Atlas

by Nicholas Gagnier

  “Kill them!”

  The world is drowned out by the second dragon giving chase. Thick foot pads crack the road, its wings cutting into house corners as I dart away from them. Every dead heartbeat flays my throat cutting along the Seat’s protective outer wall. The Behemoth’s haunches bash its structural integrity — not breaking it apart like the comparably flimsy houses behind us, but crumpling its reinforced exterior, slipping and sliding on cobblestone to keep up with me.

  Rounding the Seat, my destination lies through a little arch that will eventually open up to the Arena. Leaving the rounded wall’s flank is the closest the Behemoth comes to stomping me, diverging in front of its final, terrifying gains.

  In my peripheral vision, the gold cobblestones are cracked and concave inward from the dragon’s momentum. Passing through the arch’s alleged safety, I turn a hard left, lest the storm of exploding brick and stone and plaster rain down on me. Throwing myself to the ground at the base of the district’s wall, I cover my head with both hands, bracing for the typhoon.

  An angry blast of debris collapses under the Behemoth’s entrance, sprinkled all the way to the Arena’s southern-facing gate where the trap is laid.

  It’s up to Tim now. The distance between the arch and the gate is about fifty feet — a stone pathway where the Brotherhood carted us toward it earlier is awash in remains of the district wall. The dragon cannot stop its velocity breaking through. With my eyes still firmly closed where the debris storm fell overhead, most of what happens next is heard not seen.

  The Behemoth plows through the Arena’s southern wall, but does nowhere near the amount of damage required to level it altogether. What does collapse — a small section of the south stands— is old and gives easily. The beast disappears inside the ring leaving a cloud of dust behind it.

  The creature’s roar emanates through the district as it comes under attack inside the Arena. Its shrieking protests are followed by a skyward cone of flame unleashed from its unseen mandible, and joined by human cries of those caught in the blast.

  The struggling dragon’s kin enter overhead, wingspans in the double digits as gusts of warm air follow them toward the Behemoth under duress.

  A figure with blond hair is tossed over the wreckage, landing in the Arena’s outer grounds with a limp roll. Luca’s chiseled face is bruised and bloody, and followed by Mykul’s hulking steps over the knee-high carcass of a twelve-foot wall. He is followed by Seraphina and Barrett; the High Priestess glides in behind the warrior, sapped with horror at the destruction.

  The dragon’s brothers and sisters arrive on the open roof’s circular precipice like a flock of pigeons, but they are not harmless birds, they are the true World-Killers. There are at least eight, though more circle above, varying hues of blue and green but united in their affinity for spewing flame. Crowded around each other but making space for all to fit, I realize we don’t stand a motherfucking chance.

  The phalanx of flame bears down on the Arena’s occupants. Screams replacing the captive Behemoth’s fill the sky like they do my blood, with horror and sickness and regret.

  Avalon. Elion and the other Magi whose names I never bothered to learn. Tim, although he was supposedly in dark form, likely survived. Demetrius and the entire Crimson League.

  And Luca, whose blackened eyes and bloody face is lost to these events. Mykul stands guard over him— for the first time, the warrior cracks a gratified smile.

  Hannah clasps hands at her waist as the dragons’ exhale ends. A plume of black air rises from ground zero. The Behemoths tire of being crowded together and launch themselves into the sky as the blond woman’s head slowly turns to where I’m still on my stomach, having barely avoided death yet again. My clothes are caked in white dust. Her cold stare falls on me, but the smile — the wretched, wicked grin that I’m not sure how Death ever loved— is gone.

  And I’m not sure which version of Tim’s wife scares me more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Darkness.

  My eyes open to its vastness. Like standing in a rowboat, I look at the sky, expecting the full moon or North Star to light the way for nocturnal travellers. But there are no constellations— no Orion or Big Dipper, no Jupiter on a clear night or sunrise poking out behind the clouds.

  There is only darkness; it was the first cosmic force to show up to work, and will be the last to leave, turning off the Light once Hell has collected its coat.

  There aren’t many good explanations for the uniform shadows of my surroundings. I can’t see the tips of wiggling fingers, but feel the iron clamps holding my arms to an uncomfortable surface under my back. I can’t see clothes, only the pale hint of my white belly, and feel cold across my exposed skin.

  Like darkness, nudity is universal, and the chill of a hollow room is unforgiving to my shivering core. It tickles my bare ribs, nestling in the bones of my arms and legs, fastened to a rough veneer that feels like plywood under my shoulders.

  How did I get here?

  The Arena.

  We confronted Tim’s wife. It ended badly — most of the resistance was wiped out, torched alive by Behemoths. Hannah and her underlings looked on, and there was no more protest or sound from the Arena’s interior.

  After that, I was dragged to damnation, kicking and screaming, pounding my fists on Mykul’s beefy back plate, making chuffed music of the rhythm with which I yelled and fought him. He carried me effortlessly over his shoulder. My feet kicked at his breastbone, hoping to wind him. The warrior’s free hand pulled Luca behind us, yanked over the cobbles on his back. His head bounced left to right as his skull caught on the damaged road.

  The inhumane Frankenstein’s monster was unfazed by either Luca’s weight or my struggle. But Hannah wasn’t, quickly commanding her champion to silence me. With the return of rational thought comes sharp pain on my jawline.

  The black density is more than darkness. It must be. Even in the darkest recesses of Earth, human eyes begin to see outlines of sanity. Worst case, hearing and other senses take on extracurricular duties. Darkness is artificial here, force-fed through tubes in every pore, pumping me full of it. But this sensory deprivation can also tell me things the Light is deafened to.

  My mind can only imagine one place in Atlas where it can exist in complete lawlessness, as the master of its own universe; the only place on this side of the Shroud that welcomes darkness as much as it rejects Light.

  Stone Mountain.

  My back tenses and palms sweat, lungs hyperventilating through a better part of the revelation’s impact. The single experience I have here — as Luca and I bartered with Hardwick for his freedom, in exchange for intel that dragons had returned to the supreme realm—does not spell an easy escape.

  For the first time in a while, I allow myself to access the mental dossier with Hardwick’s name, replaying our first exchange since Washington in the Shadow Commons’ creepy, grayscale park grounds. Nevermind anything to do with the Jordan West case that cost both our lives — everything in Atlas was far, far worse.

  It was a brilliant set-up on Hannah’s part. She knew Hardwick would be the fume that set me alight, and he was sure that he could weasel his way into a second chance. The path that led us from a Whisperer to a Maester to Hardwick had too much momentum to stop, and I was too stupid to see the only good course of action would have been to go back on my word.

  Think, Ramona.

  It would be a waste to leave me here. The soul prison is petty on Tim’s part, but seems tame for Hannah. The bitch despises me; leaving me to rot would not suit her. She wants an example made, which can only mean one thing — this is a scare tactic.

  According to the plan, the Magi were supposed to port the group back to the Obelisk. The dragons seemed satisfied lifting off the ring wall, meaning they claimed someone in the blast.

  One or more of the Magi could have survived. The biggest misconception I had about Atlas coming in was that death was not achievable, many having already experienced it once
. But as seen on multiple occasions, that simply holds no water anymore. The White Light was thrown around a lot in the beginning, but there’s more than one way to get fucked up in the supreme realm.

  As for Tim, he would have been in dark form — the formless column of smoke he has inhabited and used to save me on several occasions now — and likely fell away like a piece of rope, sneaking out the back.

  Another chill tenses my jaw, clenching fists, pleading with inner Ramona to accept mind over matter. I return to thinking, because aside from those limited movements, it is all I can do.

  Time loses meaning somewhere around the hundredth time replaying events. The cold has put my body into hypothermic trance. My sight never adjusted, and there is little to do but wait for the odd, merciful sound.

  Eventually, they will come for me— and I ought to treasure every moment alone before they do.

  ***

  As predicted, Hannah arrives in due time. It wouldn’t suit her petty streak to let me be forgotten. My name must be publicly purged in a bout of violence and spectacle, or her drama loses some of its weight.

  Voices outside the cell draw close, wiping away the blissful fusion of disassociated nerves quelling anxiety that my purge from existence is nigh. The voices confer on the fringes of hearing — one belongs to Hannah, while the other contains hints of bass, and can only belong to a creature comfortable in dark, wet holes.

  Arbiters. When the dialogue ends, the wall before me shifts, allowing a column of Light that grows to a rectangle as the invisible door slides aside like a hidden passage in its seamless facade.

  That low-relay sound of a switch being flipped enables a painful cloud to assault my vision. The room comes to life beneath an unsparing glow. Tim’s wife enters alone, without Arbiter or dragon or bodyguard. The fitted gown is gone, in favor of a leather corset with stockings. Cleavage is cleverly concealed by her free-flowing blond hair; and elbow-high gloves on her arm have me wondering if I’ve stumbled into an adult film. There isn’t a way to remove the organic binds— shackles I mistook as iron but are swirling currents of white and black — and cover my indecency.

  I have never been sexually adventurous— dry spells lasted years. Random encounters were often rushed, always at their apartment, and I was usually quick to leave. But as my nemesis glides around the upright device she lowers horizontally on its supports, my eyes canvass stone ceiling for solace. Placing her hand on my sternum, Hannah leans over me, smiling.

  “Shame about your friends,” she says. “So foolish are those who would challenge the Dark Lord. You might have stood a chance, but just had to interfere— didn’t you?”

  Her hand drifts to the soft flesh right of my solar plexus. Her touch is light but firm on my breast, before sauntering down my tummy. Fingernails dance over the navel, stopping to admire its exaggerated flatness. I struggle against her touch as much as the binds allow, fighting non-consensual terror. I have never been raped, placing Hannah’s exploring hands at the closest anyone has come.

  “He loves you,” she muses. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Hannah’s hand drifts lower, but my squirming has stopped, in its own life-and-death struggle against more subtle resignation. Tim’s wife does not approve— she slips her hand down and jabs two fingers inside me. I grunt and thrash at the penetration, something rarely allowed and even more scarcely enjoyed.

  “It is a pity that you two have come so far— all these unrequited feelings for each other; all the pain and heartbreak and unrealized infatuation.” Her fingers push deeper past the labia, spreading the warm wetness further. “All this time wasted just to realize the tragedy of it. But you like this— don’t you, Ramona? Yes, bare your teeth like the wild animal you are, Miss Knox. You enjoy me, don’t you?”

  Twisting my head, to and from, back and forth, a series of low sobs escapes me. Satisfied, Hannah withdraws her fingers. The sticky remains of her methodical humiliation makes me wish I had never survived Death as Tim’s wife wipes my fluids on a towel hung off the side of my table.

  “Believe me, Miss Knox,” Hannah says. “I take no joy in this. Personally, I’m of the mind that women need to stick together in these trying times. We allow boys to masquerade as men— they fuck us and leave at the first inconvenient juncture— and when they tire of that, turn on each other, leaving us to do the same.

  “Again, I take no pleasure. But I made a promise, and intend to keep my word. The Dark Lord is a merciful god, but remains cognizant of the necessary steps to his salvation.”

  “The only steps that fucker will take,” I manage through gritted teeth, “will be the ones I knock you both down on the way to Hell, bitch.”

  Hannah circles the table to a soundtrack of my shortened breaths, stopping at the top, bending over the waist-high base. Her fingers run gently from my wrists to armpit, and I have no more strength to fight this horrible woman. Her comparably wider bust rests at the top of my skull, forehead over my throat. Hannah’s bottom lip drags over mine before pulling back and cupping my cheeks in her warm palms.

  “But has there ever been, something so great as love, quite so comfortable with sin?” She repeats Luca’s quote from the Obelisk in a sing-song voice as her hand strokes my cheek. “But likewise, there’s never been a queen, quite so determined to win.”

  I cannot disassociate long enough to allow her revolting grin of self-satisfaction to go unnoticed.

  “You are going to feel some discomfort, Miss Knox. Rest assured, it will only be momentary. After that, you will be free to go.”

  Seconds earlier, I was resolved to say nothing. I had said my piece, and was determined to say no more — but there isn’t a safe place left to go other than the follow-up questions of my hardened terror.

  “What kind of discomfort?”

  Hannah smiles.

  “The kind that follows the greatest pleasure of your insignificant existence, Ramona. The cost of carrying the Dark Lord’s future.” Her hands cup my face again, and her final words are gentle.

  “Close your eyes,” Hannah says.

  Unable to think of an alternative, I do.

  ***

  As the sole survivor of Daniel Knox’s drunken shooting spree at the bottom of a gravel pit, I know a thing or two about trauma. My childhood is a mosaic of flashes and withdrawn personifications.

  As I sat, infinitely oblivious to the violence the child carrier faced away from, my idiot mother tried to console Daniel — I imagine she said she loved him

  (please don’t do this, Danny)

  as he grunted and paced.

  Later, I learned his revolver had the serial scratched off, and was likely stolen. Most of what I know about the crime scene stems from decade-old forensics reports dug up in my early days at the FBI. Everything Maya could not bring herself to describe lay inside that sealed file. Black and white photos showed my father took the gunshot at his left temple, where it lodged on a piece of skull and failed to come out the other side.

  Tiffany was shot just above her right eye. One photo depicted the dime-sized entry as seemingly tame. The one underneath showing the smashed jack o’lantern in back where the bullet went out was far more gruesome.

  I have no recollection of the physical moment my parents died — burrowing down the rabbit hole to mentally escape the shadows wrapping around my thighs, digging inside me, I am living it.

  (Daniel, please!)

  My mind is a gravel pit where Daniel Knox took his twenty year old wife — warned by just about every reasonable family member, including Maya, not to marry him. The emotional escape route from this moment carries me through that one, because Hell is a hedge maze and anything is better than this.

  But has there ever been, something so great as love, quite so comfortable with sin?

  The pit’s walls are not a drop, but still a steep descent, hardened by the autumnal plunge in temperature. The sky is cloudy without rain, dark without night, wide without wonder as Tiffany screams at my manic father — torn be
tween drunkenness, the drugs in his system and the gun in his hand — to think of the baby. The carrier sits on a downward angle several feet away, but looks at the ascent back to sanity.

  The baby? Daniel scoffs. We can’t even take care of us! The weapon shakes in his hand but points downward. Tiffany can’t stop looking at it, nor muster anything beyond basic, sobbing pleas.

  Danny, I love you.

  You stupid bitch, I want to yell. Stop trying to save this waste of life. Come home, be a mother to me.

  You stupid bitch, Daniel says in kind, proving everything I said to be true. You’re just gonna turn me in, aren’t you?

  Danny, no!

  But has there ever been, something so great as love, quite so comfortable with sin?

  Daniel lifts his arm. The gun’s barrel points directly at her, and Tiffany emits something between a scream and squeal of the most horrible, terrified nature.

  He’s going to kill her.

  A jolt between my legs pulls me back to the table in Stone Mountain. My mind claws away, back to the West Virginia gravel pit, back to my birth mother’s final moments.

  But likewise, there’s never been a queen, quite so determined to win.

  I would rather watch this a thousand times than give that bitch the satisfaction. If this is where my mind must go, I’ll be Alice, trusting where the rabbit hole takes me.

  Daniel thumbs the hammer on the revolver; my mother’s hands tremble with her final, stammering words.

  Danny, I —

  The blast from the revolver’s end is a haze of smoke and ear-shattering confusion. I know from the forensics where the bullet went in, mutilating Tiffany’s brain before casting the back of her skull into the rocks. In this dream, I only see my mother crumple, knees buckling one way as her shoulders fall another, collapsing in a pile only feet from the maligned baby carrier.