by Blake Rivers
Romany turned on the spot, pirouetting as gracefully as a ballerina, yet far too quickly, her body a blur of white and red. Ami stepped forward and shielded the still spinning sword, fearing what might happen next, knowing only that the faces that flashed in the cyclone of power were of those who guided her. She had to trust in Grammy.
The woman who’d been Romany came to a stop and screamed, her hands tearing at her hair, her voice cracking and rasping until her scream died and fell into chorus with the bride’s melody, rising above the howl of the wind and the slash of the cutting rain.
Ami readied to grasp the sword and summon her power, but the woman simply held her hand up and the singing stopped. Only the storm ignored the gesture, the downpour too loud on the stone.
Then she spoke.
“I’ve been lost, so lonely. I’ve done terrible things.” Ami nodded, pulling her sodden hair back from her face. She thought of the stories she’d been told, the destruction she’d seen, the brutality of the woman. “I’ve brought hurt, pain and death.”
“You have,” she agreed, eying the ghostly forms who’d come to a stop at the base of the stone platform.
“I was less than myself and less than a human. It was not who I was…” She flung her arm out to the gathered. “We were peaceful, only curious. Too curious.” A murmur flittered around them in agreement. “But then it all went so wrong, and yet we lived on.”
“Fragmented, split.”
“Yes.”
Behind her the blade sung her song, and beyond, somewhere further out in the shadows, she could hear her other self pick up the tune. Where was she and why did she hide? A whisper answered as if by her ear. Don’t trust them. Flickers tickled the bellies of clouds as the rain fell hard and fast, a mist rising from the stone, across the sodden grass. Trees swayed and limbs bent, tall old oaks dancing with ash and pine. The Sentries were clustered, as she’d seen them in Romany’s memory, as they’d been on the day of their end. Don’t trust them. Ami pulled closer to the sword, fumbling in her pocket for the rook.
“The dragon is going to destroy the world because of you,” she said.
Romany’s skin smoothened, wrinkles shifting in faze, almost breathing. “I’d gone to the sacred well and had communed with the last two shards of my soul. I’d found them there, somehow, after so long…and I found there’d been an ancient purpose, an attempt to merge the lands back together through the portals. Each flicker of power I’d seen had been an attempt I’d ignored. I convinced them, convinced myself, to try again. They agreed. Our power was linked and as one for the first time since our end, but when I pulled, something else happened. The power was great, so great that it moved the very layers of the world, and in an instant another had collided into my own. All things changed and the worlds merged, and the demon raged below. The Dragø found its way to the surface and devoured.”
Ami watched her closely, her hair a witch’s mop, her body shivering in the freezing rain. “But you let it roam.”
“Yes, I was fascinated by its power, and when I fought it I realised how I could steal the power it thrived on and weaken it while strengthening myself. I trapped it at a point beneath the layers where the cracks between the two were the largest. I created the cave there and kept the Dragø, weak and unable to leave, just as I was unable to. I could not cross the barrier, deemed too dangerous by my selves. The layers could not be breached by force. They abandoned me, told me Not yet. Patience…and took the dream of my home away. Now I am with them both, here in this form.
“Over the years I plotted and planned, and when you arrived and I realised your true potential, I knew you were the sacrifice I needed. You, the Assassin Princess who are as Romany is, part human, part Sentry.” She paused and looked around the darkened meadow, her eyes flashing white as they passed over her fallen people. “You created Celestial though as I never could, and soon all of this will be gone. The Dragø will collapse every layer, full of my malice, and stolen power. Only you can stop it now.” She took a step forward, and with her came the mass of forms, shifting ever closer, a crowd looking to a stage. “You must end me. You above all have the power to do that.” Don’t trust them, the whisper said, and Ami thought she saw her shadow-self winding between the trees, crossing the walkway, now so far away. A petal fell with the pour, touching her hand and sliding to the ground. It swelled and twirled and was washed away somewhere else. “We three cannot live apart, for one is too dangerous. Sentry of new, stop us, destroy us, before it’s too late.”
“I don’t know,” Ami said, shaking her head, her hand stroking her leather clad thigh, her fingers twitching and ready to draw. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“You have to,” the Romany-being said. “Please.”
The souls began the song again, the melody that marked Ami’s turn to darkness, heard even over the thunder and the roar of rain. Were they moving forward? Their faceless faces seemed to crawl beneath light, reminding Ami of late night horrors on TV, zombies rising, the dead feeding—and is that what they were? Their non-mouths moved, yet not with words in song, but in o’s, hungry fish in a pond, needing, wanting… Don’t trust them. She looked back to the Romany-being, the merge of the three. Don’t trust them out there, or…?
“How would I kill you?” she asked.
“With your unicorn sword, of course.” A smile and a sheen of red beneath her skin. Who are you beneath?
Don’t trust them.
Them out there, or…?
Them in her.
She’d brought them, out there, but who’d brought those within her?
“Pierce us, kill us, end our suffering.” Three against one, she realised as Romany stepped ever closer, her own back touching the stone column that held the canopy above. Grammy, Pops, Romany; they were all the same, not just splinters of the same Sentry, but all the same divided. She’d been played, used, Adam’s play all over again.
Dangerous.
Not this time.
“Okay,” Ami said, and then whirled around, snagging the spinning blade.
The woman who was Romany thrice let loose a triumphant scream through a mouth too wide, her body bursting into red flame as she rushed toward the arches; but Ami jumped clear just in time, and flew high up above the crowd to see her foe fall between them, writhing and caught within the ancient stone like a fly to a web. Her screams and curses were perpetual and pointless, as her people moved forward.
Clouds split open with golden shafts of sunlight that illuminated the long dead city, and everywhere the light touched the streets buckled and the trees fell, the houses broke apart; all tumbled to dust and rubble, the horizon closing in around them all.
The Sentries were ghosts for sure, packed together and chained in power and essence. And they were hungry, hungry to be alive, greedy for the power they once had, a power now caught in their trap, their portal of destruction, their ultimate downfall.
They began to climb the steps as Romany flourished in sparks and glimmers and flames of power, all her hate and longing bursting from her in an inferno. Her face changed and revealed the truth, the jealous, the vengeful, the schemer, the powerful dead of long, long ago. Her screams and curses rang like a bell as the storm cleared completely, the sky returning to a blue, the land cracking and falling in chunks into chasms of nothing. It was a snow globe, its dome contracting, the meadow reshaping, the forest now just the black trees of no further, entrance to the dark, exit of sanctuary—only this was no sanctuary. Not anymore.
“Get away,” she heard her cry as the white beings pushed in their hundreds, thousands, upon the white stone platform, all gathering and singing her fated song, reaching and grasping for the power long denied them, long dead to them. Moths to the flame, a power-hungry race, extinct in life and their worst in death.
The beings reached the arches and smothered and covered the screams of the self-styled goddess, before they too were consumed, the meadow now only green, the petals flying up, up, up, dancing the warm air.
> “I’ll kill you,” she heard, a sigh only as the Sentries faded completely, leaving only broken stone, incomplete and silent.
*
“They thought themselves superior, and once they were, but every living thing has its time.” Ami looked up to find dark brown eyes staring down at her, framed in the fall of a chocolate mane. She was as always, her constant strength, her choice, her mirror. Dangerous.
Ami had sat upon the steps after and had closed her eyes, covering them with her folded arms in her lap. With only the gentle breeze for company, the creak and rustle of tree and branch, Ami was able to imagine herself away, far away, back home perhaps and sitting on the back step of her house overlooking her own back garden. It’d not been small, or large, but had always been well tended. It was comforting to see herself there, her mum and dad close by, just out of sight. But there were no birds here to sing like there had been at home, no traffic passing a road away, no casual chatter from a couple walking. She wanted to cry, and did a little, and sat up straight to better see the Shadow Princess.
“The old woman was a liar,” she whispered.
“She was as she had always been. That one being from long ago had been as every Sentry had been, too sure of their own righteousness; splintered, they weren’t much different in the end.” Shadow Ami sat beside her and looked out onto the green, her eyes flicking to the dark woods. “They could never accept that the end had come. If you’d have thrust your sword into the three of them combined, they would surely have overpowered you and stolen all the good, and the bad in you.”
“To live again?”
“To continue, in some form,” she said, and smiled. “But her people were also the same, jealous and greedy even in death. You called to them here to witness, and they hated what they saw in Romany, in a Sentry who would have power greater than theirs.”
“What’s happened to her?”
She shook her head. “That I don’t know. But she has gone, and you need to stop the dragon. Romany can no longer control it, but it is still there right now, breaking through the layers. This has not ended yet.” She stood and pulled Ami up with her, the connection between them a magic of purple light and sparking flame. She saw only spits of green, most having left her for Romany.
“But, how do I do that?”
The twin touched Ami’s sword at her waist and smiled. “Go through the arch. Return.” She pointed to the place Romany had been lost, where her own greedy people had devoured her, or taken her—had gone with her either way. The negative space between pulsed and seemed to swallow. “It’s not ended yet. There is still time.”
Ami followed her direction, thinking of the old woman and how she’d taken her at her word, thinking of her as Grace the elder, who’d been both a child guide and her mother. Trust was deadly, sentiment anaesthetising. Adam, Grammy, Pops, Romany—how many more times must I be used before I learn? Her power bristled, her skin swimming with light beneath the leather. Never again. The Shadow Princess stood behind her as she reached the arches and looked around at the peaceful place, the rainfall and storm gone as if never there, as were the Sentries. “This is Celestial, isn’t it?”
“Yes. All that remains, a layer all on its own. It belongs to you now.”
Ami pulled her sword and it flew aflame, the colour of lavender. “You cannot come with me?”
I am you, she whispered by her ear, and Ami stepped through, back into the cavern.
The temperature had dropped dramatically, her breath an icy mist as she stepped tentatively between the numerous cracks. Around her, rock had broken and fallen, the cavern now more a stone cage open to the sky, the light of the layers bleeding through in shafts and pools; above, the orange light swam a sea of overlapping landscapes that rippled into one another. There were mountains there that had scattered rock down upon towns, and men in simple animal skins that had wandered lost into streets and houses; fire spread from lava fount to forest to field, through suburbs and valleys, melting icebergs that swamped deserts; and in the centre, now only a flapping shadow, was the Dragø. Its roar cascaded down upon hundreds of layers, gargantuan wings seen in a thousand skies. Claws and tail swiped at planes that exploded and scattered, littering millions of lands and seas. Soon the beast will feed, she thought, and the new Celestial will reign.
And so, letting the power gather inside her, Ami raised her sword and pushed her body into light, the power lifting her up into the air in pursuit of the dragon.
She ascended quickly beyond the broken shell of rock and into an assortment of so many colours and shades; it was psychedelic, and Ami wasn’t sure her senses could handle it. It was as if she were surrounded by seas of reflections, pools of all different sizes, each showing something different. Some pools were huge, those she’d seen from below easily enough, but others were tiny and flickering for space, each and all rippling into the greater ocean of orange light. She tried to focus on the dragon, the only singular and unique shadow above her, but her attention continued to stray to destruction and desolation, dark depths pierced through with strobe light, night and day, rain and dry, blood-spilt wars, cries and screams, all heard mutely from billions of puddles, pools and rivers of life. What did she look like to those who saw her? A shooting star perhaps, or a missile aimed for the beast? There were already many of those, each falling with the wrath of fire it’d loosed upon them. Without doubt it would do the same to her, given the chance—but she was no dumb missile.
In seconds she’d caught up with it and rolled to her side to dodge a swipe of its spiked tail, her sights set on its mighty scaled body. With a downward thrust of her sword she pierced the beast’s black armour, digging deep into the flesh beneath; it roared, spitting fire in all directions as Ami flailed to the left and right and over, over again, holding fast to the grip—now solid once more—and knowing nothing of her next move. Could she drain its power and send it back down to the cave? Perhaps, but the cave had already gone, had sunk beneath too many layers, too many worlds.
A wind blew against her as she pulled herself up, a hissing sound like white noise in her ears. It was quickly followed by a loud pop that blew her backward and almost off of the dragon’s back. Ami scrambled for hold on a raised plate across his spine, finding the view around her suddenly changed.
A single fiery rip scored the black sky above, while below lay a coastline of tall structures, ornate and mostly white, lit by an array of fires sprinkled throughout. She pulled her sword from the Dragø and clung to its back, looking down upon bulbous domes sitting upon white stone towers, walls of a palace adorned with turrets and spikes, and braziers lighting streets thronging with nightly comings and goings.
Somewhere she heard a voice in the wind, near and yet far away.
Something’s coming.
They soared down with a torrent of fire. Lives, hundreds of lives… Ami turned from the blazing cull, too horrified to watch or listen. Instead she looked to the sky, to the mighty tear. It was gaping where they’d made their entrance, crumbling like stone and cutting the night, unfurling like an unzipped jacket. Soon the sides would peel apart and collapse into another world. How could she stop this?
They were swooping low, and with her eyes fixed to the thick black scales in front of her, she imagined Romany rising triumphant, a song on her lips and hate in her heart.
The matte black armour shone dull with the flame, and Ami slowly began working her way along, grabbing for the next plate, the whole row of them equally spaced, jaunting to one side and then the other. She found she could worm her way between them while still remaining steady, the only thought driving her, to pierce its massive head, the fiery orifice of evil. If she could reach it.
Souls were being harvested, but she wouldn’t look, and instead concentrated on hooking her sword between the plates and pulling herself forward, one at a time. She slipped as it turned back toward the tear, catching herself steady on a spike as the mighty wings flapped.
Behind her, its tail was curled tight and she
knew that clasped between the chinked scales would be the dead of that place, of that city.
It was too much to bear, and pulling up, Ami regained her footing and continued on.
More spikes rose from its skin, those that moved with its wings and met like knives to cut her path. She slashed at them as they came to meet, and felt the Dragø falter, roar, its foot reaching up to scratch at the irritant. Ami had to duck and hide behind one of the platelets, hearing the monstrous scrape of talon on scale. A moment later though normal flight resumed, and they were back on course for the great orange tear.
Ami forged ahead, clambering over the dragon’s back. If she could get to the head before it reached the rip…but the rip was so close now, and by the time she’d battled her way to its neck, they were already passing through it.
The terrain changed dramatically, the sea and the fiery land below replaced in a moment with a city street seen through the infected wound of reality’s rip. She saw overturned cars and bodies left discarded in the wake of the layer’s wrath, and had only a moment in which to make a jump.
The way ahead was a treacherous path across its narrower neck, its spine a series of smoothened humps and sharp bristles. Ami made a run for it, jumping and landing at the centre of its neck as the dragon loosed its flame, and with a pop they broke through into the world beyond.
Their entrance was an explosion of brick and tarmac as they smashed through the roadway and through the corner of a high rise building. Ami dropped and clung to its neck as they flew higher, talons clipping and tearing, the fire rushing beneath her with a roar. Screams followed them into the air as the dragon’s tail was lowered to collect the roasting dead, and when they swooped low, Ami dared a look up into the rip that had torn through the entire city. It stretched for miles in either direction, smaller cracks of orange surrounding the major bleed, other movements coming from it as things from other layers crawled and staggered and slunk through to invade, lost and scared and vengeful. Black creatures groaned and clawed their way across roads and scattered steel cable, crushing cars and bodies alike.
