by A. R. Knight
“Sorry, Kaishi, but neither of us has any love for that thing you’ve got with you,” Viera says.
They used my miracles the same as you.
“You lied.” I speak the words out loud without realizing.
The creature raising the fork pauses, then gives me a blink before continuing. Its feathered arm reaches up towards my head and I close my eyes, taking, for a moment, a chance to escape from what’s about to happen. Ignos doesn’t let me. It thrashes. Tickles and scratches my mind.
I’m your friend, Kaishi! Don’t forget that I want you, your species to survive. Don’t—
The connection breaks like a dry branch - a snap and then Ignos is gone from my mind. I feel it, though; gripped by the fork and pulled out from my ear and, with a wet splat, onto the floor next to me. The creature doesn’t waste a moment; its tongue shoots out, wraps itself around the ghostly gray shell of Ignos and brings the parasite to its mouth.
“Don’t,” I say as Malo and Viera let my arms drop. “It’s helped me. It brought us here.”
“It’s not coming with us.” The creature replies, and it jerks its tongue a little farther into its mouth. “These things have no right to live.”
“This one does.” I reach into the creature’s mouth, and as I grab Ignos, the creature relaxes its tongue.
I pull Ignos free - it feels both brittle and squishy in my hands, like a soft melon - and hold the Sevora. Ignos doesn’t try to pull itself up my arms or scramble away from my hands. The life of the creature that tricked me, pushed me into a destiny I did not want, quivers in my palms.
“It gave our people freedom,” Malo says behind me. “For whatever else its done, the creature deserves mercy for that.”
I nod. Then look over the great expanse from one side of cells to the other. The fights still rage, though I notice things are moving towards a retreat. Sevora guards, those furry Flaum moving in formation, are advancing, pushing back the motley squads of species I can’t name.
“We must go,” the creature says, and in its tone I gather the seconds remaining in Ignos’ life are dwindling.
So I turn and throw the thing that’s brought me here. That rescued my tribe from certain death and brought me to the heights of power. I aim with purpose, towards a group of Flaum advancing two floors below, miners keeping up a steady stream of fire. I see enough to know Ignos makes it across the gap, but before I see the result, my parasite and savior is gone.
Any chance I have to reflect on the moment is taken when the creature pulls me again, snarling that we’re running out of time. Instinct takes over while my mind drifts in my suddenly quiet head as we sprint through dark hallways and down stairs.
Eventually we hit a landing covered with red-glowing runes that I can’t understand. The creature seems to think there’s another stair and wheels around, and we follow, only to find a thick sealed door blocking our path. The only other way is a broad, wide entry spanned by four archways. I can see bright beige sky out the other end, but when I take a step, the creature grabs my arm and pulls me back.
“There’s nothing that way but death,” the creature warbles, and then turns back to the door. “This shouldn’t be shut.”
“Don’t know what your plan was,” Viera says. “But that door isn’t moving. Don’t think we’re going to like being on the other end of those miners either.”
The Lunare steps up next to the creature, inspecting the door, and I take the chance to fall back near Malo.
“It’s gone, Malo,” I say, and the warrior knows what I’m talking about.
“Better that it is.”
“You think so?” I look up at his face, and see its set in that too-serious way Malo has. As though he’s about to deal with a cataclysm of terrific proportions, and only the most stoic of expressions can see him through. “Ignos helped us, a lot.”
“A fruit, when ripe, is delicious. When rotten, poisonous. Ignos only helped you, I think, because it helped itself at the same time.”
A bang ripples through the stairwell, from above. The creature stops staring at the door, shakes its head, and turns back, looking past Malo and I to the archways and the open air beyond.
“We’re going to try for it,” the creature says. “You’re going to follow me, fast. Don’t stop for anything, even when your body tells you it’s going to die. Or you will.”
Malo steps in front of me, but I pull myself around him, go up to the creature. Its deep green and black eyes meet mine, and when I extend my hand, its warm, rubbery grip meets it. The brilliant feathers streaming down the creature’s arm make a pretty wing, though I wonder if its quite big enough for flight. Certainly the creature’s body is far larger than the eagles I know back home.
“We go together,” I say to the creature, and to Malo. “Come on, you two.”
The arch is split into sections by thin, dark rock bands - I can only see where those bands end because the pieces in between begin to glow a hard yellow. At the sight, the creature lunges forward and we do our best to keep up. It goes under the arch, padded feet flapping against the ground and I, with my hands on Malo and Viera’s, follow. As we pass beneath the arch, I notice the next three are lighting up like the first.
“Don’t stop!” the creature cries.
I don’t see anything that’s going to prevent me; there’s no wall, no rope around my ankles or armed guard. But there is, as I pass beneath the arch, a prickling sensation that crawls over my skin. Like getting lightly scratched by thorns all across my body. I think the mask I’m wearing blunts, but doesn’t stop the sensation.
We don’t stop.
Out the other side of the arch the feeling disappears. Arch number two, apparently cued, shifts its glow from yellow to a sickly orange, like a sunset trying to fight through clouds. The creature doesn’t pause, but keeps going.
“Didn’t like that,” Viera says as we keep after it.
“It wasn’t that bad,” I reply.
“Then why have it at all?”
I can’t answer that, because we’re going through the second arch and the orange glow makes itself known immediately. Like diving into a hot bath, its an instant change from the cool air of the hallway to a scalding rake across my body. I feel like when I was young, dared to dart across a fire, and my leap didn’t carry me far enough - the flames licked me then as they seem to now.
I don’t see fire. I feel it. The puckering of my skin, the air that I breathe stinging my throat. The mask lets me get just enough to keep going, keeps me from passing out.
We keep going, the three of us, and then we’re through. I feel Malo begin to let up, feel myself suck in mouthfuls of air, and I know that I would give anything for water in that moment.
“You cannot stop!” it’s the creature, and it’s still moving towards the next arch, which is shining a crimson red.
“This thing has lost its mind,” Malo says. “It wants us dead.”
“We don’t have a choice.” I keep moving, push past the pain in my legs, force myself onward.
When the creature enters the third arch, there’s a burst of light and it takes a moment for me to realize that its feathers are actually on fire. The tips burn as it moves, and its blue-green skin glistens as it hardens, chars.
Then I see nothing because my own eyelashes alight. My hair burns, along with the robes I’m wearing, though I notice those only as curious after-thoughts, a sort of addition to the sheer chaos of my own nerves as the mask barely keeps my skin from melting. Yet, as hot as this is, as scalding and brutal, I drift back to the endless series of struggles I’d braved to get here. All the dangers, all the near-deaths. A little bit of fire isn’t going to stop me. Not now.
My right hand, singing its pain, nonetheless tells me when Viera falls. I can’t see - I’ve closed my eyes to keep the heat from melting them - but I reach and feel the Lunare on the ground. Grab her searing shoulder and pull. Feel Malo pulling me ahead.
When my left arm leaves the arch, its like falling into the
cold ocean. Immediate ice, comforting and cool. Every piece of me that follows is a rapture, an ecstasy that doesn’t slip back to aching pain until all of me is out, until I’ve dragged Viera’s burning self into the gap between arches.
I start patting the Lunare immediately, batting at her with what remain of mine and her clothes, and then a pair of webbed hands join the effort, and we get the small fires put out quick. Viera’s still conscious, but she’s shaky as she rises back to her feet.
“Can’t do that again,” she says, and her voice is scratched, harsh.
“You won’t need to,” the creature replies.
It pulls out the small miner I’d seen it holding earlier. Then draws the other one. The last arch is glowing a purple-black. I can’t imagine what could be worse than what we’ve already experienced, and the thought of braving something else makes me shiver.
The thing hurls one of its miners towards the last arch. As the weapon reaches one of the glowing sections, the creature aims and fires its other miner. The shot strikes the thrown weapon as it nears the top of the arch, exploding the projectile in a blast of bright white and green flares. The top of the arch crumples and crackles with a bang, and chunks of it fall to the ground in front of us. Sparks pop and sizzle from the severed remnants.
“Couldn’t you have done that earlier?” Viera says.
“Only have two miners,” the creature replies, bearing its new scars without complaint. “Had to save them for the last arch. The one that would’ve killed you had you tried to go through it.”
“Just about killed us anyway,” Viera mutters as the creature steps over the wreckage and through the apparently safe arch.
We follow, and the thick doors to the outside recoil like a fan, pressing back into each other through to the side as we near. The hall opens into a vast courtyard; a tiled expanse marked by large smooth patches where, it’s not hard to imagine, some of the many ships shooting through the sky might set down.
The creature waves us forward, and we leave the doorway, taking all of five steps before we notice the forms pressed against the building behind us. Flaum, ten of them, in all manner of browns, blacks, whites and grays. They’re holding miners, and they point them at us, though most aim at the creature. They look just like Nasiya’s Flaum, our guards from earlier, except for one thing: the badges on their chests. Not the green and black circle but instead a blue and yellow mixture. Colors racing together like paints dropped on a stone.
My eyes flick back to the creature, and it’s hesitating. Its hand is on the one miner it has left, but I don’t believe it’s going to fight. It would be stupid, impossible. If it tried, I have no doubt we would be burned to oblivion.
“Don’t shoot,” I say. “Nobody needs to die here.”
A bit of the Empress is still left in me, even without Ignos. I’m still trying to save the lives of my subjects, all two of them.
“If the Dawn goes, then we won’t need to shoot anybody,” one of the Flaum, a speckled white and black one, says.
Its miner, a thick and long rifle, points directly at the creature, who proceeds to heed the warning, to drop its own weapon onto the stone with a loud clatter.
“They’re yours, then,” the creature says. “I expect a thank you.”
“You’ll get one, when we’re finished with them.”
The Flaum never flinches. Never takes the miner away. Not until the creature, without a look back at us, bounds away across the stone and vanishes through a wide gate in an outer wall.
I notice one of the other Flaum tapping something into an armlet on his wrist. I keep my eyes on it, even as the rest the Flaum fan out around us. Encircle us, and aim their weapons outside.
“From one prison to another,” Viera says.
“We’ll find our way out of the next one too,” I say. “We just need to stay together.”
Malo grips my hand, strong. Calm. What I need him to be right now. The emptiness in my head remains a terrifying vacuum, and I wish I could ask Ignos what these badges mean. Who these things are. Ignos, though, isn’t here. It might be dead, and I don’t dare slip into the Cache’s knockout knowledge now.
I feel the air before I hear the sound. A rush of blowing wind, bringing with it smells I don’t recognize. Unnatural ones; chemicals and burning things. I follow the Flaum’s stares and look up in time to see an elegant, bizarre craft descending down towards us. It’s a long, flat surface curved around the sides and bottom; a shallow oval. Like the badges, it too is painted in bright blues and yellows, and also reds and blacks all mixing together as if the thing simply exploded out of a rainbow.
“You have a weird sense of style,” Viera says to the only Flaum that’s spoken, the speckled one.
“We stand by our principles,” the Flaum replies. “All things together, all things inseparable.”
“What you want with us?” I try to ask, but the Flaum ignores me.
No, the Sevora that controls it ignores me. I can’t forget that we’re on a world of parasites. That all of these things have, like Ignos, a controlling monster inside of them.
We don’t have a choice, so we follow the Flaum over and up the ramp, into the craft. The floors are white, the same pearl as the tubes and elsewhere and it’s not long before we feel it mold around our feet. Keep us tethered to the ground and stabilized. The same thing happens to the Flaum, though most manage to keep their weapons angled our way as the ship ascends back to the sky. As it moves, the plain walls and ceiling fade, turn translucent, as if I’m looking through smeared glass.
Frenzied movement outside keeps my attention as we fly away from the prison. Larger ships are moving towards where we just left, and I see more than a few smaller craft take tentative slides towards our ship before breaking off. Small dots that I assume are more troops descend from the larger, blocky ships and stream towards the prison like ants.
Part of me hopes the creature escapes, the other part isn’t sure.
The ship arcs over the city, higher and higher yet not quite into the black of space. I feel the craft accelerate, move fast and burst away from where we were.
“Where are we going?” I yell to the speckled Flaum, as none of the others have shown any interest in talking.
“To safety,” the Flaum replies. “To another part of Vimelia, where Nasiya won’t be able to find you.”
So Nasiya doesn’t know about this. Interesting.
Back on Earth, in Damantum, I’d had a bit of experience playing politics. In the weeks after the Emperor’s death, after my own ascension, I’d come to know the various factions of the city. Come to taste their squabbles and grow irritated with their endless demands, most of which had little to do with aiding their people and much more to do with hurting those they feared. Or thought were their enemies.
There’s something else I learned in those weeks: that divisions, turmoil, can be exploited.
The flight doesn’t last long. While it’s hard to tell time on a planet that doesn’t seem to have a true night, I think it’s less than an hour. Just as my feet start to hurt, and my knees quiver at staying the same position, we descend. It’s a straight down drop that leads to a gentle landing on a wide pad, like the prison. However, unlike the metal constructs and bustling buildings of the city we were in, this place is lush and green.
It’s not hard to see why: small discs covered in nozzles buzz around every meter of open space, sending long sweeping arcs of what looks like water on to groves of flowers, trees, and grasses. Long thin tubes trail from the discs back to some underground reservoir. It’s a bigger, more wondrous garden than anything I’ve ever seen. Plants, or least I think that’s what I think they are, spiral up and around and grow out in all directions. Some appear to be solid glass, while others look to be pulsing, like a heart soon after it’s freed from its human prison. A grove next to me shoots silver trunks straight up stories into the air before, at the top, bursting into a fluted nova of pink and red flowers. Others, dome-shaped, open every few seconds and
release a tingly blue spray into the air. As we walk, escorted by the Flaum, I catch some and think of mint and jasmine.
There’s music here too, though I’m not sure from where it comes. Or if, really, it’s music at all. It’s almost like a chant, a low rhythm that nonetheless rises and falls to some beat and measure only the player knows. I find my feet matching its echoes as we move along a wide, white gravel path towards what I think is a building far too small for such a magnificent display.
It’s a singular tower, though not much taller than my village’s Tier. And not much wider either. As we draw close, the speckled Flaum holds up a hand and we all stop. I’ve learned that signal by now. The Flaum waves in front of us towards the tower and as he gestures, I see the air around the tower shimmer. Like peeling back a shroud, the tower elongates and grows wider and wider until it’s the width of what the garden lets me see and maybe more. It grows higher until its taller than the trees of my jungle. Taller than several of them stacked on one another.
“We keep our strength hidden,” the speckled Flaum offers without our asking.
The door, however, stays the same size and so, with three Flaum in front and three behind, we walk through in a line. What we come to is not a place of power like the throne room in my old palace, but instead a ringing mess. A chaos of shouting voices, a crowd of Flaum and other species of all kinds and names I don’t know yelling and screaming and buzzing at each other. Every once in a while I see something fly through the air; small rocks aimed at someone across the wide room.
The floor gently slopes down so that whomever is the object of all the shouting stands at the middle. Up above balconies ring the vast space, and there even more species lean over the edges, haranguing in their loud voices. I’ve never heard such a roar, so much clashing of tongues, and my first thought is to put my hands up to my ears and press, closing my eyes. To quiet, just for a moment, the noise.
At first I think I’ve been too effective. The shouts all die away, and then I hear nothing. It’s only when I open my eyes do I realize that faces of every shape and color look towards me, Malo and Viera. As if interpreting a signal, the speckled Flaum waves us forward, points to the dais in the middle, on which stands a great, blotched orange slug. Unlike the slimy things of my home, this one has arms, this one wears clothes, and this one grins at me with toothless pride as I make my way through the crowd towards it.
