Rebellion: Prince of Dawn

Chapter 11.3: The Great Shuffle

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RAY VAN CAMARO

The skies were dancing in a hue of different colours when we arrived back at Rockbell. It was a storm of colours and the eye seemed to be focusing right above Gilead.

The sky was sometimes a canvas of colours, but that was usually around dusk and not noon. Those times didn't feel as intense as this.

"What's wrong with the sky?" Private Gama asked. "It's not supposed to look like that, is it?"

Rudolf shook his head. "Not unless there's some extraterrestrial event going on. Like Neon's Comet fragmenting."

"No, there's no event like that happening soon," Hendrik said. "Let alone near the western region."

"Colonel, do you know what that is?" Kaiser asked.

"No." I didn't take my eyes off the gathering spiral of clouds. "But a large amount of mana is gathering at the centre of that storm. I can feel it."

"I'm not a jynxist, but I can feel it too," Kaiser agreed. "It might be a labyrinth forming."

"It might be, but I've never heard of a labyrinth forming in the sky."

"What about floating islands?"

"No, those are just labyrinths that formed on the ground that began to levitate. This is something else. Something is wrong."

Just then, light gathered in the eye of the swirling storm before exploding downwards into a beam of light. Once it hit the ground, it began expanding.

My heart fluttered at the thought of the beam expanding all the way to us, but it was gone the moment it started. My guess was that the beam was three leagues in diameter.

After a few moments, the sky was back to its original colour.

"Colonel, that was close to Gilead," Gama said.

He's right. The clouds looked like they were gathering over it.

There was supposed to be a party tonight celebrating John's incarceration, but we skipped out on it. Gama, Hendrik, Rudolf, and Kaiser loved parties and were often the life of it, but that beam of light earlier during the day changed their mood.

That light was dangerously close to Gilead. We all hoped we were wrong, but we had to prepare ourselves for the worst.

Jaime.

Trisha.

Ilias.

Doria.

I hope we're overthinking this and that they're okay.

None of us slept that night and my unit was ready to leave the moment I was up. We left an hour before dawn riding at full speed. The average travel time from Rockbell to Gilead was two days. We did it in half of that.

Soldiers donning a feather on their helmets were littered near Gilead, passed by us, questioning if we saw anyone nearby.

These are Seraphim soldiers.

Once we were questioned, we were ordered to head to Gilead to help out with the search party.

For what?

We arrived at our home village in the afternoon finding it occupied by hundreds of soldiers wearing the feather.

"These are the warden's soldiers," Hendrik thought aloud. "But Seraphim is five hundred kilometres from here."