Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  “I’ll do it,” Zaja promised as she shook. “I’ll do it.”

  She felt sick inside. She was terrified at the prospect of looking beneath her clothes and learning how much of her body had eroded in service to this task. She shook as she knelt, as she fought to force that last bridge through. She was half drenched in salt water, but pushed past the chill to concentrate on finishing the task.

  Back in Quema, there was a time when she’d welcomed every injection her parents had given her. She was still a child, and truly believed she would be the first to beat Nyrikon’s Syndrome. Her talent for freezing was something that had developed along the way, and stood diametrically opposed to everything she needed to survive. Even as it harmed Zaja, it had also helped her, only growing stronger since she’d left Oma.

  With the final connection to Thoris completed, Zaja scrambled up and huddled in a small alcove, shaking as she fought to pull her gloves back over her swollen hands. They were wrecked—almost entirely discolored, stiff and numb. Chari hurried to her side as Zaja slipped into a semiconscious state. She was only vaguely aware of being stripped out of her wet clothes, then wrapped up tightly for warmth.

  As her awareness returned, she could see Jean examining the alcove walls, shaking a bit more loose to expand the space around them.

  “Don’t see how we’re to get in,” Shea commented. “It’s Thoris. Better prepared have tried.”

  Jean jabbed her thumb at her own chest triumphantly. “One thing those fuck-heads didn’t have with ’em was me.”

  Zaja huddled wearily against the wall as her friends crowded Jean, praising or encouraging her. As the wall began to breach, Zaja heard Flynn thank Jean, saying, “We couldn’t have gotten this far without you.” And it was true.

  While Jean steadily opened the way, the stiffness in Zaja’s fingers receded, though little actual feeling returned. Out toward the Atvuon Peninsula, more than half the bridge was gone—melted or sundered by the waves. Night was falling, and she could see torches in the distance; she wondered if Yetinau’s killers were on their trail.

  “Fuckin’ bingo,” Jean boasted as part of the alcove wall crumbled. They began tossing pieces of it into the sea, and soon a dark tunnel was steadily revealed.

  Chari produced a flashlight and shined it inside.

  “It runs deep,” she observed. “Whether it runs through, we can only search and see.”

  While Jean put the finishing touches on the opening, Zaja tried to rise. She was exhausted—from the labor, from the cold—and her legs wobbled until she began to fall. Someone caught her, and it was Flynn she found keeping her steady. She turned away, ashamed to have been helped, but there was no condemnation in his eyes.

  “You’re important too,” he assured her. “Please don’t forget that.”

  Zaja’s pride softened and she accepted his help, climbing onto his back to be carried through the mountain passage. She soon drifted to sleep on his shoulder. She had done her part, and earned her rest.

  * * *

  Emerging from the other side of the great wall was like being reborn. Gone were the stormy skies and turbulent seas, along with the ceaseless wars of Shea’s homeland. What greeted her was not the gilded paradise of children’s stories, but a vast land overtaken by growth and devoid of human life. Yet there had been people here once; the very road they stood on was proof enough of that. It loomed several stories above the distant ground and ran for miles before meeting with another.

  “‘Garden of the gods’ indeed,” Chari muttered, scoffing at the overgrowth.

  “This it?” Shea asked. “No small thing, just … figured on more.”

  “If this truly is a garden of the gods,” Zella asked, “what became of the gardeners?”

  Shea looked over the railing to her left. The vast tracts below were so tangled in growth that the earth was all but drowned. From what little she could make out, there were remnant patterns in the soil. “Might have been farmland, once,” she observed.

  “Look at the carvings in the stone,” Flynn said as he let Zaja down from his back. The road was composed of a pattern of rectangular blocks two meters in length and half that across. “Each one is uniquely engraved. This isn’t the work of a meager cult—a whole culture lived here once.”

  “Safe to say they’ve been gone a long time,” Jean said as she knelt down to study a block. “Question is, what the hell…?” The moment she set her palm to the stone, she unexpectedly jerked it back. “Someone wanna give me a hand with this?”

  “Why not just smash it?” Zaja teased.

  Pale-faced, Jean shook her head. “Wouldn’t seem right.”

  As they fought to pry it loose, Shea realized it was not a thick block but a slab only inches thick. When it came free, a cloud of foul dust wafted out and drove those near it apart. The slab fell to the road and shattered in several places on impact. Shea shielded her face as she neared the opening, eager for a first look, and promptly saw what Jean had detected.

  It was the desiccated corpse of one of her own people, clad in ashen robes. Alone, it was only an oddity, but as Shea stepped back, she began to recognize that the carvings on the shattered lid were unique to it, and that the lengthy road before them was paved with the dead.

  “Answers that query,” she whispered.

  Poe looked to Flynn. “We’ve breached the wall. Do you sense anything?”

  Flynn seemed reluctant to reply but at last shook his head and answered, “No, I don’t. No gods, no pathway to another world … nothing.”

  Poe turned in place several times, and Shea watched as defeat clouded his face. As Poe’s gaze found Zaja leaning on the nearby rail, he seemed like a helpless child. She held up one shaking, damaged hand and told him, “I can’t get us back. Not now, maybe not…”

  Ever.

  “Might be something,” Shea suggested weakly. “Just got here, barely scratched the surface. Worth a look, ’least?”

  “A ‘look’ will still demand weeks of our time,” Poe replied tensely. “Perhaps more.”

  “Still, that there are no gods in this place tells us a great deal,” Zella said. “This land would not have been abandoned naturally—if there are no worshippers here, it may be there are none left to worship.”

  “You suggest they were struck down as Yetinau was?” Chari asked.

  “Or while challenging my father,” she confirmed. “There is a danger to those who become too enraptured in worship. As their gods flourish, so do they. So as their gods decay…”

  “We’ve seen proof of it,” Flynn agreed.

  “When the fuck was that?” Jean asked.

  “Back on Sechal,” he explained. Shea had heard stories of how they had set out from Earth, and of the first world they came to. The journey had culminated at the base of a mountain temple where a great war had once been fought. “The old worshippers of Airia’s trinity lived on Sechal, and when Taryl Renivar’s desires fell out of alignment with his counterparts, Sechal turned on itself.”

  It took Shea a moment to consider the weight of it, and to wonder at the consequences. She looked to Zella. “Said this Renivar has worshippers too, right?”

  “He does,” she confirmed. “I don’t know how many, but I believe there are millions spread across the worlds. Hundreds of thousands in Yeribelt alone.”

  Shea looked to Poe, hoping he followed her meaning. “What happens if you…?”

  “When I kill the Living God?” Poe asked, and shook his head with uncertainty.

  “What exactly would happen?” Zaja reluctantly asked.

  “If my father falls, his followers may meet the same end as those on Sechal,” Zella replied, glancing briefly at Flynn. “It may reflect the circumstances of his downfall, or…” She paused to look at the long and lonely road ahead. “It could be quiet.”

  With that, she began walking, and one by one, the
others followed, until it was just Shea and Flynn.

  “Hardly seems like Keltia,” she commented. “Feels a world apart. Find a way off, won’t we?”

  Flynn was slow to reply. “It’s all silence. I can’t sense anything where we’re going, or where we came from. I…” He faltered. “I feel cut off.”

  She’d hoped he would reassure her; a lifetime trapped in this forgotten land was not the future she wanted. Then, seeing Flynn’s face, she took his arm to escort him down the path. “We’ll find a way,” she promised.

  * * *

  It had been decades since Zella had seen a sanctum such as this, and she felt sorrow for it. The domain of Thoris was truly carved for gods—far removed from the hovel that Yetinau Gruent cowered in, or even the shanty streets of Yeribelt over which her father presided. It was a land devoted to worship, and brought to surface memories of the great city of Remonstaire, where her goddess-mother had reigned like a queen, and Zella herself like a princess.

  But the great city she still called home lived on. Not like this.

  “Food shall run scarce long before we make any significant headway,” Chari determined after taking stock of their supplies. They had been walking for days, and still hadn’t even reached the first crossroad.

  Poe was standing at the side of the road, peering down. “We should survey the growth below. Something may flourish down there that we can eat.”

  Flynn joined Poe, and surveyed the depths with dismay. “Looks more like weeds and brambles … but we don’t have much other choice, do we?”

  There was no difficulty in exploring Thoris’ depths. Stairways bridged the above and below at regular intervals, and Zella surmised they likely served to bring the harvest up and supplies down. As they descended, she tapped Flynn on the shoulder.

  “You still don’t sense anything?” He shook his head. She didn’t wish to comfort him, but felt she ought to. “It may not have worked out, but it was still a sound idea.”

  “It was,” he agreed. “But now all I can do is worry I’ve led us into an inescapable trap.”

  At first, it seemed like Flynn was right—there were signs that the old occupants used to cultivate this land, but barbed vines had taken over a long time ago. The crops that had survived had turned wild, looming large but ensnared in the brambles; with no other options, the companions began making trips down daily, hacking through the growth and harvesting what they needed.

  Zella didn’t like going far in. At first, it was a superficial fear, for although the livestock that once lived down here hadn’t survived the passage of time, their bleached bones remained. But she saw things in the shadowy depths of the brambles, and though they never showed themselves, they seemed to eye Zella whenever she made the descent.

  When they finally found a settlement, it proved as lifeless as the rest of Thoris. The houses were made of a reddish clay—thin walls with fine inscriptions on them—and seemed intended more for decoration than dwelling. Time had fractured them, cracked them like eggshells, and those that still stood had nothing of use to offer. There was, however, one curiosity that gave the group pause.

  In the center of this nameless village was a small shrine with a circular skylight and a shallow pool within. There was no water and the bottom was dusted with dry leaves and sand, but it seemed it was never meant for washing or drinking. A faint blue aura drifted from above and settled in the depression, forming a pond of soft luminescence.

  “Saw somethin’ like this in Renivar’s castle,” Jean said. “What’cha think they’re gatherin’ it for?”

  “Any who might have known are gone,” Zella replied. Her father gathered such energy to erode his chains; her mother sipped it like it ambrosia. Such gathering points were not simply left in the open, not even in Yeribelt and certainly not in Remonstaire. “I feel it resonating with the blood in my veins,” she confessed.

  “What’s that like?” Zaja asked.

  “Kind of tingles.”

  Poe knelt before the pool and removed one of his gloves. He hesitated for a moment, then plunged his fist into the light. It did not react, but Poe gritted his teeth and began to sweat like he’d stuck his hand in boiling water.

  He soon withdrew in dismay. “Is my soul so tarnished? Is this pain gauged by my murders, by the wages of my sins?”

  Flynn crouched opposite Poe and swirled his fingers in the light. “I don’t feel anything.” This revelation left Zella ill, for knowing the deceitful man Flynn once was, it raised the question of which was worse—to take a life or destroy it?

  “The pain burrows into the very core of me,” Poe said. “Like some part of my existence threatens to be unmade, and is scarcely held at bay.”

  “Such pure living energy is said to devastate the most corrupt of beings,” Zella told him. She glanced at Flynn, and added, “How you can touch it and feel no pain is beyond me.”

  He shrugged weakly. “Maybe the universe thinks I’ve suffered enough?” Flynn didn’t seem convinced by his own words.

  There would be several more settlements along the way before the great spire at the heart of Thoris began to reveal itself. In every one of these villages was a similar pool of light, and every time Poe tried his hand at it with similar results. Once, he attempted to strip down and meditate in one, but gave up within the hour.

  “Any difference?” Zella asked upon his emergence.

  Poe stopped to draw the Dark Sword and feel the weight of it in his hand. “Nothing consequential,” he concluded.

  * * *

  After weeks of travel, the spire—once just a tiny protrusion on the horizon—towered before them, casting a chilling shadow to match. The dark bronze monolith could challenge any of the skyscrapers that had survived back on Earth, and though its doors were open, nothing about it felt welcoming.

  As they looked up at the looming entrance, Chari glanced at Flynn and asked, “Any notion that we might find something within?”

  He shook his head. The lifeless road had remained so from the edge of Thoris to its very center, and all along it, Flynn’s sixth sense was silent as well. The sensation called back to the days before his transformation, when he was a different man. It was a quiet that haunted him.

  “We have no reason to tarry out here,” Poe said contemptuously as he marched in. “Let us greet the fruits of this vacant endeavor.”

  The spire’s base level was poorly lit, depending on windows that were far too high to cast significant light even on the brightest of days. The broad, shallow pools along the path would have reflected the sunshine once, but they had gone dry, save for a few sparse puddles so muddy they couldn’t provide even the dimmest reflection.

  Shea tugged on Flynn’s sleeve. “What after this?” she asked. “Long walk back?”

  “Maybe Zaja can handle getting us out by the time we return,” he suggested. “She’s had some time to recover.”

  “What I’ve seen? Don’t think she works that way.”

  Flynn reserved his response. Shea was right; he’d just hoped she hadn’t caught on to so much so soon. Even if Zaja had the stamina to bring them back to the mainland, the turbulent waves on the edge of Thoris were a far less forgiving starting point than the shore they’d set out from. There were no materials suitable for building a boat either, let alone one that would survive its maiden voyage. The rocks surrounding Thoris might have served as much to keep people in as out.

  “It’s some distance to the top,” Zella observed as they came to the center of the spire. A series of paths crisscrossed up its height before a large dais filled in the space above and blocked any view of the ceiling. “I see something up there, however. Something large.”

  “Several, actually,” Shea added. “Count four.”

  “Probably just statues of the fuckers who ruled this place,” Jean said. “There, I spoiled it. We still need to bother goin’ up now?” Poe glanc
ed at her with irritation. “What? I just don’t wanna climb up and see ya get all pissy.”

  “It does feel like we’re just trying to stave off the inevitable disappointment,” Zella agreed. “Still…”

  “We’re already here,” Flynn finished. “Let’s just see whatever there is to see. Once our curiosity is sated, we’ll sit down and discuss our next steps.”

  To reach the paths above, the spire’s builders had foregone stairwells in favor of elevator platforms, flanked on each side by a chain and pulley system. When this place was alive, Flynn imagined the gods that came and went were hoisted up and brought back down by servants doing the hard labor, but in their absence, the seven could only count on themselves.

  Flynn surveyed the distant light above with every revolution of the chain. His hands ached as he gripped and pulled, but he couldn’t bring himself to tag out and let someone else take over. A sickening feeling assured him nothing they found would justify the months-long trip. Every decision he’d made thus far had brought them to this inevitable dead end, and it could only end with them leaving Thoris to find passage to another world, then cycling through the same dart-board approach of passing through doors and hoping to get lucky.

  The platform suddenly buckled as the chain momentarily slipped in Flynn’s sweaty, raw hands. Everyone was safe, but it was a jarring interruption.

  Flynn held tight and tried to retain his grip, insisting, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

  “Oi! Oi, here,” Shea said, slipping under his arms to catch the length of the chain below his hands. She was pressed right against him for a moment, the scent of her hair in his face, the nape of her neck near his lips. “Got it. Got it. Let go,” she urged.

  Flynn wanted to argue, to bear this task himself in penance for all his missteps. But he knew his hands were sore, his strength tapped, and so he submitted to Shea, disengaging from her in the process. He felt her tail slide against his leg as he stepped back and wondered if it was intentional.

  “You overtaxed yourself,” Chari stated with concern as she soothed the pain in his hands.