The Shivered Sky

by Matt Dinniman

  The silence that followed was overwhelming. Fifteen angels at least. Gone just like that. Smoke filled the room. It seemed attracted to the dark Sphere, swirling around it, forming a loose ring. The resulting image was oddly serene.

  “Iopol, get up here.”

  The remaining angels came up, solemnly. The main entrance had been blasted shut, and now they were going to seal off the chamber of the Sphere.

  There was no time to mourn the passing of their companions. Bringing up some prefabricated supplies, they quickly fashioned a metal barrier over the single lower exit way. While it was welded shut using a rifle, a pair of angels stood guard over the other exit, the one leading up. This one was already sealed, but they didn't know if the demons had created a secondary entrance.

  “They'll be loath to blast their way in here now,” Frish said.

  “That doesn't mean they won't do it,” Tamael said.

  “Let's get on with it then,” Yehppael said, removing his outer armor and helmet.

  Tamael watched quietly. So many times now they'd been separated, and she had to deal with the terrible reality she might never see him again. But this time it was different.

  Indigo was beside her. The cicatrix bearer was deep in contemplation as well.

  “Is it as beautiful as he hopes?” Tamael asked.

  “He will never run out of places to visit.”

  Tamael nodded. It was always his dream. Even before they had met. It wouldn't last forever, she knew. But it would be enough. Maybe even enough to make it all worth it.

  Ashia was carried and placed on the ground before Dave. The human removed all his clothes, giving his two periscepters to Indigo.

  “First,” Ashia said. “The Sphere must be turned back.”

  She had already explained how the procedure would work. Iopol, Frish, Yehppael, and a Principality each placed a hand on the lower part of the giant, swirling mass at equal intervals. There, they slowly began to move themselves against the spin of the massive orb. They strained for but a moment, and then it began to turn.

  The whole time Ashia stared into the eyes of Dave. After just barely a moment, she called out. “That is fine.”

  The Sphere looked exactly the same, but Tamael knew they had just changed billions of planets, turning back their flow of time. Trillions upon trillions of humans suddenly died on their worlds, perhaps altering the course of their histories. That it had been so simple was terrifying.

  “Child,” Ashia said to Dave, her voice strained. “I mark you.” Her hand reached forward, and it passed through his body and into his chest. “I grant you a path, and the knowledge to complete that path.”

  For a moment, both of them remained motionless while everyone watched. Dave took in a deep breath, shivering as the Virtue exhaled. He slowly opened his eyes, and the form of Ashia began to fade, fainter and fainter until she was gone.

  Another terrible sacrifice.

  “I killed her,” Dave said.

  “No,” Tamael said. She had trouble finding her voice. “The demons killed her. You allowed her to have a purpose in her death, one of the greatest gifts you can give.”

  Yehppael strode forward, taking Dave's hand.

  “Goodbye,” Indigo said to her human friend. “I'll see you soon.”

  “Bye,” Dave said. He attempted a smile.

  Tamael removed her helmet. She and Yehppael held each other's gaze for a never-ending instant. In that moment, they said everything they needed to say, expressed everything they needed to express. He was going through a one-way door. She would never see him again. She had the perilously strong urge to go with him, leave this place of terror and war.

  But she couldn't. She had a responsibility to the few left.

  Silently Yehppael and Dave rose. He knew where to go.

  Yehppael came to a spot on the Sphere. He and the human absorbed themselves within.

  * * * *

  "Code blue in ER. Code blue in ER. Code blue ... Jesus. We have Code Blues in every ward. All nurses report to your stations!”

  Dave opened his eyes. His head ached like he had been tackled without a helmet. He tried to shake the cobwebs away, but he couldn't move. His face stung, as did his hands and arms. The voice came again over the loudspeaker, this time shrill. A loud commotion raged around him, but distant. People were shouting, upset.

  I'm in a bed. In the hospital.

  He tried to remember what happened, how he got here, but everything was fuzzy. He'd had a dream, but it was different this time. Worse in a way, he knew, but longer. And it was confusing. His head ached, and his skin prickled.

  The sensation at his leg was a person. A head rested on his leg.

  “Mom?” he asked, his voice croaking the words.

  Her head shot above his, her red-rimmed eyes widening.

  “Holy shit!” she cried. “Dave!” She leapt on top of him. “Doctor!” Her arms were crushing. “They said you were brain dead. We had pulled your goddamn plug. Holy Jesus, you've come back to me. Oh thank God, thank the Lord. Doctor! ”

  “How did I get here?” His head swam. He had nothing in his recent memory.

  “Oh, Dave,” she said, stroking his hair. “Where's the doctor?” she shrieked.

  “I'm sorry, ma'am,” a woman's voice called, out of breath. “I'm just a CNA. We've just had over 100 people spontaneously code. Some of them are doctors, and I can't find anyone.”

  “Well my son just woke up, and he needs help.”

  A pause. The nurse muttered something then ran off.

  “What's happening?” Dave asked.

  “I don't know, honey,” his mom said. She started bawling, blurting the words. “The doctor said you were dead. But you weren't. I can't believe it. I just can't.”

  Dave wished he could remember. He struggled, finally able to sit up slightly. His whole body screamed in protest. His arms stung, and his throat was raw, like he had just swallowed sand.

  He wasn't in the regular emergency room. This place looked eerily familiar, but he couldn't quite grasp that old memory, either. People kept passing by, paying no heed, always running.

  “I know what's happening,” a woman called from nearby. He couldn't see her, but her voice was piercing. “Read the Bible. It's there, I'm tellin’ ya. It's all there. It's the Rapture. You hear me motherfuckers? The fucking end of the world.”

  “Shut up,” someone else called. Another string of alerts were called out over the loudspeaker. His mother cried and stroked his hair.

  “The angel of death is coming,” the woman screeched. “If you're still here, he's coming for you.”

  Angel. Death. The words triggered something.

  Carumba on the lake, savagely biting at him like in his dream. A girl named Indigo who was really an angel. Demons who looked like bats and scorpions; and a woman spinning on a spit over a fire, still alive. How could he forget her face?

  Like a wolf pouncing on him out of the bitter darkness, he remembered.

  Angels and death. He remembered it all.

  “Just a dream,” he murmured. But that wasn't true. The chaos at the hospital made sense now. They had turned back the Sphere. Around the world, people died prematurely. Weeks, months, maybe years of death all pushed back to the same moment. All because of him.

  He sensed another presence here now, too. Though Dave couldn't see him, he knew Yehppael was in the room, watching. The angel had promised to stay with him until he was done. But what could he do? How?

  “Mom,” Dave whispered. “I can only stay a little while. I gotta go again soon.”

  She looked up; her makeup was completely eroded away by the tears now except for a few traces of black upon her cheeks. “What're you talking about? You're not going anywhere. Don't you understand what's happened? You almost died. Hell, you did die.”

  “I have to go back. They returned me so I can tell the others where they are.”

  “You're not making any sense, Dave. Who's they? You have to go back where?”

/>   “Back to the place I just was. Before I woke up.”

  The deep red in his mother's face completely drained away. “It was just another dream.”

  “No,” he said. “They were never just dreams.”

  “You're scaring me.”

  “Oh, mom. I wish I could explain it all, but I don't have time.”

  Dave pivoted his legs off the bed, but his mother leaned forward, pushing him down. If she hadn't done it, he probably would've ended up a heap on the floor. His head spun.

  “You hallucinated. You know how your dreams get.”

  “No, mom.”

  Wait. This will help. I will show myself to her.

  Yehppael. Speaking in his head.

  “Mom,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his hand. She was going to freak. “I want you to meet someone. He's a friend. He's here right now with us. An angel.”

  “I'm going to get the doctor.”

  “There is no need,” Yehppael said. He faded into existence at the edge of the cubicle for all to see, his magnificent wings completely spreading out to fill the hallway. A woman screamed. “Your son speaks the truth.”

  The angel's voice had the oddest accent, and it didn't sound like him. And he had that translucent look as before, but his whole body glowed with a light so brilliant, Dave felt tears well out of his own eyes.

  His mom fell to her knees. “No,” she cried. “Please no. Take me. Take me instead.”

  “Your mother loves you deeply,” Yehppael said to Dave.

  “You're speaking English.”

  Another scream, this time from a man. He dropped the tray he was running with and it went clattering. He, too, fell to his knees.

  “Ashia imbued me with the knowledge of human speech,” he said, grinning stupidly at Dave in a very unangelic manner. “Not just yours, but all of it. I must admit I find your talk fascinating. There are so many words I know how to say, but their meaning is a mystery.”

  An old man began snapping pictures, the whole time reciting the Our Father.

  Yehppael reached forward and lifted his mother's chin with a finger. A crowd was beginning to form now, more people taking pictures. Another with a video camera.

  “This is difficult to comprehend, I know. But your child is very important, and us bringing him back to you for a moment was the only way to accomplish what needs to be done. I know, it is terrible. But it is not without reason.”

  “Please,” she begged. “Take me. Not him. Take me.”

  Oh God, this was hard. “Mom,” Dave said. “It's okay.”

  “No,” she said vehemently. “It's not okay.”

  “He should not be alive,” Yehppael said. “Without our intervention right now, he'd still be dead to you. Look around you, see all the confusion and pain. These people here and across the universe died early so he could come back and do this task. It is important, terribly so.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “You will.”

  “What's going on here? ” A loud voice boomed. A security guard, pushing his way through the crowd. “Holy crap,” he squeaked at the sight of Yehppael. He was tall and thin with cracked lips and freckles. Probably about forty years old. “Uh ... um ... You gotta ... Are you an angel?”

  “Your weapon,” Yehppael said, extending a hand to the guard. “Give it to me.”

  “Yes sir,” the guard said, unsnapping his holster and pulling out the black revolver. Yehppael gingerly took it from his shaking hands and dropped it into Dave's.

  Is this adequate? the angel asked in his mind.

  Yes.

  Don't miss, my friend.

  It was impossibly heavy. Dave gripped it in his hands. He and his father used to go shooting. His thumb found the safety, and it clicked away. His father had died in this room, too.

  “No,” his mother said, panicked. “Give me the gun. Give it to me right now.”

  I don't know if I can do this. I used to think about doing it all the time, but now that I have to, it just seems so ... wrong.

  You can.

  Dave thought of the marketplace and the humans used like cattle. Of the demons streaking out of the sky, killing everything in their path. Of the little girl in the slave market pleading for them to help. He thought of all the people he knew who had died. Were they slaves now? He could do it. He had to.

  “Mom, I'm sorry. Yehppael will watch over you from now on, protect you because I can't do it anymore.”

  “Please,” she cried.

  “Don't do it,” a man called, followed by murmurs of agreement.

  “The end of the world,” the woman screamed from the bed next door. “It's the fucking end of the world.”

  “I love you,” Dave said to his mother, pulling the weapon into his mouth, aiming upwards. The metal tasted oily, and his teeth chattered against the barrel. The tastes and sensations of earth.

  Just a squeeze of the finger. That's all it took.

  * * * *

  Yehppael absorbed himself away from their vision as the chaos ensued.

  The boy died instantly. His body fell backwards as the people around him screamed. Dave's soul immediately shot free of the body, arcing outwards toward the edge of the universe, where his mark would lead him to the proper beacon. Yehppael prayed for him as the bright light of his soul took the long, mysterious journey for the second time.

  Dave's mother cried, and Yehppael felt for her.

  He touched her then, wrapping his wings around her. He didn't have the Virtue power of healing or redemption, but he had warmth, and he offered the human all he had.

  * * * *

  If the entire history of the Geyrun was to be written in two sentences it would be: Defeated and enslaved by the Overseers. Gentle, peace-loving creatures.

  Bloodthirst. Revenge. Hate. None of those thoughts were supposed to come as easily as they did right now.

  “If I receive any sort of censure for this,” the Footie captain growled to Ko, “I will come for you.” The assembled team waited on a floating platform for the transport. Each of the Footie team was constantly fiddling with his weapon and suit. The newly-trained soldiers were nervous, and rightly so. This would be their first exercise, most of them arrived in Cibola very recently from their respective worlds.

  “These Molochites go out of their way to purchase slaves of your kind,” Ko said. The captain was a head shorter than Ko, which was fairly big for a Daityas. The captain's long fingers twisted around the barrel of his gun. “No one knows what happens to them.”

  “If they're slaves, then it's no business of mine why they are taken. And that has nothing to do with this Charun. Prancing into their holy places does not constitute good relations if you ask me.”

  “I'm not. I have an order for the arrest of the Charun. And now we know where she is. Under the direct seal of a sector commander. Your soldiers won't have to even remove their weapons. All I want is their presence, nothing more.”

  All Ko had ever wanted was peace. An existence where all creatures, regardless of how, when, or why they were created, could happily commingle in one great community. There would be no more slavery, not even for humans, and problems were solved using words and reason. Not fire and teeth.

  What Ko was about to do was necessary. A cutting out of the cancer before it spread to the more vital organs of the Dominion.

  Uzkiev was north meeting with the council to deal with the growing problem with the Overseers. That, too, was a great concern for Ko. But the Overseers were constantly angry. He knew them and their politics well. They would take the recent slights and threaten to pull their forces. But they wouldn't. The council would sate them somehow.

  Presumably, Uzkiev would discuss this new development with the Dahhak and their sudden concern with mass conversions also. But if the council even got to the issue, Ko feared they wouldn't do anything. Not until it was too late.

  Ko found himself breathless after reading the report of the Dahhak's post-mortem interrogation. No, not breathless.
Not angry, either. Enraged. This Dahhak had been sent out to specifically kill him. Why was unknown, as the Dahhak himself didn't truly know, but it was very troubling. It was Ungeo G'sslom herself who had ordered it.

  The Dahhak—and this rogue Charun—were taking everything the founders of the Dominion had worked so hard for, and they were rending it apart. The Dahhak temple services swelled with the anti-Dominion sentiment this single Dahhak had shown before he attacked Ko.

  Ko had a child. Qulp, a strong name. His thoughts had been turning to him more and more often. Traditionally, Geyrun left all rearing responsibilities to the mother. If this boy was to live without knowing Ko, at least he could do his part to shape his future. He wanted him to grow up and never know war. To never know he was even someone else's property. He had a responsibility to him. For peace.

  The Dahhak were trying to take this away. They were trying to harm his child. How could he not feel such a great anger?

  Immediately after learning which specific temple the assassin worshipped at, Ko had asked Uzkiev if they should dispatch a platoon to fetch the Charun. Or better yet, tip off the Catechist on her location. But Uzkiev's response had been surprising.

  “Ahh, no,” he said. “This is a very dangerous situation. Disturbing, too. We must seek the council's opinion before we proceed, yesss.”

  But there wasn't time to take this to the council, Ko had said, especially since there's a Dahhak sitting on it, but Uzkiev insisted. So Ko demurred, though as he finished his recovery and found himself back at work, learning how to balance the load with only one hand, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He began to fume. And then the results of the Flamen's process were delivered.

  The 250-page computer-generated report extrapolated the Dahhak's last several hours in detail, including murky pictures of key images, actual dialogue, and thought processes occurring during all this. In addition to the Dahhak's constant mulling of the impeding assassination of Ko, there was a very alarming prayer meeting where Ungeo G'sslom herself had stated: “Every moment that passes, we have new supporters. Every time the leadership of the Dominion fails us, Moloch becomes angrier. It is time to change focus upon our role in this war. Spread the word. Molochites will no longer exist in the shadows, quietly worshipping the one true god.”