Atlas

by Nicholas Gagnier

  The Behemoth facing Luca and Harper unleashes its volatile breath. The angel plants his sword between stones at his feet, hands at its hilt to shield the Phoenix with his wings.

  The scream from Luca’s mouth transcends pain, determined to hold onto honor until his final moments, stopping my urgency to catch Hannah as I hang on the outcome, holding my breath for their safety.

  When the dragon pulls back, I expect ashes and dust where they stood, and anticipate my friends are scattered to the wind. A plume of roiling, black smoke lingers where intense heat bore down, cooking thin sand.

  Hannah and Barrett are gone now, likely returning to the Spire, leaving Seraphina’s corpse obscured by the stone chair. Members of the surrounding Brotherhood yell and guffaw at me to stop blocking their view of the clearing smoke below.

  I jump back as a figure charges out of the plumes, drives his sword into the dragon’s side with a scream. It lodges between the creature’s ribs, prompting howls from the dragon.

  Also emerging from the black, sweeping cloud comes Harper— the Phoenix is back on her feet, Mother’s Star joined to the Seed, casting its strange hybrid glow.

  The locket must have protected them.

  The ailing Behemoth is taken by further surprise when a thick column of black air shoots over several bodies in the Arena’s northern stands, arcing down the wall. It moves with ferocity, speed and brutality, wrapping under the dragon’s chin. Like a gravity hook finding its anchor point, the smoke tube wraps around the monster’s neck. The column weaves under the dragon’s front legs, crossing over its lighter-shaded belly, securing each limb as it progresses. Tim’s dark form binds the wings together, snapping them vertically as the Behemoth screams in pain, bowing on its haunches.

  Luca wastes no time pulling his sword from between the dragon’s rib. It sinks lower, grunting in discomfort until the roars and protests dull to a resigned purr. He draws his arm back and plunges the sharpest tip through its skull.

  The alpha dragon’s collapse shakes the entire structure— its off-center position sees the released wings strike the eastern wall as Tim withdraws. The webbed limb cuts a swath of sediment and debris through the base of the stands.

  All three rows that were supported by that foundation sag. The men caught in its buckling levels push past each other to reach safety on the north and south portions. In the southern section’s top row, the influx of Brotherhood and outlanders barreling toward our end makes escape in any direction impossible.

  The Behemoth’s collapse below whirls sand at Luca and Harper’s feet as they back away from the dying monster. Tim returns to his human form at their side— the man who calls himself Death first lands as a totem, assuming his familiar human outline. The skin lightens, and his facial features take shape; the suit forms in the dancing plumes, finally solidifying into the celestial being I’ve known my entire life.

  The three allies stand in a row along the northern wall. Harper eyes the dead dragon— screams from its brethren above fill the sky with the language of primitive creatures voicing their loss. Luca sheaths his sword as the white wingspan on his shoulders retracts at the swirling aerial horde.

  For now, my friends are safe.

  The bottom row’s collapse on the eastern wall is sudden as the blade that Seraphina tried to use on Hannah. Several spectators are pulled down with the avalanche of concrete and stone. Screams pierce a rising cloud of dust and shrapnel with the men caught in the down slide soon falling silent at my stunned allies’ feet.

  The second row counted on the first to support its jam-packed weight, and tumbles as the structure gives, pulling down the top two rows. The third was empty on the east side after most of its occupants made it to the adjacent stands, and only serves to crush those who collapsed with the first two tiers, leaving a gaping wound into the surrounding district.

  Hannah’s inner circle has collapsed, and all that remains is to pry the last of her cold, dead fingers off the supreme realm. Crowded between the shaken populace crammed in the south, I look down at my allies, who return their own affirmations.

  Luca bows his head with a smile, looking back up at me.

  Harper casts a lone, sullen nod. Mother’s Star glows with verdant fury, illuminating her saviors’ expressions.

  But it is not until I look at the man who calls himself Death that I notice something is wrong. Tim’s eyes are wide, his finger raising to warn me of something terrible, formidable and imminent— something present with me up here.

  Before I can turn my frown to the object of his shock, a hand clamps over my mouth from behind me. I can’t scream or call their names. I’m dragged backwards, pulled through the shoulder-to-shoulder survivors. Another set of hands grab me— I kick with my feet, only to be restrained at the ankles.

  I cannot see my attackers, but they are legion, a maw of darkness opening to swallow my soul. I try calling Tim’s name, and imagine him dissolving into the column of smoke, raging through the blue sky to save me.

  Nothing comes — only the short fuse in my breaths, snapping with each iteration.

  I am pulled back, yanked down.

  Dragged forward.

  After that, the only thing I know is darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  White lights.

  The introduction of blinding Light pulls me from slumber. It is an assault on my being, weaponized to paralyze me at the same time it drags me out of unconsciousness. The scene is familiar— a dark room, a chair, a rope to hold me in place. The furniture is unreliable in balance — one leg is shaved away, giving the remaining tripod uncertainty it can maintain my weight and remain upright.

  How did I end up here? That seems to be a recurring theme— like drifting from locale to twisted locale

  (a hospital, heaven, light at the end of life’s tunnel)

  to end up in the worst place of all. All this time fighting for Light, and I am returned to the darkness I masqueraded within, unaware of what true darkness ever entailed.

  It is here now, and I am terrified of it.

  “Good,” says a familiar voice, repeating equally familiar words. “You’re awake.”

  Good, as it was in the Capitol when Stephen Hardwick left me in the same bad spot. I’m awake, as I was before my old partner tried to murder me.

  I should have never trusted him.

  As Tim’s wife steps into the flood in my eyes, she is just another shadow of me— a mortal pretending to embody Darkness, mocking it with amateur impressions.

  “I have to give it to you,” she smiles. Coming into focus, the knuckles of her passing hand brush my cool cheek. “You almost had me, Miss Knox. Entrusting the Seed to my husband’s champion? A brilliant display. Even more, turning the High Priestess against me? Ziz warned me to be vigilant, and now I am grateful for the Dark Lord’s counsel.”

  I resolve to say nothing. The only thing left is to murder her, whenever such an opportunity presents itself.

  “Although, there are some things that even the most brilliant mistress can never outmatch in the spouse, right? So much arrogance, you didn’t even realize your only chance had slipped out from under you.”

  She lifts an object in her hand— it glows an evocative purity of white, but is no smaller than an earring’s backing, affixed between the woman’s forefinger and thumb.

  The Seed of Light.

  “All it took was making you believe it couldn’t be taken. Everything has a price, Ramona.”

  How did she get it?

  Despite our victory, Hannah now holds Creation’s fate in her hand. She circles the wobbling chair.

  “The Phoenix?” I ask, not wanting to know all the same.

  Hannah snorts.

  “Please— that basket case wouldn’t do me the kindness if her life depended on it; not that she seems to value it very much.”

  “Luca?” I say, bracing for the worst news of my life.

  Tim’s wife smiles.

  “So quick to point the finger at your allies�
� it’s no wonder so few of them chose to defend Atlas. And from what? The right to choose our own free will, rather than serve gods who hold us to unattainable standards? Who, in their pettiness, left you comatose for over two decades?”

  I have no more patience for her justifications.

  “Oh, you mean the gods who created this universe, you witch? The ones who gave you life and loving parents, I imagine, and a husband who was faithful until the day you died? Even then, he told me it destroyed him. It ripped him apart, you ungrateful, stupid cunt!

  “Do you know,” I ask her, through gritted teeth and burning eyes, “what I would have given for any of that? I tell you, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing this— bowing to some petty demon, all to satisfy your inadequacy over the fucking truth! You were never good enough for him—“

  The speed of Hannah’s knuckles meeting my cheekbone in an open plank of fingers sends my neck sprawling to the side. Hair is cast over my eyes and nose in fragments, strands glimmering under the Seed’s glow, bringing out the contrast between the monster I thought I was and the one who took my place. I pray my neck is broken, and I can go onto the White Light.

  Nope.

  Still alive— still watching this bullshit play out.

  Tim’s wife doesn’t even give me defeat, using her free forefingers to lift my chin.

  “It must be difficult,” she says softly. “Having such a limited worldview, watching it crumble like pieces of glacier into a cosmic ocean. So simplistic — and how like humanity! — to romanticize shades of gray. Evil must seem to be everywhere, when it is all you look for.

  “I pity you, Miss Knox. Of course, no more than I pity myself— and not over Tim. The first mistake of a good woman is placing faith in men. They taste you, and swear yours in the only fruit they will ever want. But ask them to wait — to delay gratification when it’s no longer readily available? Suddenly, an orange is worth more than an apple, and here we are— fighting over our interpretations of them. I have no desire to fight you, Ramona.”

  “No,” I snipe. “Just destroy everything I’ve ever loved, at the moment I find it. Play your card or leave me the fuck alone.”

  This is the moment she has waited for — the opportunity to extinguish me like the little candle I am, and make a long, conniving speech to precede it.

  “Soon. I wouldn’t dare deprive myself of this moment, Miss Knox. I have waited for it for a very long time.

  “When we first met, I told you why I chose this path. To amend that, it was chosen for me — never truly my choice. But over time, the Dark Lord’s will became clear, even if his reasoning rarely did. And there has scarcely been a moment I regretted joining with him.”

  I bet he never mentioned what happens when their bodies separate. He is part of her, just as Tim’s darkest manifestations once melded with mine to stop Hardwick.

  We have to begin the separation process, Ramona.

  We did, and I was left a shell on my bathroom floor, bleeding from a hole in my temple where all Tim’s devilry escaped into the open. It destroyed me, putting me into deep sleep for a long time.

  I wonder how Hannah will fare when Ziz no longer needs her.

  Will it hurt?

  Immensely.

  But the Dark Lord will show no love in the aftermath of their physical parting. He will not wait at her bedside, nor surrender to higher powers for her freedom. He will not stand beside her as Tim stood by me, waiting for life to return. Ziz will sap the life from her, absorbing Hannah’s essence into his own horrible form, and there will be no reversal or burden to undo the damage.

  I wonder if the bitch knows.

  “You and I are not so different,” she observes, finally letting my head fall back under its own willpower and cupping the Seed in her fist. “I just wish you could have seen it sooner, Miss Knox.”

  As she turns to leave, I call her back — not by name, because she is a monster and deserves none other, but with my rage.

  “You couldn’t be more wrong!”

  She wheels on her heel, facing me with those ice-blue eyes and that misplaced sense of injustice I hate so much about her.

  “Because at the end of the day, I was always willing to lay down my life for those who couldn’t defend themselves! I gave up everything, just like you did. The difference being, I wasn’t stupid enough to expect some eternal reward!”

  This last remark draws Hannah’s lips in a tightly-puckered pout. There is no sadness, or even regret to it— she is devoted to her Dark Lord, in lockstep over the cost to her soul.

  In the greater good’s eyes, she is irredeemable.

  “Sad, then,” she says with a bleak smile, “that this was all that awaited you.”

  Hannah turns, disappearing into crawling emptiness. The Seed fades. My shallow breaths are drawn in, then forced out — as if meeting a door that does not allow the complete inhale entry to the lungs. The last of her steps evaporate, and I am alone in some deserted corner of the supreme realm, terrified for my soul.

  When Hardwick abandoned me, I was quickly given company in the form of flames — they washed over the decrepit warehouse he left me bound inside. I called Tim’s name as the chair collapsed beneath my legs, and slowly suffocated under tides of black smoke.

  He is not here to save me this time. There will be no reincarnation when the flames come, no gorgeous room of stars where he will reveal everything in the only mirror I could ever face myself, a gift the man who calls himself Death had long kept.

  I have been saving this for you, he said, gently leading me to a beach where the framed glass waited.

  It will show you everything.

  The moment between Hannah’s silhouette being swallowed by darkness and the beast that slinks from its eternal depths momentarily following her departure is marked by the greatest fear I have ever felt as a conscious being. The room whose dimensions are shrouded in black void is filled by a yellow-eyed demon with great rows of teeth and the outlines of flesh wings. A great growl fills the room with no windows or doors or escape. The breath washing from the monster’s nostrils saturates my personal space with wet, warm air as the creature’s irises dilate in the dark.

  A Behemoth. She left me as food for her pet — not the alpha male that Luca felled in the Arena, but more than I could ever hope to defeat alone. I scream as it slinks closer. I don’t know how often dragons feed, but this one is hungry, and all too eager to please its mistress.

  The eyes are my sole source of light, and not a great one — their yellow cast dances with the dim shadows, and I have one course of action as the Behemoth lunges for the chair.

  Just as I dived over a wheelchair to dodge a bullet in the hospital, I force the uneven legs far right; the weakened prong snaps, and the backrest goes down. My head hits the hard floor, but adrenaline does not afford me the moment of recovery. The dragon’s snapping jaws narrowly miss where my head was, passing over the broken chair.

  Time to move, Ramona.

  Hands still bound to wooden fragments, something tells me Behemoths aren’t nocturnal, giving peace of mind long enough to pull arms under my rear, slipping legs through the opening between them. Vaulting to both feet using only my knees, I smash the backrest against the ground, splintering the chair’s remaining piece. It shudders but doesn’t break, and I slam it down harder as the Behemoth pulls its head back, searching the room for me.

  One final thrust against the ground breaks the backrest in two. Rolling left, I fight shadow and Darkness and everything I ever mistook myself for, crawling on joined wrists as the mangled wood beats against my palms. I don’t see the creature in pursuit, but hear its low growls, using these cues to roll away from their source.

  My ribs hit a wall, and the crunching mandible of a beast ten times my size bashes on the surface above, sending unseen projectiles out the other side of its facade. Chunks of it land around me; my wrists smack the ground, dislodging the last pieces of broken backrest from loops in the slacked ropes, pulling my hands free.
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br />   A streak of yellow glow pours through the reorganized wall, its combination of plaster and stone knocked outside. Just beyond it lies freedom, and escape from Hannah’s depraved pet.

  The Behemoth flails inside the structure. Thanks to Light, I make out columns and interior balconies. The floor is cleared of glass that previously inhabited it, but the crumpled fountain base sits on a circular marble floor that immediately rings familiar.

  The Illumitory. The dragon’s long tail has smashed away what remains of the fountain; it pulls down walls and columns, thrashing in the dark as I grab at the small opening, kicking my legs to pull through. The massive jaws close and open with ferocious grunts and squeals, nearly amputating an entire leg from the knee down as I tumble through the hole onto the Illumitory’s lawn.

  The creature pushes and prods at the pint-sized opening. Realizing it will not catch me, the dragon withdraws its snout from pursuit. Its howling ceases, and the Illumitory falls quiet.

  As I turn around, the crimson sky over God’s City enveloping everything I once loved about it, so too is my last shred of mercy gone.

  The woman had her chance. I told her to take her followers and leave Atlas.

  I showed her mercy, and received none.

  The woman is going to die.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I was twenty-eight years old when I met the man who calls himself Death. To my recollection, I was only a few years past infancy, incapable of reading and most rational thought; vulnerable from my parents’ deaths, emotionally stupid in the way that only children and dysfuctional people can be.

  I was just a scared child hiding under a dining table as Maya pushed a bookcase against the door to keep her recently rejected lover out. But Tim, the suited ghost who appeared underneath that clothed table, already knew everything about my life. He had been using his new powers as Death to investigate a personal injustice when he came across me, dying in a burning Georgetown warehouse. From there, he moved backwards, intervening at the ages of five, six, seven and twelve, appearing in ravines and my bedroom and a little white box where I was held after being caught stealing makeup.