by Cate Corvin
I looked at him in surprise, hardly noticing that the stairs had ended. “Three decades? But what does that have to do with… with me…” My words trailed off.
Three decades. My sense of time had become a little warped since my mortal death, but I’d only belonged to Heaven for three years. I’d been somewhere in my twenties when I’d died.
“Yes.” The Chainling looked up at me again, full in the face. “It was before the Apocalypse, before the razing of the earth. A mortal was born. The Chain already knew where her links led.”
I swallowed hard, my heart pounding in my throat. “How could you have known about me if you were in Hell and I wasn’t?”
The Chainling motioned towards an arched obsidian doorway. “We only had the vaguest knowledge that there was someone on earth who would become very important to the Chain, and that one day, she would join us. The Chain’s joy became our joy. And it was only by following the faintest of signs, the tiniest of omens, that we finally found you.”
I peered nervously through the archway, my feet frozen in place.
What would communing with the all-knowing links of the universe be like? I only had my own small experience, and the idea of joining with something that had known about my life from the moment of my birth seemed like it would be too much.
But the answers lay on the other side of that arch. If I could join the Chain, even for a few brief moments, I might find something. All roads had led me to this time and place.
I steeled myself and finally forced my feet to take a step, then another. I passed the Chainling, walking into a darkness so complete it was like being swallowed by a void.
But this void, unlike Azazel’s, was not full of stars to light my way. It was complete and utter blackness, swallowing even the Chainling’s candle flame until it sputtered out.
I found myself unconsciously holding my breath, like breathing in this place would draw some of that endless darkness into myself.
Then there was a brief flare of light, a soft glow lighting the way like a beacon. I forced myself to walk sedately, not hurrying towards the welcoming light. If the Chain really wanted me, it wouldn’t harm me.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from the Chainlings’ temple, but I finally stepped out of that dark tunnel and into a forest of silver.
Chains, of all metals and colors, hung from the ceiling. Some of them hung limp and straight, but others were moving, twining around each other like snakes, giving off faint clinks like music.
I watched in fascination as a gold chain wove itself lovingly around a dark iron one, the links melding together to form an endless loop. Then, with a sharp crack of breaking metal, the rest of the gold chain broke away, leaving a few gleaming gilt loops on the end of the iron.
The Chainling stepped up to my shoulder. “We’re in a holy place, my Lady. It senses your presence.”
That was easy enough to tell. As soon as I’d walked into the temple, many of the chains had stopped in their wandering and began to reach for me. It almost like I was walking through a nest of metal snakes as the Chainling led me forward, moving carefully around the chains to avoid being ensnared in them.
The room itself was a large, rough rectangle, but there was a raised dais of obsidian at the end, obscured by the chain forest. Chainlings sat around it in circles, their hands linked together, some of them silent and others muttering under their breath. A little velvet cushion rested on top of the dais, with something dull nestled on its surface.
I squinted through a wreath of incense smoke, taking another step forward. “What is that?” I asked, speaking low so no one but my guide would hear me.
He followed my gaze. “All we have left of our first queen. Her bracelet. The links of silver were… appropriate.”
The Chainlings were starting to sit up, hoods turning in our direction. I hesitated again, feeling pinned by their gazes in a way I’d never felt before.
Possibly because I’d never understood the why of them, or the force they worshipped. In this temple, it felt like the chains were pulling at my soul.
Two of the Chainlings closest to the dais unlinked their hands and moved apart. Another brought a black cushion and laid it on the floor between them before resuming her place in the endless line.
“My Lady.” My guide motioned to the cushion. “It’s time to join us in communion.”
This was it, the place the High Priestess had guided me to. I felt like I had no choice but to step forward and settle myself on the cushion, folding my legs beneath me and looking up at the dais.
The Chainling to my left took my hand, being careful not to prick my palm with his claws, but the one to my right had a softer, slightly calloused hand like mine. I was oddly grateful that my hands were dry instead of clammy.
My guide leaned over my shoulder. “Don’t fight it,” he said softly, almost in a whisper. “Let it guide you. It means no harm.”
With that, he vanished into the circles of Chainlings that made up the links. They shuffled around to make room for the new addition to their ranks.
And then there was silence. I stared up at the dais with the rest of them but saw nothing but ranks of hooded heads against the softly flickering lanterns. The minutes passed in silence as I attempted to meditate with something I didn’t entirely understand.
The scent of incense was so much stronger down here, making my head swim a little. I felt Sarai flip around, a soft, burbling feeling in my stomach, but then she went quiet, too.
Then it happened.
The hum that had been building in my bones, an almost imperceptible tug at my heart, intensified until I felt almost seasick, like I was being pulled out of my skin and off the floor.
But I felt the pillow beneath me, the solidity of the ground. I was still in the temple of the Chain… and yet somehow, my soul was being pulled out of me, exhaled on my breath and spiraling into the swirls of incense overhead.
The Chainlings’ chanting grew stronger, a murmur that built on the echoes of itself until it sounded like distant thunder.
My head spun. The entire room swam, and I closed my eyes to reel in the dizziness, to block out the sight of the chains weaving like snakes and the flash of eyes in the dim light.
I exhaled again, feeling the tug in my chest shift and move, and the Chain ripped me away.
11
Melisande
I tore upwards, ripped straight out of my body and into the stone overhead.
The temple flashed by, followed by the arena, and the Chain yanked me through Dis, bits and pieces of everything flashing by. It felt like it was wrapped around my incorporeal body, holding me tightly bound as I raced along invisible paths.
Tiny glints of light caught my eye as I exploded through Dis, straight through buildings, demons, and into the desert. I was sure I was screaming, my lungs exploding from the lack of air, but all I heard was the wind rushing by.
The little sparks of light grew brighter, tracing the pathways, and I realized what I was seeing.
Chains.
Chains everywhere, long, short, connecting demons and places. Some were gold, others silver, iron, ebonite… it wasn’t a forest, but a massive tangled web, so dense that once I realized I could focus on seeing them, almost everything else was obliterated by their light.
Some of them extended far into the sky overhead, but the Chain that had a grip on me kept pulling me further and further from Dis, far from being able to see where they went.
The air tightened around me, becoming almost thick like glue, but still I flew through everything, seeing slivers of time long after the fact: a god of night reaching for the stars, a goddess crying a river into existence, a woman with golden hair, stripping off her jewelry and clothes as she passed under seven arches in a wasteland darker than Dis…
The wastelands vanished as I zipped and jerked through the massive web, riding the links to who knew where, and suddenly there was green everywhere. Green grass, leaves on trees, a blue sky with the sun overhead�
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My chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the Chain itself when I realized what I was seeing. It was a world I thought I’d never see again.
Earth.
Earth as it was before the Apocalypse, before the final days when blood filled the rivers and oceans, before everything was eaten to dust, before Wormwood fell and the bodies piled like mountains…
My eyes burned, but there were no tears in this incorporeal body. Just a tight, deep ache in my throat as the Chain pulled me over dense forests and the true sun shone on me.
It was like a painting, this Earth, so real I could reach out and touch it, and yet such a distant memory it couldn’t possibly be real. It was only a relic, a leftover vision from the time before.
The Chain tightened around me gently, squeezing my chest like it meant to comfort me.
The sun glittered off the windows of skyscrapers in the distance, and before I knew it the forest below had vanished, giving way to towns, to sparkling blue water, to houses lit with warm light.
A faint memory tickled at me, but it was gone as the Chain ripped me through a building of glass and cement.
As I blew through one of the rooms, I saw a woman in a chair. Her face was so familiar, and a sharp stab of pain went through my heart at her expression as she looked down at the tiny baby she was holding.
Before I could peer any closer, I felt myself shift in midair, reality warping around me.
I slid onto another fragment of Chain, the links pulling me away from these old memories I had no recollection of.
I was ripped backwards, away from the hospital and the houses and trees, and into another time and place.
The leaves of Earth were painted in warm golds and rich oranges, piling up along the cracked pavement of streets. A girl with long black hair looked up at the sky, shielding her eyes against the glare of the autumn sun. The woman with the loving face was only steps behind her. “Rebecca-” she said, and then her voice was cut off, as though a pane of glass had slammed down between me and them,
My stomach flipped as the Chain reversed again, pulling in yet another incomprehensible direction.
Olive drab. Marching legs. Waving flags of red, white, and blue.
I remembered this, a little.
They were all so young, these new recruits. All the human soldiers marching down the street, their parents cheering madly for them. They thought they were going to make a difference, to give up some of their years to honorable service and come home.
There was the little girl again, an adult this time, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, her cheeks still full from being well-fed and happy.
I wasn’t sorry when the Chain pulled me away, far from this memory that ended in nothing but heartache and despair. But it wasn’t over yet.
Olive drab. Camouflage, netting, dark oily guns in soft, unproven hands.
The sky was no longer blue. The young soldiers, hardly more than children the longer I saw them, falling by the dozen. The last line of defense as the sky went black with ash, as the sound of Heaven’s trumpets deafened them and made blood pour from their ears, the screaming… the distant flare of red on the horizon of the mass bonfires where they burned the bodies.
They were all starving now, their cheeks gaunt. Their eyes were no longer innocent, glazed and distant as they aimed and fired at an enemy they’d never be able to kill.
The Chain pulled me upwards, away from the battlefield where we’d lost all hope. Into the sky, no longer blue but forever choked with ash and flame, and away from the stench of the burn-pits.
It was terrible to see the Earth this way, from high above. The Horsemen were riding, Conquest cutting his way ever closer, War herding the dregs of humanity with his dogs, Pestilence walking through cities and people dropping around him, and Death… he was ahead of the others with his scythe, reaping the souls that stood there like dumb sheep and stared at their doom riding them down.
It’d been hopeless, all of it.
The Chain yanked me through time again. The forts were gone, the land scorched black, and not even vultures came to circle the air over the killing fields.
The angels descended with a brilliance that cut through the destruction and illuminated how terrible it had been. I watched Gabriel stoop over a woman’s body, peer into her face… and smile as he pulled her silent, numb soul forward and into a new shell.
The new angel blinked at him, her black hair like pitch against the snowy white of her new wings.
“Don’t-” I tried to whisper, but my mouth wouldn’t work. The Chain kept my words bound inside my throat; this was the past, a place where I couldn’t interfere.
He took the angel’s hand and flew upwards, and the Chain dragged me after them.
Somewhere in the back of my dazed mind, I wondered if it would skip away from the history I knew and show me the past I hadn’t been alive for… the cursed slice of time when God was killed.
For a moment I thought I’d gotten my wish; there was no sign of myself or Gabriel, and the gleaming gold and ivory towers of Heaven were nothing compared to the tower in the center. The throne room of God.
I held my breath, waiting for the horrible moment when Gabriel had ensured humanity’s destruction.
But I saw nothing except chains. Golden chains spiraling from the tower in every direction, connected to everything… and then I was falling again.
Downwards, another steep plummet like my fall, the wind whipping tears into my eyes and my hair behind me like a comet.
I forced myself to keep them open as we plummeted back to Hell, the wastelands rising up to greet me, but before we hit the sand the Chain leveled off. I felt myself jerked away from Dis again.
Over the Fields of Asphodel. Over barren lands and dark seas, into places where nothing grew and even the sun seemed burned black.
But there was a light despite the darkness. A thin golden thread, no more than a filament, stretching ahead of me.
I forced myself to look down, and saw it was connected to me, growing from the dark mate mark over my chest. Two others extended from my palm and wrist, one a brilliant silver and the other deep scarlet. I was sure if I could see my back, there would be a glowing violet line as well, leading far back to Azazel.
Wherever they were… the Chain was pulling me along so fast I could barely make out where I was in the darkness, relying only on the sense of the links around me to hold me in place. They were an anchor in this endless dark.
And then the sun returned, pale and faded. The land opened up beneath me, revealing the high, sharp peaks of a mountain range like jagged teeth against a gray sky.
Ash rained down softly, landing on the rocks in large flakes and covering everything like snow. I held onto the thin golden chain like a lifeline, refusing to let go even for an instant. It led deeper into this terrible place.
The mountains dipped down into valleys so steep I couldn’t see the bottoms, only endless chasms. The Chain pulled me over several withered trees sticking up from the soil like skeletons, and then I saw it.
It took my breath away in fear, my body clenching up tight even though I wasn’t technically real at the moment, only a specter of myself.
Still, I couldn’t stop all of my senses from clamoring in terror, because I had no weapon, and he was here.
It was the Dragon, stretched out in a valley far below. He was so enormous that he made the chasms look small, his putrid scarlet and green flesh squeezed down into one of the voids. His wings were curled up tight against his back, and several of his heads appeared to be sleeping, their eyelids tightly shut.
One of them was perched on a rocky outcropping, rancid steam spiraling from his nostrils. But the golden chain I held… it led down there.
For the first time, I was afraid to go after one of my men. The creature that had tried to take everything was there, only yards away.
But I couldn’t stay away. The Chain had brought me here for a reason, and I was no coward. I didn’t need
the Sword.
This time I resisted the Chain, fighting to go downwards and tugging on the golden chain with all my strength. It tightened around me, but let me go, giving off a sense of exasperation as I did so.
Sorry, but I didn’t come this far for nothing, I thought to it. Lucifer was here, and if he was alive and well, then maybe Vyra was, too…
I touched down on solid ground, my feet sinking right through a thick carpet of ash. I left no footsteps as I followed the golden line, keeping it looped around my wrist so I wouldn’t lose my way.
It led down a narrow ledge cut into the side of a mountain and onto a flat expanse that overlooked the Dragon’s sleeping form. I shuddered as Satan’s enormous back rose and fell with even breaths, his scales catching the light and glinting like he was painted in fresh blood.
There was a cavern, the mouth wide and sharp, and all the ash had been disturbed. It was built up in piles to the side, leaving a clear walkway for whoever lived here.
My golden chain stretched into that cavern, and my heart thumped unevenly as it grew warmer in my hands.
Lucifer walked out, his eyes on the sky, tattoos still shining crimson like a pagan warrior of Heresy. I gripped the chain so tightly my palms ached, even if they weren’t real, and took a step forward.
He walked right by me, out to the ledge. His wings were so dark that they seemed to soak up all the light around him, dim as it was.
I glanced into the darkness of the cave, but there was no sign of anyone else. My stomach flipped at the thought of Vyra being gone, but I had no idea how long the Chain would let me linger here.
I had at least one of them in my sights, and I meant to do what I could before it pulled me back to my body.
I tugged myself forward hand over hand, fighting the Chain’s insistence, and the fact that the closer I got to Lucifer, the harder it was to move. It was like the air had solidified, stopping me from going any further.
I gritted my teeth and pulled harder. The smaller chain bit into my hands, but I ignored the pain, taking dragging breaths against the solidity of the air.
