by John Hook
“My name is Saripha. I believe yours is Zara? If you’re truly interested in our cause, you’re welcome.”
“Thank you for the welcome. I’ll be honest with you. I liberated myself because I don’t want to do anything to satisfy anyone else’s demands ever again. However, I think we have the same goal.”
Saripha nodded. “And what would that goal be?”
“To stop the Angels. I want to kill them.”
“We have another goal, Zara. To free former humans from pain and humiliation while at least stopping what the Angels want to accomplish.”
“Again, honestly. I might sacrifice humans if doing so accomplished the main goal.” Zara looked at me. “You’re not so different. You turned an entire town into protos to get Janovic.”
“Yes I did.” I nodded. “That’s on me. It was wrong. It wasn’t my decision to make.”
“We all participated in that decision, Quentin.” Saripha put a hand on both Zara’s and my shoulders. “Can we say that we will at least discuss what we want before we do it?”
Zara didn’t say anything.
Saripha continued. “You’re a Shade then? Fire element, I believe.”
“I’m more like an energy. Seems to break things down at their most basic molecular structure.” She looked at me and smirked. “It doesn’t burn to the touch, does it, Quentin?”
“What Manitor were you allied with?” Saripha was staying on track.
“I’m not allied with any Manitor!”
“I said ‘were.’ You must have started out with one.”
“Bloody boar head.” Zara flipped her hair defiantly. “I was lucky. He mostly ignored me.”
“I met him. Pretty ugly,” I noted.
“I should have had Kanarchan.”
“Why?” I asked. I was honestly curious, but she became agitated.
“Because I should have had the blue power. I earned it.”
Saripha gently turned Zara back. “We have what we have. You are welcome to travel with us and we will both—all—see how it works. If you wish.”
“All right then,” Zara said as if it was no big deal.
“To the Mountain.”
“Which mountain?”
“The one by the sea?” I tried.
“There are a lot of mountains by the sea.”
Izzy and Anika scooped Zara up and took her along with them.
“Then just come along and we’ll show you which mountain we mean.”
Saripha shook her head, a slightly amused look on her face.
“This is crazy, Saripha. This is never going to work.”
“She has a kind of twisted attraction to you, I think.”
“The hero who never came.” I sighed.
“You may have to let her explore that.”
“I already did.”
Saripha laughed.
“Saripha, are you sure you want to do this?”
“I can work with her. She may be valuable. And it is probably better if we can keep our eye on her.”
“That’s what she said.”
“She’s right.”
11.
What had been the pain farm where my previous “body” died was now a blackened ruin. Most of the towers were collapsed, their exteriors blackened. The fire had not been entirely controlled because a stand of trees to the west had also been severely burned and stood as charcoal sentinels with many of their branches gone. It had been long enough that grass had reseeded and green and yellow vines climbed over the broken shapes of the pain towers like blankets thrown over the dead.
“I suspect you had something to do with this?” I looked at Blaise.
Blaise grinned but it wasn’t entirely joyful. “Right after you disappeared. The frogs told us where you were but refused to take anyone. Figured we do some mop-up with this bit of business. Wouldn’t want them to recycle the place.”
I looked at the trees.
“No fire departments or smoke jumpers in Hell, I see.”
“A little miscalculation in our enthusiasm. It burned itself out quickly enough.”
“You don’t think that was odd?”
“I think everything here is odd. Taka thought it had to do with the fact that lava-created fire burns very slowly for some reason. Might be more of a chemical burn than real fire. Maybe the air here has less oxygen. We wouldn’t know if our glamour bodies are adapted to it.”
Zara had formed her carpet of fire and was flying inspection over the ruins.
“She’s an odd one,” Kyo noted without elaboration. There was no judgment in her voice, either.
“She’s been through a lot,” Saripha said quietly. “Her coping mechanisms are a bit unexpected. She’s strong, but her emotional connections are broken. She has trouble relating to people in normal ways.”
“Can we help?” I asked.
“Maybe, but there is no guarantee.”
“There wasn’t with Rox, either.”
“Rox was never as damaged as she is. I suspect Rox was a stronger person to begin with and she mastered compartmentalization. That’s why she could do truly terrible things one moment and later flip a switch and be something better in the next. It’s what actually made it easier to trust her once I taught her how to control the switch.”
“You think Zara can’t control the switch.”
“I don’t think she has the switch. In her case, everything’s all mixed up in one big roiling pot and what she does at any moment depends on what comes to the surface.”
“What do we do?”
“For right now, make sure she isn’t too isolated.” Saripha motioned to Zara floating over the ruins of the pain farm, lost in thought.
“Me, huh?”
“She’s formed a bond to you, no matter how twisted. And you are like her—you are also a “‘Shade”’ who has turned on the established order.”
“I never thought of things that way, but I guess you’re right.”
I floated up and joined Zara above the pain farm. I just floated. I didn’t need to imagine myself floating on something. I also never got a lot of speed, which is why I didn’t use it for long distances.
“What are you thinking about, Zara?”
“All the suffering the Angels have engineered for former humans in this place. Why? They just plan to destroy our worlds.”
“It’s part of the plan. They need an alloy of pain and metal.”
“For what?”
“You don’t know about the sword?”
“I heard of a sword to shatter the cosmos. Always thought it was a metaphor.”
“You’ll see it. It’s in the Mountain, too. I need to check on it.”
“You’ll destroy it, yes?”
“Maybe. Yeah. It looks that way.”
“You don’t sound sure.” Zara looked at me like she was trying to read what I was thinking.
“It’s complicated.”
The mines were still there. People who had been turned into protos in Antanaria, and maybe elsewhere, worked endlessly, digging away. They were guarded without much effort by a group of Shirks. If they were surprised to see us, and in the company of a Shade, they didn’t show it. We ignored them as we passed. They weren’t going to make any trouble for us.
We circled to the ocean side of the Mountain. As before, the shoreline was rocky and treacherous. Even with a clear sky, the waters were dark and choppy. We climbed up to the cave entrance and followed the path to the first chamber where the metal and pain were heated by lava, and then we passed through the double doors to the large room where the sword was being made, suspended in a ring of scaffolding.
It was still an eerie sight, with flashes of light as the hot alloy hit the surface of the sword and the steam from the water used to cool the sword filling the room like a fog. I noticed some changes had been made. First, the sword was very close to being done, if done meant that every surface was covered in cooling metal. Only two areas on the sword had not been filled in by the random pattern I had o
bserved before. I noticed new troughs had been set up to more precisely aim the hot goo onto just those areas and redirect the water as well.
Zara started floating up, her eyes wide. There was a wild look in her eyes. I decided I better stay with her. I had a sudden uneasy feeling. I floated up next to her.
“It’s huge,” she almost whispered.
“That it is.”
Zara turned to me. “How can we wield it?”
“We don’t,” I lied, at least partially. I wasn’t going to get into enlarging our glamour bodies as Rox had shown me if it didn’t occur to her. There was something I didn’t like about her interest in the sword.
“We have to. It’s made with their physics in mind. If we could find the main nest of the Idiri we could use the sword to destroy it.”
“You’ll do nothing with the sword.” The voice was deep and resonant. A shadow peeled itself away from the stalactites above us. The giant winged figure had blue-black skin with a dusting that gave it a violet blush. Black hair and feathers hung in ringlets about her shoulders. Her descent was graceful as she unfolded her broad wings with tiny, articulated hands with claws at the tips. Her eyes, shiny gold with a red center, though alien, were those of the woman I loved.
“Zara, you remember when I said the sword was complicated?”
“Who is she?”
“Zara, meet Rox.”
Zara became agitated with excitement. “Look at her, she can wield the sword.”
Rox extended her wings and made a banshee cry. We covered our ears and energy shot out from Rox, and Zara was unceremoniously sent flying out through the opening where the water exited from the chamber.
An eyebrow went up on the creature that was Rox, but was also the Black Angel. It was a most Rox-like expression.
“We need to work on your social skills. Zara is a little fragile and we’re trying to hold her together.”
Izzy waved at me and indicated he and Anika would go look to Zara. Saripha had climbed up the scaffolding to join us. I stayed normal sized. I didn’t want to do anything that seemed too challenging until I understood the current mix of Rox to Black Angel.
“Why are you here, Quentin?”
“We need your help,” Saripha answered for me.
“I told you, there is no help for this world except to end it.”
“Are we talking to Rox or the Black Angel?”
“I am Rox, Quentin, but the Black Angel is part of me. I don’t fully understand the connection myself, but I see the broader implications of things because I share the Angel’s perspective.”
“And if you wanted to do something differently…?”
Rox looked at me. There was an odd tenderness in those alien eyes, but there was also steadfast determination.
“I don’t want to do anything different. There is no other way except to destroy everything and start over.”
“I think if you were just Rox, you’d see the Black Angel’s choice is as bad as what the Idiri want. Either way, someone’s making the decision of what should happen to our multiverse and we get no say in it.”
Saripha cut in again. “We are not here about the sword.”
Not this time, I thought to myself. Saripha continued. “We need something so that I can reconnect with Kanarchan before the end.”
Rox’s features softened just slightly as she looked at Saripha. I decided it might be better to let Saripha do the negotiating.
“What do you need? If I can grant it, I will.”
“You will need to reach into the Black Angel’s memories.”
I grew large and then picked up Saripha gently and put her on my shoulder so that she could talk to Rox face to face. Saripha nodded her appreciation.
“You remember Kanarchan—Guido?”
“Yes, Saripha. Has something happened to him?”
“He is trapped in a form created by the dreaming. I need Adaxa to free him, but she has fled.”
“Adaxa?”
“You don’t know her. The Black Angel does.”
I saw Rox—the Rox Angel was how I was thinking of her because she was really both—pull inside herself, searching. At last she opened her eyes again.
“Adaxa the Ancient. Yes, I see. She was Antanaria?”
“She was a prisoner, too,” Saripha continued. “We freed her to help us, but her grandson spirited her away.”
“There is no grandson. Grandmother is a title. She is Grandmother to all her race because she is the one who controls the dreaming.”
“Her race?”
“There aren’t many. The Angels had most of them killed. They were the first.”
“She looks so young,” I said.
“She is called Adaxa the Ancient for a reason. However, her body never ages and not because it is a glamour. Hers is the only humanoid race indigenous to Tzadaris.”
“Tzadaris?”
“What her people call Hell.”
“I’ll stick with Hell. Easier to pronounce and remember.”
Saripha jumped back into the conversation. “The Black Angel knows Adaxa. Where would she go to flee the Angels?”
Again Rox turned inward for a bit. “She isn’t fleeing the Angels. She knows that is useless. She is returning to her people, to where it all began. To the island where the sky shattered.”
“She’s from an island? Where is it?”
“Somewhere across that ocean.” Rox pointed.
“Can you fly us there?” It was half pleading and half demanding.
“I will not leave the sword.”
With that, our audience was ended. The creature that was not entirely Rox and not entirely the Black Angel and yet completely both of them became a shadow again and receded up into the darkness above the stalactites.
I carefully took Saripha off my shoulder and placed her down next to Blaise and Kyo and then shrunk down myself.
As before, we weren’t sure we should continue the conversation with Rox there so we exited back out and looked for Zara, Izzy and Anika. Both Izzy and Zara were wet. Zara was getting quickly dry by using her fire-like energy. Izzy was just letting his glamour take care of it.
“That was rude,” was Zara’s first comment.
“Probably,” I said with a shrug.
“Izzy says that used to be your girlfriend.”
“No, that still is my girlfriend, actually my soul mate. She just used to be more human and spend more time with me.”
“So, did we find out anything from Rox?” Izzy asked, changing the subject.
“We think Adaxa’s on an island.”
“Great,” Izzy cheered. “Where?”
“Yeah, that’s the catch. We don’t know.”
“It’s this ocean, right?” Izzy waved towards the ocean.
“I think so.”
“So do we know how big this ocean is?” Izzy was looking at Kyo.
“I really don’t know.”
Izzy and I were trying to keep things light, but Saripha had her head in her hands.
“Saripha.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “We’ll do this.”
She smiled up at me wanly.
“I know we will, Quentin. But I’m as “‘human”’ as anyone and sometimes it just seems like every time we try it gets further away.”
“Sounds like Hell to me.”
I took her arm and helped her up.
“We aren’t going to let Hell win, are we?”
“No, ma’am.” I saluted.
“So we need to find an island somewhere out there.” Blaise summarized as if it wasn’t a big deal.
“Not our first problem,” Izzy added.
“Which is?” I prompted.
Izzy pointed to the water. Waves tore violently at the shore over sharp, rocky projections.
“We need a boat and a place to launch it. If the whole coastline is like this, we’re not going anywhere.”
Zara floated up on her magic carpet. “I’ll scout ahead and see if I can find a safer harbor.”
&nb
sp; “We might need to send for Taka if we have to do any boat building.”
“We need to find someone who can give us an idea where this island is.”
“Azar? He seems to know a lot,” Izzy suggested.
“Depends on if he’s in a sharing mood,” I said grumpily.
“I’ll see if I can mentally reach out to him.” Saripha closed her eyes for a moment.
“What about Rooni?” Izzy continued.
“Rooni is a little annoyed at me.”
“You seem to be good at that.”
“We all have our gifts.”
“What was it this time?”
“You know that thing you asked me not to do?”
“Oh, that. Rooni saved you.”
“It cost her one of her lives.”
“What? She has nine lives?”
I shrugged. “More than one, anyway.”
“You think she’d hold that against you?”
“Who knows? I’m tired of depending on magical beings whose motivations I don’t understand.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“Apparently not. Just once I’d like a straight answer to a question.”
“What fun would that be? This is Hell, after all.”
“Oh, right, I keep forgetting.”
We followed the coastline for a way. Nothing much improved along this stretch of the shore. Since we were headed into new territory that ran roughly south of the territories we knew, I made periodic markers on our trail and looked to the mountains behind us for distinctive features we could recognize later. I knew Blaise was doing the same thing, except he would be better at it. He would actually remember and he would be sure.
We finally came to a point where we couldn’t follow the ocean. There was nothing but sheer cliffs overgrown with thorny brambles and we couldn’t walk there, so we had to move inland to the forest and try to see if we could circle back to the ocean later.
I think we were beginning to feel discouraged when Zara reappeared. She seemed excited.
“You found something?” Saripha looked hopeful.
“I found a stretch of beaches with calmer waters and fewer rocky projections. Looks like we could launch a boat against the tide if we had one. It’s something.”
“That’s great, Zara.” Saripha gave Zara a hug. I almost laughed because the expression on Zara’s face told me she hadn’t been prepared for that.
