could remember was what she’d chosen to. The Aerius needed to be found, the directive burning in the forefront of her brain. She’d paid a high price for that knowledge, it had better be worth it.

  Still considering the stone, she still didn’t kno
w the full extent of what it could grant to her. She’d allowed Doctor Hota to examine it when she’d returned, and he’d told her the only way he could see to irrevocably remove it would be to cut her hand off. It was, he’d explained, consistent with wounds suffered in wars where shrapnel had been blown into someone, too small to be removed easily, and the wounds had healed up around it. Of course, given the time it took for that to happen, it begged the question how long she’d been in there. Carson had told her she’d only been gone a few hours before coming back but it felt like it had been longer for her, something she found more unsettling than she wanted to admit. She’d lost a lot of time somewhere, could feel it in her body and see it in her face. For the two hours she’d been gone, she looked maybe five years older. Maybe more if she aged well.

  More than that, she felt the way her flesh was failing. There’d be occasions, fleeting at first but becoming more and more common that she’d glance into the mirror and fail to recognise herself. Who she was? Why she was set out to do this? Her eyes would be blank, something would be missing, just for a second and then it’d return.

  Perhaps this was what being reborn felt like. To grow anew, the old had to be scrapped. It was hard to stand in the way of progress.

  Progress. A small word but it could mean so much to so many different people under drastically different circumstances. For her now, it was like looking at pieces on a board. Seeing the moves, seeing how each could pan out and adjusting strategies accordingly. She knew where she wanted to go, what she wanted and how to proceed. So why was this turning out to be harder than she’d expected it to so far?

  Unisco weren’t rolling over for her, they were proving to be surprisingly resilient a foe. She’d launched attack after attack at them, hitting them where she could. Their well-known buildings were too well defended, their agents too scattered and well-hidden to execute en masse. However, in a way, that worked for her as much as it did against her. Alone, they were insignificant. Her attentions would be far better served against the targets she could see removed.

  Her forces were growing every day, the longer she waited to go full out on her attack, the better her chances. The clone tanks were working overtime to produce new recruits, the education programs filling their heads with tactics and weapons knowledge, stamping out any hint of rebellion, instilling in them the desire to obey her. That was progress. A shame that she’d been found out, she could have made a small fortune selling the technology to the five kingdoms. A large army however, made the use of it inevitable. Too long they’d relied on local police forces and Unisco to ensure that the peace was kept. Now they were recruiting, a desperate attempt to catch up. Admirable but ultimately foolish.

  When she won, in her mind it was already a sure thing, she was going to see everything torn down and rebuilt. These kingdoms were tepid, floundering and it killed her that she’d subjugated herself to the system for so long. She had bowed when she should have stood tall over the rest of them. Her time to do that was now. Claudia leaned back in her seat, examined her fingers like she’d never seen them before.

  She would be divine. Worshipped. The top page in a new history book for the kingdoms. All she’d ever wanted, and it was so close to her. She’d sweep through them like wildfire, grant those who wanted it the benefit of her illumination. Those who opposed her would be crushed. Unconsciously she reached out, gripped the arms of her chair suddenly and felt the metal give beneath her grasp. A gasp escaped her, almost pleasured in its release. A hidden secret, there wasn’t anything more pleasurable. A secret shared, however…

  Claudia hadn’t come back from the other side the same. She was better. Improved. Twice the woman she’d been before. All that worship, all that emotion directed towards her, she could feel it and she loved every second. More than that, she loved what it did to her. The old her had been weak. Insignificant. Hiding behind a book of credit cheques. Now she was slowly earning the right to be front and centre of her entire new world order. Still the assassins would keep coming. The Senate had seen to that.

  She’d been amused at first when she’d seen how they’d been quick to put the credits up for her death. She’d been even more amused when they’d realised how strong she was now and how their weapons did very little to affect her. She’d shrugged off laser blasts with little more than a smile. Broken them herself even. Domis had fretted, he was unnerved. Rocastle was sulky about the whole thing, she could feel him just as she could everywhere else. If she knew who to look out for, she could hear, if that was the right term, the individuals and read them like books. He feared her and rightly so. She wanted him to be terrified of her. A scared Harvey Rocastle was someone less likely to go out of his way to fuck things up for her. He was a coward, she knew that, and she hated him for it. Her other lieutenants bore everything she’d expect from them, a mix of awe, respect and a little fear, everything a leader could ask for.

  This must have been how the original Divines felt all those centuries ago, she’d thought more than once. The theory had been that they were just ordinary men and women who’d become something more. They’d become notorious and ultimately the people around them who they’d stepped over to reach the top had worshipped them. They’d become their own gods. Of course, back then it must have been a lot harder. All this modern technology at her fingertips had made the whole process one she’d laughed the way through. That brief ten-minute appearance at Carcaradis Island had to have done more than ten years of campaigning and war many hundred years ago. The self-fulfilling prophecies were the best kind. They drew power from the belief their worshippers held in them, became more than human, became harder to kill and with every failed blade and arrow, their legend grew that little bit more.

  And how would they remember her in centuries time? The one question she wanted to know more than any other and at the same time, one she was looking forward to finding out. Because if they remembered her, it’d mean she’d succeeded.

  Of course, there were problems that she couldn’t have foreseen with Divinity. Gauging the limits of the whole thing were tough, she’d think she could go on forever only to find herself suddenly exhausted by her exertions. It didn’t come with a manual, working out the kinks on the job was more dangerous than she wanted to admit, least of all to herself. Better that she’d discover her limitation now than at a time it could cause her serious harm.

  Some of the clones had already been set aside to be formed into units with the intention of challenging the Vedo. Again, Rocastle had done just enough to prove his worth was justified. He’d produced a sample of blood which he claimed had come from a Kjarn user. Now they had the raw material, everything should have been so simple. And yet, there had been complications, although things were looking up in that respect. They were close, Hota informed her, to producing a working Kjarn clone, a prospect that filled her with excitement.

  Her glee had been tempered by the reaction of Wim Carson to discovering the process. As annoyed as he had been, there had been something in his reaction that did explain the reasoning behind the failures. The Kjarn, he’d bellowed, couldn’t be quantified and replicated in a lab. To try and do so would be disastrous beyond belief. Given the clones that had died in the process, perhaps it wasn’t a million miles away from the truth. He might look like a beggar and act like an eccentric but always it was worth remembering Wim Carson did hold surprising depths of knowledge. Whenever he did offer thoughts on a subject, he knew what he was talking about. She wouldn’t have gotten this far without him. Couldn’t have. His presence had made the whole enterprise one set on a path to success.

  Claudia drummed her fingers into the grooves in the arms of the chair, those that had been left by her earlier grasp, stared into space. Being left alone with her thoughts should have been something to worry her. She’d never been this introspective before. Always thought meditation was a crock of shit. Now it felt increasingly like she was going through it more and more. Keeping her own company. Being reclusive. Of course, being the most wan
ted woman in the kingdoms made it a little hard to appear in public these days. Perhaps that was her biggest regret. She’d already missed her daughter’s wedding, although with the way she felt about Meredith these days, that was hardly a loss. Ungrateful little bitch. She’d been informed the little cow was spending time with her uncle these days, the two of them building the sort of relationship she’d dreamed of having with either of them. They’d spurned her, they’d found each other. Her blood and they didn’t want to know her.

  Screw them.

  Maybe one day they’d all reconciliate. Be a family again. They were blood. Her and Meredith anyway. Despite what had happened, despite all that had been said, she had to believe that. Meredith’s words on her wedding day had hurt, not least because of the ring of truth to them.

  She’d come around when she was tired of playing Happy Common People with that harlot. Of that, Claudia was certain. Collison on the other hand, he needed to die. She couldn’t tolerate betrayal like that. Once they locked down his location, he’d be a dead man.

  Around her the lights dimmed and once again she was alone in the darkness. Hold the lights too bright and they hurt her eyes these days. Couldn’t be doing with that. She missed natural light. Maybe she should go to the bridge, enjoy the feel of some sunlight on her face. What was the point of it all if you couldn’t enjoy life’s smallest perks. They were in the best place for it, a few thousand feet above the clouds in the Eye of Claudia, one still boasting several hasty repairs still not entirely fixed following the Unisco attack months ago. The on-board maintenance staff had done their best with what could be brought up in frequent trips, but ultimately it felt like it might be a losing battle. They’d already gotten lucky enough that they’d been able to construct it in secret in the first place.

  Even as she considered leaving her chambers and going for a walk, the apathy gripped her limbs and any thoughts she might have had of it left her. She sank back deep into her seat, folded her feet underneath her and rocked back and forth.