"I don't understand," I say.
"After your accident, the World-Killer disappeared. Perhaps he understood the magnitude of what he had done. Maybe it was simpler than that, and he was afraid. By all rights, he should be. But he made a deal with the Council, which is the only reason you are still not in that hospital bed."
"What sort of deal?"
Siskett asks me to help him to his feet. The old man winces as I oblige him, finding balance after a moment and hobbling alongside me.
"I'm alright, child. As to the deal, it is not my place to reveal these things to you. I am just an old man who has been here too long, susceptible to carrying too many secrets. I am sure all will be revealed in time. There is something, however, I would ask of you."
"What is it?"
Siskett stops, leaning on my arm for further support on our way back to the God's Road. The Maester groans with each step, worsening with every second he spends here.
"It has been my great pleasure to serve Atlas all these years. I have been here so long, my hair has gone three shades of grey, two shades of white and I've amassed more aches and pains than I can shake a bloody stick at.
"I am having a party of sorts. A small get- together. Some friends, and nothing more. Would you come?"
I have never been a social person, often choosing to hole up in some sort of confined space, drinking wine or pouring over paperwork. Christmas parties never missed me, because I've never been to one. Friends were a scarce commodity past the age of ten, and my only companions afterward were Maya and Death.
At one point, Tim took her too.
"Of course," I smile. "Would be my pleasure."
We part, with Siskett limping back to the Cathedral on his own. I drift toward the God's Road. Part of me yearns to return to God City, with its quaint little houses and friendly faces dispersed throughout the district. That same part yells at me to avoid places like Devil's Corner and Stone Mountain (hell, even the Obelisk and Seat). But indulging in the nicer parts of this city, while disregarding its ugliness.
All my answers lie in the darkness Atlas hides. If I'm not careful, it may very well devour me whole.
CHAPTER NINE
The gathering for Maester Siskett is held— to nobody's surprise— in the Cathedral district. Luca and I have passed through it, zipping between various areas of the Atlas, at least ten times. Its central location between the northeast and west makes it an ideal shortcut from one district to another, but this is the first time I've seen the old church up close.
Just prior to the gathering, I found myself in God City— wandering the small market, admiring its status symbols for sale. Everyone in Atlas is beyond biological function. There are no racks of meat or smell of overripe fruit pervading the scenery. There's no faint smell of sewage, wafting from some backwoods district. Instead, the wooden stalls hocked jewels and fake dragonskin armor. It looked more like newt skin than dragon, despite its merchant’s assurances it was real. My hands traced its rough textures, not a scale or sign of supreme reptilian beings in its makeup, but I politely declined.
"Smart," Luca said from behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Jesus. You scared the shit out of me! How did you know where I was?"
"Wasn't hard. You seemed pretty enamored when we passed through here before. Piece of advice— anyone who tells you they've seen a dragon in the last four thousand years, or wants to sell you something to do with dragons, is selling you lies."
"I will keep that in mind," I said. We gravitated away from the corner market, back between the rows of brightly colored houses. "Where did you disappear to?"
"Updating the High Priestess. She fancies you, you know."
"Does she?"
We passed through the gates of God City, back onto Atlas' central road. The people here are a mix between the mutts of Devil's Corner, intermingling with Royal Guards and a small injection of God City folk.
"Be careful around that one, Ramona."
"Yeah," I said. "Seems like a shady figure."
"Shady is putting it lightly. Seraphina has ambitions that extend beyond the Nephalim. Their ostracization has only seen those ambitions boiled in resentment. Tread carefully."
"Thanks. So, what's the next step?"
"The Council is still debating the next step. The Maesters have requested our presence for Siskett's little party. The Council themselves will be present, as is customary when a Maester meets the White Light."
I should have guessed. The way Siskett moved and spoke— as if something greater than I could see ailed him— should have been a red flag.
"Is that what's happening?"
"Yes. Siskett's final assignment was to retrieve you from Earth, and bring you to Atlas. Since the Nephalim uprising, the Maesters have been pulling double duty researching ways to protect the Council. Siskett has aged quicker than normal."
"I see. Where are we on Hardwick?"
"I am sure," Luca replies, "the Council will strike some sort of agreement with the Arbiters, and he will be released into our custody."
Part of me regrets not leaving that monster in that prison to rot for all time. Knowing I will have to babysit my former nemesis leads to the question of whether I can kill him after this is over— inflict one final round of retribution.
That's not who I am.
But when it comes to Hardwick, I am no longer entirely sure, any more than I am that the man who calls himself Death is worthy of exoneration.
***
The Cathedral of Atlas is an interesting structure. Destroyed in the invasion by Ziz during the First Age, and rebuilt in the Second, it stands out like a sore thumb among other districts and buildings the city's original architects seemed fond of. It is brick, rather than iron. It has turrets, rather than towers. Its stained glass windows don't depict angels or God or the fucking Virgin Mary, but the passage of time beyond its windows. The massive church's interior is awash in gargoyles and angels statues who would protect Atlas from such darkness, were the streets not soaked in it.
It is here that Maester Siskett will meet the White Light— whatever that entails. The room is filled with a garden-variety of the Atlas's denizens. The Council are seated at an oval table that has been pulled over the drab green carpet running up the room's center, draping the steps before arriving at a sept few openly worship. Several Maesters and the common rabble are assembled around them. Their members are more life-sized here, and I can't help wondering if they are projecting themselves into the modest chairs, paling in comparison to their thrones. Apollo dozes, as usual, but there are only four chairs instead of five.
The mystery of the missing god continues.
The walk from the Cathedral’s giant iron doors to the top of the room is filled with people. Even in the realm of the dead, old habits die hard. I stick close to Luca as he cuts up the crowd to where Maester Siskett is seated behind the Council. There is not a plate of food or wafting smell resembling it. The people of Atlas converse, but not over food or sweets. None of the Council takes part in such vanity. Venicia comes closest, having swapped out her usual red dress for a white one. She looks bored, affixed beside the snoring Apollo. Muerkher appears unimpressed as the Habinar boasts to lowly immortals gathered around his end of the table.
"Bless the stars! I cried," the Habinar says— a group of children have gathered round, mothers watching from afar. "When that Nephalim rose up, so did the Habinar. I retrieved my axe and struck down those who tried to storm the palace!"
Luca looks away from the bragging god, steering to Venicia's end of the table. The Habinar continues, enticing the rabble of Atlas with tales of the Second Age's end.
"It was there, their leader sought a showdown with the Council. We had bestowed heavenly privilege upon him, and this was how he repaid us? No, the Habinar does not stand for such betrayal!"
Like Luca, the serpent woman has little patience for the Habinar's romanticized history. But his voice booms louder than the silence that follows it
, and we must wait until he finishes speaking.
"I challenged Tomas, the Nephalim who would overthrow us, to explain himself. And he could not, other than drawing his weapon against us! Such are explanations of the weak, children. If you must fight a war with swords, it is because you have no wits to fight a war of words!
"He drew his sword, I drew mine. We clashed. I'll admit," the Habinar says solemnly, "Tomas almost got the best of us that day. Weren't it for Gabriel, Tomas' brother-in-blood, we might have perished! The sword struck the ax from my hand. Gabriel wielded it, and drove it through his brother-in-blood!"
The children cheer loudly, then settle, and we are able to speak with Venicia without competing for volume.
"Ah," the goddess says. "The Council's newest Nephalim. So glad you could make an appearance, Ramona. Luca."She eyes the son of Tomas. "That must have been hard to hear."
Luca shakes his head.
"Old history, nothing more. Has the Council decided on a course of action?"
"Yes," Muerkher says, eavesdropping. "There was a great deal of debate, but the decision was made to release Mr. Hardwick into the Nephalim's custody. How he is utilized, handled and what ultimately happens to him rests with Ramona."
Bad decision. Placing Stephen Hardwick's eternal judgment in my hands brings back all the deception and evil one man can embody. Making a mental note for later, I allow the Fire Man to continue.
"The next step will be identifying this woman who came to visit your prisoner. It is mutually agreed she could have been leaving a message of some kind, and its recipient was intended to be you."
"The Maesters are already looking into it," Venicia adds. "Once this business with Siskett has passed, the matter will have their full attention."
Before we can continue, the air grows cold. It flows up the Cathedral's center like a sharp winter wind piercing D.C. in January, arriving like long, slender fingers caressing my shoulder.
"Of course," Muerkher mutters.
Creeping up behind us, the Nephalim High Priestess dons a stunning green dress with golden planks fanning out behind her head. Her smile is twisted as the cold working its way down to where petty darkness lives between my legs, mocking its mere existence.
"Seraphina," Venicia smiles, but the gesture is accompanied by clasped, diplomatic hands. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
The voice that reaches my ears is a high-pitched whine, reigniting my gut feeling that this woman is terrible news.
"A Maester meets the White Light, and you don't invite the old guard anymore, serpent woman? You consolidate all of the Nephalim's power into this...doll?"
"Don't tell me you're jealous, Seraphina?"
The High Priestess scoffs.
"Some nerve. Nevermind it was a Nephalim who saved you! Gabriel risked everything to protect you ungrateful gods, and look what has happened! We are cast out, exiled— forced to watch you replace us from afar! Isn't that right?"
"Gabriel turned out to be a traitor as well, if I recall," Venicia snipes. The snakes on her head eye Seraphina out one side, snapping their jaws malevolently.
"How dare you! Ungrateful gods! That's all you are! How about rebuilding from within? How about paying the dues of those who bled for you?"
A hand reaches out, grabbing the High Priestess' flailing wrist. Luca pulls her arm down— Seraphina glares at him in disbelief, yanking the hand back.
"Don't touch me, boy! You are not even Nephalim! It was your flesh and blood who got us into this mess— a petty little boy who is outlawed, exiled!"
"Yes," Luca says. "Just like you."
"I am no such thing!" Seraphina protests. "I am the Nephalim's High Priestess! Its functional leader! And yet, I've been cast out! Cast out by an earthling bitch and her pet outlaw, backed by a group of ungrateful gods!"
"Luca," Venicia smiles. "Please see the High Priestess out."
***
Some time after Luca escorts Seraphina from the gathering— she screams and yells insults the whole way out the door— Maester Siskett clinks an empty glass. The Habinar, whose exuberant recountings of Atlas history have dropped off, cranes his shrunken neck to look back at the transept where the elder is perched. Candles around the room are blown out as silence befalls the church. Luca and I remain off to the side as the raspy-voiced scholar begins his final speech, his face illuminated by Muerkher’s glow below him. I lock eyes with Maester Barrett, stationed closer to the Cathedral's elevated perch where Siskett stands, and we share a nod.
"Thank you all for coming," Siskett says; his voice is clear throughout the church, settling into the history of great speeches and sermons likely uttered long before his. "You know, I have been doing this job for somewhere in the quadruple digits, if we're reduced to speaking in years.
"It was all those millennia ago, a very old friend came to me," Siskett explains, smiling at Barrett, "and asked if I would help him build an Order that could inform the Council of whispers between stars plotting against them. We would have to search the universe, Creation permitting, for the answers that could afford this realm protection.
"I am glad to have accepted. It has been a fruitful journey. It was not perfect! Like any profession, there are members who would undermine its reputation with foulness mistaken for righteousness."
Siskett clears his throat. All eyes are on him— an old man at the tail end of Creation, being called home. In the complacent quiet, he wipes a tear away.
"We have learned a great many lessons together! We have faltered, and learned together! And when the White Light calls us home, it understands why we fought for our vision— why we stayed behind. So to you all, I give my parting advice;
"Remember the lessons of the Second Age. What transpired may have been inevitable. The demon Ziz is everywhere. It was on us to be vigilant in every corner we hold. We were not, and suffered terrible losses within our camp. But we held the line, and overcame it— a reminder to never disregard the darkness, which would see this realm dislodged from the universe's workings."
Just as my mind wanders, wondering when the main event will come, an odd sensation shifts the ground beneath my feet. Siskett continues his farewell speech, and I contemplate whether events of the last few days have me hallucinating.
Two things dispel that notion. First, the dead or undead souls of Atlas have no need for sleep. Even if I felt the impulse to rest my head, I am unsure whether I would drift off at all. The people of Atlas are perpetually on their feet— glaring in a window of one of the Dr. Suess-like houses in God City, there wasn't any furniture to sit, a table to eat, or any sign of beds. I have seen peasants in Devil's Corner, but nobody slept in the corner, other than the baby on his mother's breast.
The second confirmation arrives in a shared glance with Luca. Neither Barrett or the Council members notice. Nobody in the crowd does a double take, either. Siskett continues rambling as the inquisitive staring contest with my angel companion intensifies.
"And when the White Light calls thee home, thou shalt look back at thy home, and assess its safety!" the old man recites. Another shift under our collective feet causes Barrett to look up from the floor, and Muerkher glances around.
Whispers travel the crowd, asking about a storm in the forecast. The pit of my stomach lines up with Siskett's enthused, raspy preaching, and I can no longer fight the knife in its lining, stabbing butterflies floating inside it.
Something terrible is about to happen.
"We have to evacuate," I tell Luca. "Now!"
Atop his perch, Siskett is so caught in his sermon— so focused on the White Light that will steal him from this world, bring him home to repentance— he doesn't see the turning heads or hear the Council members' whispers to each other.
"What was that?" asks someone in the crowd.
"Is that an earthquake?"
"Something is behind the Cathedral!"
"And White Light!" Siskett screams, raising his robed arms to the turrets above. "Grant us reprieve!"
The
elder’s final plea is cut short by an avalanche of breaking bricks and shattering stained glass in the wall behind him. I am not sure which takes him out— the assembly of debris pouring inward at fatal velocity, or the enormous scaled paw that kicked it inward, stomping down where the old man stood. The foot is attached to massive shoulders which break apart the wall further up as a pair of yellow eyes follows the claws inside. People scream and flee at massive webbed wings with the span of a Boeing 747 folding in on themselves as the creature squeezes between the widening gap of its own making.
The Council is gone, confirming my projection theory— it's a good thing too, because the crumbling Cathedral's pieces plunge several feet, crumpling the center of the oval table they were gathered. It snaps in half, buckling toward the ground in the center, a large brick broken within its disaster.
I could have made out the accusations and labels of Atlas citizens, fleeing toward the door, but the world has slowed. This monster makes all the ones who came before it pale as its cat-like eyes focus on Luca and I.
The angel slowly draws his broadsword, holding it level with both hands, blade edge at an outward angle.
Without a weapon, I am frozen.
The dragon leans forward on its front haunches. Warm air pours from quarter-sized nostrils that dance and ripple around their edges. Pulling back, it arches its neck upward and screams, backing away into an attack position. Like a lion ready to pounce on its prey, the dragon begins a graceless trot in our direction, spreading its massive wings.
"It's a Behemoth!" my companion exclaims, backing in the opposite direction. "It's going to destroy the Cathedral—“
Luca darts left as the beast plows between us. I cut right, smashing into a pillar on the room's eastern side. The Behemoth charges into the opposite wall, sending more bricks tumbling down. The structure groans. I spot Maester Barrett across the room, crawling on elbows and knees. Siskett's body is lost in the rubble— against my better judgement, I break to save Barrett.
Pulling itself from the jimmy of bricks and collapsing stone, the dragon bleeds from its neck. In the corner of my eye, Luca drives his sword into the Behemoth’s side with a scream. It matches the sound several octaves higher, backhanding Luca, sending him flying into the wall Barrett crawls towards.
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