Unlocked (First of the Blade Book 3) Read online

  Unlocked

  First of the Blade Book 3

  D.K. Holmberg

  Copyright © 2021 by D.K. Holmberg

  Cover by Damonza.com

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Series by D.K. Holmberg

  Chapter One

  The shadowy form of the gray-skinned branox moved along the rock. Moonlight gleamed overhead, giving Imogen the only light she could use to see.

  She inched closer to the branox with sword unsheathed, crawling along the stone in a way that would help her stay connected to the sacred patterns and get ever closer to her target. She needed to do so quietly. Otherwise, the moment the creature detected her, it would attack. That didn’t worry her nearly as much as what might happen if it were to escape.

  They had been tracking stray branox down the mountainside for the better part of several weeks. The people she led had been stuck, with no place to go other than down, though everyone wanted to return home at this point.

  Another form lumbered across the stone near Imogen. She raised a hand to her lips to indicate silence, and Jorend nodded. He wasn’t moving nearly as quietly as she wanted. He was a skilled swordsman, trained with exquisite control in the traditional patterns, but he still had quite a bit to learn about the sacred patterns. The notches he’d earned still meant a different level of understanding than what she possessed.

  Imogen slipped forward and danced around one boulder, then another, which put her close to the branox. They were large creatures, nearly the same size as her, and incredibly muscular. The ones that had escaped the slaughter following the downfall of their queen were bigger than most and much more challenging to kill. When her people had faced the branox originally, Imogen had believed that they were all one kind, but she had come to see that there were subtle differences between them.

  She wasn’t sure where these creatures were going, but she worried. Benji, the Porapeth they traveled with, hadn’t said as much, but Imogen feared that the branox would find another queen and be able to reestablish their colony. If they did, they could move once more throughout the world, spreading their terrible influence and threatening any living being with magic.

  These days, Imogen increasingly worried that she was included in that designation.

  The branox she was following started to turn.

  Now was her chance.

  She focused on which sacred pattern she would use. She had been taught a dozen different ones, yet she often found herself defaulting to the same core set. This was partly because she knew them better than the others, but partly because she understood how to use them effectively—and when it came to these creatures, she needed to be effective.

  She rushed at the branox while using Lightning Strikes in a Storm and plunged her blade into the creature’s chest. But not before it let out a faint cry.

  The sound died off quickly, but not quickly enough.

  Movement along the rocks caught her attention, and Imogen darted in Petals on the Wind. She flowed and thrust her sword into the next branox, then streaked forward using Lightning Strikes in a Storm once again. She moved into Stream through the Trees, and the energy of the sacred patterns filled her and carried her into Axe Falling.

  She paused and looked around. How many more branox were there?

  Jorend fought near her. He was quiet as he moved through a series of traditional patterns. Imogen wouldn’t have defaulted to those, but she also had a greater handle on the sacred patterns than he did. He understood them, but his understanding was different than hers. He had what Master Liu would have called a sloppy technique.

  Another creature scrambled up the rock, heading away from her. Imogen rushed toward it. She could not let any of them get away.

  She bounced off one stone, then the next, practically floating as Petals on the Wind carried her jumps forward. That realization almost jarred her out of her concentration, but she focused on switching to Lightning Strikes in a Storm. She lunged and slammed her blade into the branox.

  The creature fell in a spray of blood. There was no cry this time. No sound.

  Nothing but silence.

  She paused on the rocky hillside, sweeping her gaze around. She saw no other movement. Jorend stood several dozen paces downslope from her, and in the pale light of the moon, she could make out a strange expression on his face as he held his blade ready.

  Imogen climbed down the slope and made her way to him.

  “How did you move like that?” Jorend asked. He was a muscular man, slightly taller than her, with his cloak hanging askew on one shoulder. She could just make out the five notches on his sword, markers of his acquired rank.

  Imogen wiped the blood from her blade, then slipped it into the sheath. “Practice.” She peered around again. “There were more this time.”

  “I think we are close to finding all of them.”

  She wasn’t as convinced. “Let’s get back to the others. We need to send scouts out to search.”

  She could do the scouting herself, but she preferred not to. The others were capable of identifying the branox. More and more of the Leier soldiers could even fight them, so she and Jorend weren’t the only ones who could cut them down. The Koral shamans had provided enchantments, but most of the Leier were hesitant to use them for one reason or another—foolishly, Imogen thought, but she couldn’t force her people to work with the Koral if they didn’t want to. It was hard enough for her people to travel alongside them, but fighting on the same side had been more of a challenge.

  “I will send word, General,” Jorend said.

  Imogen tensed slightly, though she knew she shouldn’t. It was her title now. She hadn’t resisted when she had been offered the position, which she had taken up because she outranked everyone else. Still, the title didn’t quite feel right for her. She wasn’t sure when it would, if ever.

  They scrambled down the slope with Imogen in the lead, pausing from time to time to look for any sign of movement. She didn’t see or hear anything to suggest that there were other branox nearby.

  She used Tree Stands in the Forest, one of the sacred patterns that she defaulted to the most, partly because it was the first pattern she had been taught, but partly because there was a unique power to it that she could not fully explain.

  She didn’t detect anything as she used it, which reassured her, but would she even be able to? If she had the same skill as Benji, she might be able to listen to the wind or touch the stone or even see possible futures t
hat would guide them toward the branox, but she was not a Porapeth and did not have that kind of power.

  Instead, she was Leier. Imogen had long since moved past the belief that the Leier were only simple sword fighters. She understood that there was more to what she did, and what her people did, than just their ability and skill with the blade.

  Eventually she and Jorend arrived at their camp. She approached slowly, the campfire blazing against the backdrop of darkness, and she nodded to the scouts as she slipped into the camp. Jorend stayed with her, his gaze darting around as if he was going to find some danger she had not seen.

  “I don’t like this place,” Jorend muttered.

  “Because we’re on Koral lands?”

  “I don’t like the way it feels, and I don’t like that we’ve been forced in this direction.” He looked behind him toward the mountains that were little more than shadow against the darkness of night. “There has to be another way for us to return to our homeland.”

  “We’ve tried,” Imogen said. “We can’t get all the people off the mountainside.”

  “We could climb the rock. There has to be a path—”

  Imogen raised her hand and shook her head. “We aren’t abandoning the Koral. I need Leier and Koral working together.”

  He clenched his jaw. There was a time when Jorend would have challenged her, and she half expected him to do the same now, though she suspected she should be thankful he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “We follow your lead, General.” He marched off toward the gathered Leier.

  She sighed. Would they be able to find a way to work with each other, rather than against one another? Years of fighting made it more difficult than it needed to be, but going forward, Imogen was certain that they needed to find some way to work with each other.

  She nodded to an approaching Koral shaman, a man by the name of Conrad who had taken up a leadership role among the other shamans. He was tall and thin, and moonlight gleamed against his balding head. Unsurprisingly, many of the Koral who had been gathered by her brother, and by the branox, were shamans.

  “He seems troubled,” Conrad said, nodding to Jorend’s retreating form.

  “Most of the Leier are troubled by this,” Imogen said. “Everyone wants to return home.”

  “Do they fear what’s happening in their absence?”

  Imogen didn’t know. She hadn’t been back to the heart of her homeland for too long, and she wasn’t sure what it was like anymore. General Derashen had brought the army into the mountains because he’d felt there was a danger. He had been right, though not about the danger he had first believed. They had lost many Leier, which weakened the army. Imogen understood that those like Jorend wanted to return as quickly as possible to get back to their home villages, as well as to protect the Leier homeland.

  “I suspect they want to return for the same reason your people want to return.”

  Conrad turned slowly. “Perhaps not the same reason.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  They had been traveling together for the last few weeks, and in that time, the Leier and the Koral had generally been separate parties. The Leier hunted the branox and protected the Koral from them, which gave the Leier a certain air of superiority, though Imogen wondered how many of her people knew how much the Koral did for them. The shamans placed protections around their camp at night, and though those protections might draw the branox to them, they also created a barricade from the creatures.

  “Our shamans have a unique role among our people.” Conrad gestured to a group sitting in a circle near a fire. Imogen couldn’t see what they were doing, but it felt like they were using magic. She could detect it, though the effect was subtle. “Many of our greatest have been lost—not by anything your people did, but before. When we were herded toward that place. Those of us who remain don’t have the same knowledge. It will lessen the strength of our people.”

  He smiled tightly and seemed as if he didn’t want to acknowledge where they had been guided or why. It was no secret that her brother had a hand in what had happened. Imogen had decided not to hide that from them out of fear that if it came to light, she would attract the wrong kind of attention and potentially make it so that her people could no longer trust her.

  “I’m sorry,” Imogen said. “Are there other ways for you to access some of that knowledge again?”

  She didn’t like the idea of sending them to the Sorcerers’ Society, but she increasingly wondered if such a thing might be necessary. Then again, it wouldn’t be her responsibility to do so.

  “Temples like this were once a place where we could learn. There are several of them throughout the Koral lands, so losing even one…” He turned to a tall structure that loomed over them.

  This had once been a place where the Koral celebrated. Much of the stone had crumbled, as if it had been abandoned long ago. According to the shamans, that wasn’t the case, which left Imogen thinking that perhaps there had been some sort of magical attack. She suspected that the branox had come through, but she didn’t know for certain. When she’d suggested it to Conrad, he had not known, but he’d been curious and wanted to investigate whether such a thing was true.

  She frowned. “This was one of your sacred temples?”

  “They’re not sacred in the same manner. We don’t view things in quite the same way as your people do. They’re sacred in that we can learn and teach and protect our people.”

  Imogen found herself drawn toward the tower. She stepped away from the firelight and into the darkness, where she traced her hand along the surface of the stone. It crumbled beneath her fingers, a strange sensation. If they stayed here long enough, she wondered if she would even be able to witness the stone slowly collapse.

  “Will you be returning the army back to your lands soon?” Conrad asked.

  She turned to him. He stood behind her with hands clenched in front of him. “Is that what your people want?”

  He glanced back. “How many of our villages have we passed?”

  “Several.”

  “And what have you seen in them?”

  She knew where he was going with this. “They were abandoned.”

  “They were. And because of the collapse, we aren’t able to reach the rest of the Koral lands easily.” He turned and looked out into the distance. “Much like your army is separated from the Leier, we are separated from the rest of our people.”

  “What if we kept going this way?” she asked.

  “I’m not from this part of the homeland,” he said, his voice soft. “There was a time when this was all part of our land, but something changed. I’m not exactly sure what, nor am I sure why it changed, only that it has.”

  “So if we keep going, we head away from your land?”

  He nodded. “Away from my land. Away from your land. Where will you guide us, General?”

  They’d been heading steadily downward, which was the only way they could go, given the collapse of the rock that had trapped them in this valley. Coming across several of the Koral villages in the process, Imogen had been disheartened to see that they were all empty. A large number of people remained with her, and she felt an obligation to keep them safe, though she didn’t know if she could do that. How could she keep these people safe when she wasn’t even sure what that meant?

  It was time to come up with a plan. Leading them down from the mountains had always been part of the plan, but from there, she had anticipated that she would be able to bring the Leier back to their homeland and lead the Koral back to theirs. And she had to do it before they ended up fighting one another.

  “I will see you to safety,” Imogen said.

  “And what happens if your people decide that old grudges with the Koral must be handled?”

  “They wonder about your shamans being the ones to feel that way.”

  “The Koral won’t attack,” Conrad said.

  “I hope not.” She looked into the darkness. “There are still more of these branox out there. The
Leier continue to hunt, but I hope the Koral will continue to protect us, at least as much as such a thing is possible.”

  Conrad regarded her for a moment, then nodded. “We will offer you whatever we can. You have earned that.”

  He turned away and left her. She made her way around the tower, tracing her hand along the crumbling stone. If this had been one of the sacred temples of the Koral, what had happened here?

  Timo, maybe. He had power.

  As much as she wanted to deny what he had become, she no longer could. He was more than just a Toral. It was possible that he had drawn enough power that he could rival a Sul’toral, but Imogen no longer knew. Regardless, she had to be careful, especially when it came to her brother.

  They’d seen no sign of him since they’d fought the queen, but Imogen had kept looking. Benji had as well.

  She’d asked him what the wind and the stone told him, but he was unusually cagey about it. He had been ever since they had defeated the branox queen, and ever since they had been forced down the mountainside.

  Imogen took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she looked around her, noting the two distinct camps. The Leier stayed close to the Koral, but only because Imogen required that of them. She wanted the Leier to be able to react if they were attacked. The Koral, for their part, also remained distant, and they made no attempt to hide their use of magic. That alone would irritate many of the Leier, Imogen knew.

  She had promised safety not only to the Leier but to the Koral as well. The problem was that Imogen no longer knew how to keep them safe. She didn’t know what she would need to do, especially if they were now cut off from their homelands.