by David Beers
Rhett shook his head again, his brow furrowed. He didn’t glance at anyone else, unable to pull his eyes from David.
“They are the One Path’s version of jails, I suppose. I only know this because we have followers in them. Imagine huge pools floating in the sky, row after row, column after column. They’re filled with an oily substance, and it almost shines gold. It nearly glows. The One Path tosses people into these and they’re held without food, without water, without even the ability to breathe. Somehow that liquid delivers everything the body needs, but the pit holds them. It keeps them from moving.”
He paused for a second.
“And … these pits drive them insane. I don’t know if it’s the liquid or the solitary confinement, or not being able to move. I don’t know which.”
Reinheld shivered and Rhett glanced at him. His arms were folded across his stomach, and he was hunched over, staring into the fire. The breeze was cool, but not that cold. Rhett understood, or thought he did. They both had been held captive, but Rhett had the First Priest coming to him daily. As awful as the Priest was, it was still human interaction. How long had Reinheld sat in his cell without speaking to another human?
David went on, seeming to not notice anything happening around him. He appeared lost in his head, not even seeing the fire he stared at.
“There was a man in those pits, and I don’t know why, but my Blood flows strong through him. I found him first … and … his mind is broken. Not fully, but fractured I guess would be the right word.” He finally looked up again. “Which is a good thing. It’s what I want. I’m not sure the exact number of people in those pits, but there are thousands. And I brought them out and I sent them to the Ministers.”
Rhett’s eyes widened, understanding. “Where?”
“The Globe of One. It’s like Corinth’s Shrine, but the One Path’s version.”
Rhett shook his head, questions coming to him. “Even with thousands, how would they make a dent in the Globe? I’ve seen it, David, when converting. The thing is huge.”
“I’m with them,” he said.
Rhett’s eyes flashed to his arm and he saw those gray strands hanging from it. He jerked, but only slightly, before gaining control of himself. When he blinked, the strands were gone and he was staring only at his arm.
“All of them?” he said, not looking up.
“Yes.”
“Won’t the Ministers just leave?” Christine asked from the other side of the fire. Rhett had nearly forgotten about her; she was quieter than ever.
“They can’t. All entrances and exits across the entire place have been shut down.”
“How?” Rhett asked.
“I’m with them,” David repeated.
Rhett was quiet for a moment, awe filling him. The One Path was above them all right now, in the sky above the clouds, and David sat on the ground, yet waged a war above—his power now knowing no limits.
“Are you a God? Are you the Unformed?”
David looked back to the fire, a smirk on his face … a sad smirk. “I wish, Rhett. I’m only a man.”
Manor walked away from the dying fire. The other three were preparing for sleep, but Manor wouldn’t sleep by the fire. He had stayed to hear what the Prophet said, still unable to come to terms with being next to him. Manor understood now why people followed him, and it was beyond the Blood or the Unformed, or even truth. They followed him, and they would to their death.
Himself included. Manor would have died for this before, but after meeting Hollowborne …
Manor would cut his own throat if that was required of him.
Walking toward the beach, thoughts of the Prophet faded, and thoughts of what Manor had promised earlier resumed. Raylyn had refused the Blood, and he offered his own life up as guarantee that she took it.
And what about what she did for you? Didn’t she risk her own life just two days ago?
It was true, but she wasn’t serving the Unformed. She didn’t have the Prophet sleeping not a Corinthmeter up the beach. She had forsaken a false religion for him, but now he’d agreed to give up everything.
She’ll take it, he thought. She’ll take the Blood.
Raylyn was sitting with her back to the campsite, staring out at the ocean. Manor stood for a few seconds and looked at the moonlight casting its glow across the dark, rippling waves. He looked to his left and saw the transport still resting where they’d landed. The gray static remained wrapped around the Prophet’s sister, glowing like a light bulb in the night. Manor wondered briefly what was wrong with the woman? How she could be so evil?
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Raylyn said, pulling him from his thoughts.
Manor sat down next to her, placing his hands in the sand and feeling its cool grit. “It’s too late now.”
“I’m not joining him,” she said. “What do you call it? Taking the Blood? The Blood of the Touched, right?”
Manor nodded.
“I’m not doing it. I showed that I would die for you, Manor. I did that two days ago, and we should have died. I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone else. More than I love my own life.” She was quiet for a few moments, and then said, “But I don’t love you more than I love my soul.”
“He’s the truth, Raylyn,” Manor whispered. “You’ve seen what he can do.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if he brings the Unformed and the two of them rule forever. I won’t submit again.”
“Submit?” Manor asked, incredulous. “What else are you supposed to do? When you see truth, you follow it. That’s not submitting. It’s purpose.”
Raylyn chuckled, a sarcastic sounding thing. She had listened to him for hours in his cell, talking about why he’d chosen the Unformed … and then she’d thrown away her religion. She’d thrown away her life, yet when she spoke now, it was wired with hate.
“You shouldn’t have told him that, Manor. There is no mercy in that man. I’ve seen him kill hundreds of people in seconds. I watched him burn my friend alive. Just burn right through her bones. He’s going to kill you, Manor, if you don’t leave with me.”
“Leave with you?” he looked over at her, his voice a whisper.
“That’s the only choice we have, if we want to live. When I tell him again that I’m not joining, that’s it for both of us.”
“You have to join, Raylyn. There’s no other option. There’s no leaving. Where are you going to go? Right now, he’s wiping out all of the Ministries. He’s destroying them with a single swipe of the board. You either join or you die.”
“So I do it out of fear, if not love? That’s your pitch?”
Manor didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. He looked out at the ocean and the two sat in silence.
A while passed, and then Raylyn spoke again. “I gave my life to Corinth. Every piece of me. I haven’t even begun to process what breaking away from that means, because I haven’t had the chance. But if I live long enough, I’m sure I’ll deal with this the same as I would deal with the death of an intimate loved one. Because that’s what he was to me. And none of it was real, Manor.” She reached across the sand and took his hand in hers. “You showed me that, and I’m eternally grateful. I do love you, even though the things you’ve done frighten me to my core. I’m free for the first time in my life. Maybe not physically. I’m still under his rule right now, but mentally? There’s no god I have to pray too. There’s no being I need to curry favor with. There’s no lie to live.”
She looked back to the ocean.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave with me if you want to live. I’m not joining him.”
Manor sat for a few minutes with his hand underneath hers. His vision was blurred, the moon’s rays scattering in strange directions.
“I’m not leaving, and you should think about your decision, Raylyn. There’s only death out there. Life … it rests with him.”
He took his hand away and walked back up the beach, leaving her alone with the other n
onbeliever.
“How are you feeling?”
Rhett heard David ask Christine the question as he walked back to the campsite. He’d gone down to the beach to check on Rebecca—making sure she was still wrapped in David’s gray wires, and hadn’t floated out with the tide.
“I’m better,” Christine answered, glancing to Rhett as he arrived. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Rhett didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. There wasn’t an ounce of thankfulness in her, and Rhett had known there wouldn’t be.
“What?” David asked.
Christine didn’t take her eyes off Rhett. She just shook her head slightly, saying no. She wouldn’t tell. She might be angry with Rhett, might even hate him for what he’d done, but she wouldn’t be the one to tell David.
Rhett looked over to him. “I was given a choice. Either they tortured her or I talked. I thought you were dead and we were too. I talked. I told them about the Blood, about how it passed from parent to child. Other things, too.”
David held his gaze, but Rhett saw no sign of the gray static in his eyes. “Who did you tell?”
“The First Priest.”
“So if we lose, they know how we spread in between Prophets?”
Rhett nodded.
David looked at the ground and was quiet for a few moments. “Then this time we can’t lose.” He looked back up. “I agree with Christine. You shouldn’t have said anything. If they were going to torture Christine, then so be it. We serve a greater purpose than any of us, and the purpose will live on even if we die.”
Rhett didn’t nod, gave no sign of affirmation.
David broke eye contact and stepped outside of the campsite, a bit closer to the beach. Reinheld was down there, as was Brinson, though Reinheld had gone on a walk alone. Brinson was now by herself, lying on her side. Rhett hadn’t checked to see if she was sleeping or not; he didn’t care. David would decide what happened with her.
“What are we going to do?” Christine asked.
They had all spent one night together, but no one had brought up what came next. Rhett hadn’t said anything because he was simply glad to be around David. He didn’t want to move forward, not yet. He wanted a bit more time with just these two, because once everything started, this respite from turmoil would break.
“We’re going to wait a day,” David said. He looked up into the sky, staring straight at the clouds. “Maybe two. Every available ship and man from all the Ministries will be heading toward that globe. Then, once everything is in place there, I’ll show myself to the rest of our followers.”
“Chaos,” Rhett said. “It’ll be chaos everywhere. They won’t have enough enforcement to guard their Ministries, because they’ll all be focused on the Globe.”
David nodded, still looking in the sky. “And then the three of us go to the Nile River, and we finish it.”
“What about her?” Christine asked.
David looked to the transport, the bundle of gray strands lying inside.
“I’ll deal with her tonight,” David said.
The rest of the day had passed easily enough, except for David dreading nightfall. Tomorrow he would deal with the infidel and her lover, but tonight he had to deal with his sister.
And even after everything she’d done, he didn’t want to.
David stood outside the transport.
He looked at the gray light wrapped around her, both protecting her and holding her captive. The strands were providing her with water, though she would probably be hungry—not that it mattered much.
He stared for a long time, the moon moving higher in the sky. No one ventured down to the beach, and David knew no one would. Even the infidel had walked far away; he couldn’t even see her from where he stood.
He thought about when he and Rebecca were kids.
He thought about their parents being murdered, blood and death mixing together in his mind like poisonous gasses.
He thought about the orphanage, where they beat him and left her alone. Yet, it was still the two of them.
David thought about the years on the street, him learning how to steal and connive and hurt in order to make sure she stayed alive. He’d never told her that, but it was the truth. All those years where they had to fight for their meals, he did it because of her. If it had been him, alone? He would have starved to death. Most likely, he wouldn’t have escaped the orphanage. He grew strong because of her, because more than anything he needed to live so that she wouldn’t be alone.
And now, standing on this beach, he was alone. Rhett and Christine would murder this woman for him, but that didn’t change any of the loneliness he felt. His sister, his blood, the only family he had left … was lost to him.
Go forward, he thought. There’s no other choice.
The strands around Rebecca started to unwrap themselves, gray static peeling off and then dying a few seconds after. The cocoon covering her slowly fell away to nothing.
Rebecca lay on the transport’s floor, looking the exact same as she had yesterday. She didn’t move her body, but only shifted her head so that she could see him.
David’s eyes were calm.
Hers weren’t, but full of rage.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said. “Kill me if you want, but never do that again.”
David remained still, staring at her as if he didn’t know her. “You give me orders now?”
Rebecca pushed herself up to sitting without looking away. “You may be the Prophet, but you’ve never owned me.”
She stood up, though she didn’t step outside of the transport. She was a few inches higher than him, a few arm lengths in distance.
“Why?” he said. “Why did you do it?”
The two stared in silence, the ocean wind whipping by David and into the transport. Rebecca’s face was hard in that silence, though it slowly changed, and beneath the moonlight he saw tears swirling in her eyes.
“Because, you wouldn’t stop on your own,” she finally said.
“Stop? Fucking stop?” David felt the rage he had feared coming to him now, breaking through concrete barriers he had tried to erect, a battering ram with a lion’s head on it—unfazed and unstoppable. “WHY WOULD I FUCKING STOP?”
His voice echoed up and down the beach, easily back to the campsite, but David didn’t care.
“Because!” Rebecca shouted back, her own voice not capable of rising to the level of his. “Because this is madness! It’s always been madness! We just couldn’t see it!”
David lunged forward before he knew it was happening. The back of his hand smacked across her face, and her head jerked to her left. He stood with his arm still extended, blood on his knuckles. Rebecca didn’t move. Neither of them did.
He’d never put his hands on her before.
David’s eyes were gray, and if he was stunned, the gray wasn’t. It swirled out from his eyes, shining its eerie light across the night’s darkness. The strands didn’t move toward Rebecca, only remained stretching out of his eyes like thin strips of seaweed.
“It’s madness,” she said. “It has to be stopped.”
“And when did you discover this, Rebecca?” he asked, his voice low, rippling with anger.
“It doesn’t matter when.”
“WHEN.”
A few seconds of silence passed, and then she whispered, “Five years ago.”
“HOW.”
Rebecca shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She looked up, blood dripping from her nose and lip. The tears that had sat in her eyes had now spilled over; she was crying, and not from the slap’s pain. “You wouldn’t stop, regardless of what I did, and yet you have to. This has to end. What you’re doing, what It wants to do. Have you ever asked yourself, David, what It wants? Even once, have you sat back and thought about such a simple question?”
David let his hand collapse to his side. A drop of blood fell to the transport, landing silently. The gray strands twisted from his eyes as if mocking Rebecca’
s words.
“No, Rebecca, because that doesn’t matter.” His voice was a whisper, hardly louder than the wind blowing through the transport. “I’ve been summoned, just as you have. You took my Blood, remember? You injected it into yourself and swore allegiance to It. There is no asking what It wants.”
“And that’s why I set you up, David. Why I would do it again and again and again. Because you’ll never stop. You literally rose from the dead to complete this.”
David’s rage had driven him this far, but something nagged at him. A question, somehow tied to the other like him—the girl from the Old World.
“What made you start thinking like this? What made you become so lost?”
“Are we done here?” Rebecca asked.
He shook his head. “Tell me.”
“No. Now do whatever it is you want, David.”
Brother and sister looked at each other, one with bright, static filled eyes, the other’s shrouded by darkness. The Prophet’s rage simmered, not exploding out. He’d never seen himself ending up here; he could have sooner seen himself killing Rhett than his sister.
But what other choice did he have?
To let her live?
Her face was still defiant, believing thoughts that didn’t even matter. She was a human, what she thought of the Unformed’s wishes were less than insignificant. Yet just as David would walk to his death for the Unformed, she stood here ready to do the same against It.
The gray strands snaked further out from his eyes, forming two powerful bands then wrapping around her throat. They didn’t burn, nor squeeze too tight.
“You’ve always been my everything,” he said.
“No. It is. Ever since It came to you.”
“Then you were second,” he said. “And I should have been second to you as well.”
“We just put different things first. You put the Unformed. I put humanity.”
The gray strands tightened some and David saw her face grimace. She could still breathe, but he felt the static heating up, ready to do what it had come out for. Tears fell from his sister’s eyes and dripped over the thick cords.
