Hatred Day

by T S Pettibone

Snofrid defied the impulse to falter. This fact about Mock Walls she knew for certain. It was stored away in her memories, unspoiled by magic.

  Foraging onward, she channeled her focus on her impending task. If she could win Hadrian’s compassion, she just might earn her phone call to Atlas. The tricky detail was that Hadrian didn’t seem to respond to anything. He simply demanded obedience and forced submission. She tried not to let this kill her nerve. Even after being exposed to his manipulations, she wanted to believe that in every living being, no matter how perverse, there existed a trigger for empathy. Otherwise, she couldn’t fully believe that all the people she cared about would survive the quarantine.

  At the end of the tunnel she positioned herself before a craggy wall, her left foot out in front.

  “Use your defiled Halo to access the passage,” Hessia instructed. “There is a seal on the upper left-hand side.”

  Snofrid located the seal—a roaring wyvern subtly embossed into the stone. She hiked up her coat sleeve. The reedy strands of her Halo glinted blue on the flesh of her bicep. Pressing her Halo to the seal, she held still until she heard a click. Then, she lunged through the rock as if it were air.

  She emerged in a dome. The cold air hit her like a freezer draft. She slipped, skidding on the icy floor, and snagged a dangling root.

  “You’re on your own now,” Hessia told her. “Don’t touch the water.”

  Snofrid glanced down. She was standing on a black coral path that roved through a maze of iridescent silver pools. Further down, was a table built from living trees with all their trunks bowed and knotted together. Arranged on top were two black wineglasses—one full and one empty—a tiny marble orb and a tall bottle of alcohol with a dead cobra floating inside.

  Hadrian was enthroned at the table’s head, his claws interlaced as he stared absently into one of the silver pools. He didn’t seem to notice her presence, or if he did, chose to ignore it. A black velvet cloak with a silver fur collar arrayed his shoulders. His hair was neat, slicked back, and wet, as if recently washed. Looking at him now, her original impression of him being an indomitable, mighty soul metamorphosed. Since journeying through the Mania Mirror, she’d viewed the world through new eyes, ones with richer vision. What she saw presently was a man embittered by life’s failings—a rock shaped by a merciless, crushing tide.

  As she advanced, she felt like she was sharing a room with a statue. He hadn’t moved, even as she reached the chair. Then he tipped his chin slowly.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “I know, Commander. But fault your Seer.”

  His eyes flicked skyward, as if he knew Hessia was lurking in the chamber above them. “This briefing will end in twenty-six minutes. Have a seat at the table.”

  Snofrid slid into one of the open chairs, counseling herself not to show her intimidation. Once seated, two frost beetles scuttled into her lap. Her hands dove and swatted them off; they’d sting her worse than a common nettle.

  “While you’re in the Web, your guardian won’t leave your side,” Hadrian said. He looked at her with marked interest, as if he detected something different about her. “Coming down here was the one exception.”

  “You need a man to spy on me?” she guessed.

  “Not spy. The Coyote will make sure that you do nothing you shouldn’t.”

  “I’m sure he will.” She drew Spectrals Imported from her satchel and pushed it toward him. “I finished Section 23. Governor Dhiacula was insightful.”

  “I doubt it,” Hadrian declared, reaching for the marble orb. “You spoke to Poppy Van Todder.”

  “They’re the same person.”

  “That’s an obvious assumption,” he granted. “But incorrect. The mask he wears is possessed by a Spectral. Dhiacula Sykiss and Poppy Van Todder are not the same man.” Hadrian flipped back his left claw and activated his Halo. The silver strands flickered like a fluorescent bulb as they awoke. She watched him brush the Halo across the surface; the orb animated, sparks popping inside. “I’m going to tell you a story.”

  “About the welx?”

  “About a range of issues.”

  She eyed the orb curiously. “Why do you need a spell for that?”

  “A Meno Orb contains memories, not magic.” Standing, he picked up the bottle. “In order to keep this brief, the next time you ask a question, you’ll drink dragon-ale.”

  “I haven’t heard of it,” she admitted. “But I’m guessing its alcohol.”

  “That’s a boring guess. It’s also only half-correct. But I’ve already established your flaws.” He proceeded to fill the wineglass with some kind of glowing, green liquid. Steam swiveled from the glass’s rim as he raised it and sloshed the liquid around inside. Rounding the table, he set it before her; fumes sputtered from the glass and singed her nose.

  “What’s in this?” she coughed. “Aside from deadly venom?”

  “A variety of ingredients. In this distillation, the venom isn’t lethal; it’s curative.” His mouth twitched wolfishly. “Aim high.”

  Snofrid decided she’d pull through the brief question-free and shoved the glass away. The inkling that he wanted to punish her lingered. But punish her for what? Being a halfbreed? “Before we start, I want to talk about negotiating another trade,” she said.

  “I don’t do favors,” he informed, retaking his seat. “I have no desire to please people.”

  “A trade means we each get something,” she pointed out. “It’s not a favor.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “A phone call. I have to talk to someone outside the shield and you have tech that can penetrate it. I just need five minutes.”

  Ice was beginning to crust his hair. “Making the favor seem simple won’t convince me any better. Who do you need to reach outside the shield?”

  “His name is Atlas Bancroft. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “That’s not likely. In my experience men use women for pleasure or to complete tasks.”

  “In my experience men and women serve each other.”

  Hadrian braced his elbows on the table, his face taut with condescension. “Men permit women to think they have power purely as a means to control them. It’s an effective delusion, but men have defined history since the beginning, and they’ll define it at the end.”

  “You’re a stiff,” she accused.

  “That term means nothing to me.”

  “It means you think you’re superior and, therefore, have a right to oppress people.”

  Hadrian let silence fill up the chamber, his features so sanguine that the hair on her nape stood erect. He was proud of the accusation.

  “Relationships are a matter of psychological dominance and submission,” he explained, as if he were imparting an obvious principle. “There’s never a balance. The varying degrees depend upon the man’s or woman’s need to dominate. I have a need to dominate. In pursuing it, I grow to the fullness of my nature.”

  “And turn people into slaves like Hessia?”

  “I turned her into nothing,” he insisted. “She was always meant to serve. I merely helped her to become what she innately is.”

  Snofrid’s whole being rose up in opposition. He’d mistakenly assumed that these so-called innate slaves would never challenge subjugation, that they’d accept oppression. Her own experience proved him wrong. She would fight slavery again and again until she was free. “Is this the way Inborns think in the Empyrean City?”

  “It’s the way every animal with reason thinks, though some are more inclined to power than others.” Hadrian drummed a claw against the orb. “The story I’m going to tell you will prove that our need to dominate is a natural instinct.”

  “It’s probably some people’s instinct, yes, but not everyone’s.”

  “The people you’re referring to are the ones who submit to dominance. Enough. We proceed.”

  Hadrian rocked sideways and pitched the orb at one of the pools. White fog spun from the pool as the orb struck the water;
the fog formed a vortex over the pool, generating a roaring wind that slammed Snofrid back against the headboard of her chair. She covered her face.

  “Before we came to this world, Inborns stood unified in Armador,” Hadrian called above the turmoil. “All were submissive to the Five Lords until a Spectral named Invidia opposed their authority.”

  Snofrid whimpered as the wind grew hotter, burning her face like dragon’s breath.

  “Invidia needed a Necromancer host to master the six elements and become all-powerful. Invidia broke the Law of Spectral Possession and possessed the body of a young, Lambent Necromancer woman.”

  WHOOSH. The tornado blasted into a hundred tongues of smoke.

  Panting, Snofrid lowered her arms, her eyes darting about the chamber. The smoke was coalescing into colored shapes. Stretching, the shapes morphed into three-dimensional images that swayed, as if alive, above the pools. She saw a castle built on the slope of a volcano in the clouds; fiery birds flew over the castle ramparts, streaking past the war chamber walls and then dove into the water with a hiss. Above another pool, herds of purple forests were migrating into a desert, and fleets of ships, built as half-machine-half-creature, were warring on a red sea. Further down, multitudes of beasts were retreating into caves, and an ice fortress was melting in the heat of a giant orange sphere. The sphere’s light was flushing dark, spreading into black vapors, and destroying all that it touched.

  Screams erupted in the room so abruptly that Snofrid yelped. She shrank against her chair’s headboard. The scene was so lifelike that, for a moment, she questioned if she’d been physically transported into it. Bodies writhed all around her, melting into puddles under the giant sphere’s vapors. On the sea, horned beasts broke from rising black waves, splintering ships; and on land, Inborn army stood against Inborn army, spawning endless fields of carnage.

  “What is this?” she cried.

  “This is the blood of the Stygian War,” Hadrian told her. “The Stygian War is why Inborns left Armador.”

  CRACK. The images vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Snofrid looked at Hadrian, unblinking; fear crippled her tongue. She felt small, shrunken in the shadow of a sudden disturbing truth, one which she was in no way prepared to face. Cold enveloped her, cold like she’d never known, and it leeched her hope. For any species to forsake their planet was horrible, but this revelation was more terrible than what she’d ever imagined: Armador didn’t die by some natural plague; it was ruined by her own kind.

  “There is an abyss in Armador called Babadon,” Hadrian went on. “Invidia disappeared inside Babadon for nearly a year. When she climbed out, she was almighty, able to raise blackchant.”

  “What?” Snofrid panted. “No one has ever survived Babadon.”

  “No one, except Invidia.”

  Old terrors that had sent her cowering under her covers resurfaced. As a child, whenever she’d ordered Lycidius to tell her a bedtime story, he’d terrified her with tales of Babadon. He’d described Babadon as the open mouth of evil, the threshold that, once crossed, stripped a person of his ability to know right from wrong. Supposedly, even the vegetation that grew on its slopes was poisonous. But she wasn’t a child anymore and blackchant was no longer a story. It was real.

  “What is blackchant?” she asked.

  “Blackchant is almighty destruction. It feeds off chaos and grows more powerful as it devours.” He honed in on her wineglass disapprovingly. “You’ll take a drink of dragon-ale for asking this question.”

  Unregretful, she took up the glass and flinched when the vapors seared her nostrils. It can’t be worse than Lucian’s homemade vodka, she encouraged herself. She braved a small sip. The ale cooked her lips. Her tongue quivered as the ale fizzled like soda and then gushed down her throat. “Ah!” Standing, she wheezed hysterically for air. The boiling sensation sank low in her gut before it flash-fired up her chest. “Ah! M-my…” She thrust her head back, straining, choking a cry; she clenched her fists and burped flames.

  Hadrian watched the fire waft from her mouth with a smirk. “That was the worst spit I’ve ever seen. Roar next time.”

  “Beastcrap.” Snofrid scrubbed spicy saliva from her lips. “Dragon-ale isn’t hot like vodka; it’s hot like acid. Make me drink it again and I’m walking out of here.”

  “Choosing to remain ignorant rather than feeling a little pain tells me a lot about you.”

  “A little pain? My throat almost melted!”

  “It blisters the first few times, but not seriously. Drink some milk.” Hadrian sipped from his glass, savoring the taste, and, as he spoke, exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “I’m not finished. Sit down.”

  Bristling, she lowered herself into her chair, wondering what exactly his glass was filled with. It couldn’t be dragon-ale; he wasn’t even batting an eyelash.

  Hadrian set down his glass, and continued. “Throughout Armador’s history, all Inborns were submissive to the Lord Office, sometimes to the extent of slavery. Invidia promised Inbornkind an existence where Inborns would rule themselves without government and without natural laws. Despite being acknowledged as the fifth Inborn species, Spectrals were cast off and left to live on the outskirts of civilization. Most of them joined Invidia as revenge and started calling themselves the All-Steam Hunters. Thus, the Stygian War began.”

  “We should’ve seen it coming,” Snofrid said. “When an animal is abused, it always bites back.”

  He considered her keenly. “I sense a double-meaning. Are you suggesting that if I continue to use you for my own end, you’ll bite back?”

  “Yes.”

  He plunked down his glass, unaffected. “For me to act defensively, you would need to have teeth. Now sit quietly until I finish.”

  Snofrid squeezed the sides of her chair, knuckles burning white. “Yes, Commander.”

  “When the Spectral Lord joined Invidia, it caused the final turn in the Stygian War,” he went on.

  Snofrid followed his attention to the pools where gray swirls were rippling through the water. The swirls formed into a pair of towering, arched gates erected on a blue mountain peak.

  “Four years into the Stygian War, the Five Lords admitted defeat. But in knowing Invidia would never spare the millions who’d fought against her, they didn’t surrender—instead, they chose to run. Lycander Learyum, the Necromancer Lord at that time, raised a portal, allowing Inborns to cross into this world. But when Invidia’s army found the portal, Lycander sealed the door from this side.”

  Snofrid dropped the leaf to the floor, slack-mouthed. “That explains why some of our kind never made it across.”

  “It wasn’t just some,” Hadrian informed. “More than half of our species is still in Armador.”

  The sinking feeling that streaked her stomach gave her the sensation of falling. Nothing she could utter or think would fully encompass the horror of this fact. But she felt it—felt herself tumbling fast into sickening awareness: those left behind who hadn’t bowed to Invidia had likely been butchered, or worse—enslaved.

  Hadrian dispersed the images in the pool with a wave of his claw. “Four of the Lords agreed that allowing the portal to exist posed too much of a risk. Lycander alone disagreed. He believed it was wrong to destroy the portal, for it would condemn to death the millions of Inborns who’d been left behind. So he secretly hid the portal and shrouded it with a Concealing Spell. For nearly four years, Lycander didn’t reveal the portal’s location to anyone. Only his immediate family was aware of what he’d done. Eventually, however, his brother betrayed him. Lycander and his entire family—except for the betrayer—were executed. Before his death, Lycander infused his memory of the portal’s coordinates into a Spectral comrade.”

  Snofrid’s voice quavered. “The welx…or…the Spectral possessing the welx is Lycander’s comrade.”

  “His name is Nox Wolba,” Hadrian confirmed. “He consumed more than half of the welx’s mind and can’t abandon the beast. When we destroy the welx, Nox and th
e coordinates will be destroyed.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Not easy. Simple.”

  She sat back, her ears stiff with shock, feeling overcome. She’d already sworn to act as bait, so she told herself it shouldn’t matter why the welx was being hunted. But it did. When the risk was this high, it did.

  Before speaking, she mentally tailored her next question. “You haven’t mentioned the All-Steam Hunters.”

  “That counts as a question.”

  “It was an observation.”

  “It counts.”

  She cursed.

  “Thousands of All-Steam Hunters are trapped on Earth,” he answered. “They’ll slaughter Nox Wolba after he digests a third Halo and the portal coordinates will become visible in the welx’s blood. Then the All-Steam Hunters will invite Invidia into this world.”

  “Nox Wolba must care that Invidia might be freed,” she reasoned. “It will affect every living creature on this planet.”

  “Nox cares for nothing,” Hadrian countered. “He went rogue after the Learyum Massacre and has no loyalties now. If he could, he’d starve himself, but having inhabited a beast host, it’s nearly impossible for him not to feed. He won’t commit suicide either because he’s a coward.”

  At the foul taste of this insight, Snofrid wanted to vomit. “I see why you’re readying for a war,” she realized. “You’re going to go up against the All-Steam Hunters for the welx.”

  “Don’t concern yourself with the All-Steam Hunters. My Dracuslayers will deal with them.”

  “I don’t doubt your Dracuslayers’ competence, but if the All-Steam Hunters were to attack during the hunt, who will kill the welx?”

  Hadrian contemplated her as if she were excrement. “That’s not your concern, halfbreed.”

  Snofrid sat motionless, and, for a long while, they stared at one another, communicating dislike and intimidation.

  Suddenly Hadrian rose, sweeping aside his cloak. “The Coyote will come for you tomorrow morning at 0800 hours. We’ll negotiate a trade for the phone call.” He rammed a cork into the dragon-ale bottle. “But ignore my call one more time and I’ll have the Coyote beat you with his staff. That you’re a woman is irrelevant when you’re under my command.”