"I still can't spot them in the mural," Jophiel said. "Although the Emperor insists they are there. Nobody recognizes an Agent of Ki until after they've completed their mission. Not even the gods."
The Emperor finished reading the story for Uriel:
True love will inspire the Other One,
To pierce her heart upon a thorn,
And bring back hope where there is none.
For agape can access Ki’s Song.
When all the players have made their moves,
And the Morning Star shines bright,
He shall light the way through the darkest hour,
And restore the path of Light…
And if these measures should someday fail,
And Ki’s protections fall,
The Dark Lord shall seize his vessel,
And protect the Light by destroying them all.
Raphael shuddered at hearing the last line of the poem. "That sounds ominous."
"It is," the Emperor said.
Raphael turned to face his emperor and god.
"I just wanted you to know what's really at stake if what I fear has been set in motion."
"You think this Moloch-god is sniffing around your Alliance?"
"I have no proof," the Emperor said. He handed Uriel down into Jophiel's waiting arms. "Only a bad feeling about certain coincidences."
"Such as?"
"The rebellion of my son!" The Emperor's golden eyes waxed copper with anger, giving Raphael the impression they were filled with fire. "The sudden re-emergence of a species that went missing 74,000 years ago. And other … incidents … that I care not to go into."
The Emperor slid down off his throne, surprisingly short for a god who commanded such an imposing presence. Raphael tucked his wings against his back and prepared to be demoted, smote by lightning, or at minimum, lectured. It was time to answer for his crime.
"What are your orders, Sir?" Raphael asked.
A small door behind the throne opened and Uriel's froglike Delphinium nanny, Nanna Oophaga, hop-hobbled out, bumping against her an assortment of over-stuffed packages. Behind her the Emperor's chief geneticist and Muqquibat advisor, Dephar, click-click-clicked across the marble floor bent over his cane, a small tray balanced in his free hand.
Raphael felt before he saw the tears which Jophiel suppressed.
"Sir?" Raphael asked.
Nanna Oophaga puffed out her pale, yellow throat pouch and gave a nervous carroak as she fumbled her packages before the Emperor and bent to grab them, nearly butting her head onto Master Yoritomo's armor.
"Y-y-your Majesty!" Nanna Oophaga croaked.
"Good day, Madam," the Emperor gave her a reassuring smile. "I want you to know how much I appreciate the sacrifice you are making."
"En-en-anything for you, Sir," Nanna Oophaga fumbled with the packages, not sure whether to salute, bow, or curtsy. She finally did a combination of all three. The packages tumbled onto the floor.
Uriel reached towards her with a delighted gurgle while the gorock immediately hid behind Jophiel. One amphibious creature to another, Nanna Oophaga didn't put up with any of the gorock's antics.
"Did you remember his stuffed iompróidh?" Jophiel asked.
"Yes, Sir," Nanna Oophaga said. "And his blankie. The one Major Klikrrr's mother knit for him."
"This will only pinch," Dephar said. The Muqqibat dragon pulled a syringe out from under a napkin which hid the implements he carried on the tray. "I suggest you hold down that gorock, Brigadier-General Israfa."
Raphael gaped while the Emperor's chief geneticist pushed up Uriel's sleeve and plunged the needle into his arm. Beside him, the Emperor gave Raphael his orders, but all he could hear was a silent, overwhelming sense of grief from Jophiel. Raphael clutched his chest, unable to bear it even though he couldn't understand her fear.
"What's going on here?" Raphael choked out.
"Just a sedative," Dephar said as blandly as though he'd just vaccinated a pet. "So they don't panic."
"Panic?" Raphael turned to Jophiel, who pressed her face into Uriel's neck as though she feared she might never see him again. Her wings shuddered with silent tears. Uriel yowled at the indignity of having just been jabbed with a needle and peered over his mother's shoulder with accusatory jade eyes, his small red wings pounding against her even though he was still too little to fly.
"Your little friends should be here any second," the Emperor said. "Ah! There they are!"
Raphael whirled to where two living 'needle' ships appeared. Needles were long, slender biomechanical creatures that could 'jump' from one end of the galaxy to the other in a matter of seconds. They were the remnant of some vast civilization which had risen and fallen in a distant galaxy, leaving the creatures, who gathered in flocks similar to carrier pigeons, with no 'roost' to call home. Inside their abdomen was a large, natural marsupium pouch which could carry small amounts of cargo, messages, or, if one wasn't too large or claustrophobic, an Angelic.
The gorock yelped.
"Sit still there, ya pesky creature," Nanna Oophaga scolded the gorock as he tried to wriggle out of Master Yoritomo's grip, "or you'll make it worse on yourself. Don't you know who that is who's got ya there? That's the Emperor's Cherubim Master of Arms! You're lucky he doesn't use his sword to dock your tail!"
Master Yoritomo let the creature go. The gorock immediately ran and hid behind the Emperor's throne. Raphael watched, dazed, at the specter of the Emperor's throne room turned into a circus.
"Shouldn't you hold onto him?" Nanna Oophaga asked Dephar.
Dephar neatly arranged his two syringes back onto his tray and leaned wearily against his cane. His dragon-like snout curved up in a bit of a vindictive smile.
"Sixty seconds," Dephar said. "Sixty seconds is all it takes and then Gi will be happily sleeping on the carpet."
Raphael glanced over at Uriel. His big green eyes had grown heavy beneath his auburn lashes, only the occasional hiccough causing his tiny red wings to flutter.
"Are you coming with us, Jophie?" Raphael dared ask.
Jophiel's eyes were filled with tears.
"Supreme Commander-General Abaddon gave me a direct order," Jophiel's voice warbled. "Place each of my twelve offspring under the direct command of their sires because he cannot guarantee their safety if I chose to keep them with me."
"But ... the Emperor..."
The hand which touched Raphael's wing looked like any other hand, but the tingle of electricity was anything but mortal.
"Needs you to complete your mission," the Emperor said. "Something you won't be able to do if you're worried sick about your son."
"She can come with me," Raphael insisted. "Abaddon has no idea where we search for Earth's coordinates. I can protect them both!"
The Emperor had a wistful, apologetic expression.
"I cannot spare her," the Emperor shook his head. "Jophiel is," he glanced up at the ceiling, "unique."
Raphael swallowed, his heart breaking along with Jophiel's as he realized she'd known this all along. Hybrids weren't supposed to become attached to their offspring, who were only begotten to further the glory of the Emperor's kingdom, but General Abaddon, Parliament's successor to Jophiel, had changed all that, ending with his rebellion hundreds of years of the Emperor's Be Fruitful and Multiply policies.
Nanna Oophaga bustled forward. Her broad, soft-soled shoes flap-flap-flapped across the marble as she lined the marsupium of Jophiel's personal 'needle' with Uriel's favorite blankie.
"Come, Sir," Nanna Oophaga gestured. "I'll be there on the other side to make sure he's well taken care of until you can rejoin us."
Jophiel lay the now-sleepy infant down into the marsupium and wrapped him in his blanket.
"He's so little," Jophiel tenderly strapped on his air mask. "How will he thrive without me?"
"You know I'll take good care of him," Raphael promised.
Master Yoritomo helped Nanna Oophaga ram her dowdy frame into the second needle, the on
e which had logged so many hours carrying Raphael to visit Jophiel and his son. Now, it seemed, the flow of visitation would have to flow in the opposite direction. Nanna Oophaga gave a frightened carroak as the marsupium closed its pouch around her, but thankfully, as a naturally evolved creature, she was far smaller than Raphael and fit comfortably inside the needle, packages and all.
"Come right back for me." Raphael rubbed his needle's nose ... if it was a nose. Nobody knew for certain.
Jophiel sobbed as her own needle closed its marsupium around their son. The Emperor moved forward and placed his hand upon the needle's forehead.
"Ah, little friend," the Emperor said. "What a useful Alliance citizen you and your friends have turned out to be. If only I had more of your species. Then my Angelics wouldn't need to be spread out all over the galaxy, so far from their families." He rubbed the needle's nose affectionately. "Take good care of little Uriel?"
The two needles rose until they were three meters off the floor, and then made a leaping movement like a Leviathan catapulting itself through the water, and disappeared without a sound. Jophiel began to weep.
"Come, Master Yoritomo," the Emperor said. "I have other duties to attend to today. That filly can't do without me for long before some internal process needs tinkering."
"Hai, watashi no kōtei," Master Yoritomo gave the Emperor a quick nod. With a lumbering, clanking walk, he and the Emperor strode side-by-side out of the Great Room and disappeared into the doorway from whence the nanny and Dephar had come.
Dephar walked behind to throne to check on the gorock, now snoring peacefully. This was not how Raphael had expected his audience with the Emperor would go. He'd anticipated many things. To be punished for following his heart. To be treated with stiff formality. Anything … anything except to have the Emperor treat him like … family?
Jophiel did not resist as he pulled her into his arms and wrapped his large, golden wings around her smaller white ones.
"I assume the entire point of all this is that the Emperor feels it's too dangerous to keep Uriel around the palace?" Raphael asked.
"You've got 97 ships under your command," Jophiel said, "your men are not aware of the rebellion which has incapacitated the larger Alliance, and the only problems you've encountered so far are minor skirmishes with traders. Uriel will be safer with you than me. Right now the only thing protecting the Emperor from the will of Parliament is Abaddon's refusal to order his armies to engage the Cherubim."
"There's nothing out there in Zulu Sector," Raphael said. "Except a few marginally-habitable planets. It's the reason that spiral arm was never explored."
"If you find the planet," Jophiel said, "send in a reconnaissance team to determine how well Shay'tan's got it protected. Don't just rush in and save them. We have to figure out the supply lines."
"He cut off the Marid traders," Raphael said, "probably because he doesn't trust them. Wherever that planet is, Shay'tan cut off his own supply lines to keep us from tracking them to the human homeworld."
"They must be getting terribly short on supplies," Jophiel said. "Our intelligence says nearly a third of Shay'tan's ships have disappeared. It would take months for them to sneak into Zulu Sector from the outer perimeter of the galaxy, but once they get there, we'll never wrest that planet out of Shay'tan's hands. It's imperative that we get there first. Before Shay'tan resupplies his landing party."
"If I know Mikhail," Raphael said, "he's probably sneaking in under cover of darkness to hit the Sata'anic lizards where it hurts."
"Do you think he'd rally the humans?" Jophiel asked. "As soldiers?"
"Possibly…" Raphael thought back to his years of basic training with the brooding, dark-winged Seraphim. "He's a capable military commander, but his lack of social skills always hindered him with any grouping larger than a Special Forces unit. Unless Mikhail decides he wants to let you know him, he's about as sociable as a rock."
Raphael did his best impersonation of Mikhail's unreadable stare, which elicited from Jophiel a weak smile.
"Just find him," Jophiel sniffled. "Find your friend. You're not the only person who lost a friend the day Mikhail's ship went missing."
Just then the two needles reappeared above their heads.
"Ah!" Dephar called. "Brigadier-General Israfa. Could you please help me carry the gorock? I'm getting a bit old to be carrying around a pet."
"Yes, Sir," Raphael said. He picked up the awkward creature and tucked it into Jophiel's needle with a modified oxygen mask so it wouldn't suffocate. He turned back to Jophiel. "And what if the planet is too heavily defended, Sir, and for some reason I can't reach you. What are my orders?"
Jophiel's features hardened into the mask of their supreme military commander.
"Then call in The Destroyer," Jophiel said. "Abaddon promised his wife he would lay that planet at her feet. He will seize the old dragon by the tail and make him bleed, whether or not it serves Lucifer's interest or the Emperor's."
"Yes, Sir," Raphael gave her a crisp salute.
Raphael ignored the retreating Dephar, who had enough sensitivity to vacate the room so Raphael could kiss his mate goodbye.
"You'll come visit us?"
"If I can."
"We're just a needle jump away."
Her blue eyes darkened as Raphael crushed his lips down upon hers. It was a desperate, almost frantic feeling, this desire to make love to her right in front of the Emperor's empty throne.
A joyous note interrupted their kiss. A tiny, inconspicuous bird settled in a bush near the doorway which opened up into the Eternal Garden, warbling its cheerful song as though it had been granted an audience to sing before the Emperor. Jophiel broke their embrace and brushed at her eyes, embarrassed she'd let him see her cry.
"It's the Happy Bird," Jophiel said. "Perhaps it is a favorable omen?"
"I will find that planet," Raphael promised. "I will find that planet and bring home Mikhail."
With a final, desperate kiss goodbye, Raphael rammed his too-large wings into his needle's marsupium and stared up at the shapeless black mass painted on the ceiling to depict the Guardian of the Universe. Pitiless, dark eyes stared down upon him, reminding him of the consequences if, as the Emperor feared, the Evil One was on the move.
"I will find that planet," Raphael vowed to He-who's-not, "and bring Mikhail home to meet my family. This I swear to you. I will bring my best friend home."
He could have sworn as the womb-like marsupium closed around him that the darkness on the ceiling moved, giving him a glimpse of a muscular figure possessing bat-like wings that would have dwarfed the wings of even Emperor Shay'tan. Primal horror grabbed Raphael in the gut. Whoever this Agent of Ki was, they'd better fix the problem before this galaxy was the next casualty of the Dark Lord protecting his mate.
With a jarring dislocation, the needle catapulted him to the opposite end of the galaxy to rendezvous with the Light Emerging.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 6
Time: Indeterminate
Ascended Realms
Bishamonten
The Cherubim God of War felt the summons milliseconds before his consciousness was yanked away from the aftermath of the battle where, against the rules, he'd participated in the outcome as a combatant. Before him stood the imposing Great Gate to the Infernal Palace, the abode of He-who's-not, also known as the Dark Lord. Fear ignited in what would have been Bishamonten's belly had he still possessed a corporeal form.
'I have been summoned,' Bishamonten thought to himself. 'And now I shall pay the price for interfering in the affairs of mortals.'
There was no sound here in the void, but if there were sound, it might be described as an endless, howling scream; the cry of insanity any living creature made when it stared into the nothing and recognized their own insignificance; the cry of emptiness, of hunger, of loss of life.
Bishamonten could feel the vibration which rippled through his exoskeleton as the enormous black doors swung inwards like a great
black, ravenous maw. Compulsion drew him inside. There was no running away from the god who ruled the chaos underlying All-That-Is..
He sheathed his swords and stepped into the gargantuan, chthonic hall which rose out of the darkness, devoid of light, of life, of love. Not even a candle could remain lighted when HE summoned you unto his presence, but lifesparks transcended the power of the ancient god of destruction who, along with his mate, had created between them All-That-Is.
Bishamonten's own azure light thrust valiantly into the dark, illuminating the chess squares upon which he trod. As he stepped, each square revealed the galaxy that chess square represented. He paused to stare down at one as it cast a momentary, brave light into the darkness, its stars visible as it whirled peacefully on its axis, unaware that at any moment, the two immortals might gamble it away and cast its essence back into the void.
"Do not be afraid," a terrible, sonorous voice vibrated through the hall, everything about it screaming through Bishamonten's nerve endings to RUN. "I merely wish to discuss with you a problem."
Bishamonten stepped carefully through the massive chess pieces strewn about the hall like tombstones. He paused when he saw which square the Dark Lord's chess table had been placed upon, delineating the galaxy currently at play. In the chess square beneath the table spun the Milky Way, the galaxy Bishamonten had made his home.
A deep-seated thrum pulsated throughout the palace, a manifestation of He-who's-not's consciousness which held the otherwise formless construct into a shape which was recognizable enough to comprehend. The Infernal Palace had grown more solid since the last time Bishamonten had been summoned here, twenty-five years ago when the Dark Lord had asked him to take an orphan under his tutelage. It was to save that same orphaned Seraphim which had inspired Bishamonten to seize possession of the neophyte named Pareesa.
A titanic deity sat in total darkness upon his massive throne. Pitiless black eyes stared out of a stern face so inhumanely handsome it appeared as though it had been chiseled out of black volcanic obsidian. Every aspect of the Dark Lord bespoke his role as Guardian of the Universe, from the sword-like spikes which adorned his leathery wings to the scorpion tail which curled menacingly at his side. He had six horns which encircled his face like a deadly crown, and from his torso bulged striated muscles.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 8
