by James Maxey
Shay willed the flames of the angel sword even brighter. "You've been beaten before."
"You want to sword fight?" Jazz giggled. A rainbow sword grew in her left hand. She planted her black boots in a fighting stance. "Let's do this thing!"
Shay gripped his sword with a sweaty hand. He watched Jazz's face intently. He had to know. "Remember Lizard!" he pleaded.
"I remember," she said, as a smile played upon her lips. "His neck made the most satisfying snap when I twisted it."
Shay lunged. The goddess leapt.
There was a flurry of motion that Shay found difficult to understand. He felt suddenly light-headed. He looked down. His sword was lying at his feet. His right hand was still wrapped around the hilt.
"You might be worse at this than anyone I've ever seen," said Jazz.
Shay grabbed the stump of his wrist with his left hand, pinching off the blood flow.
"You might not have got the memo that my sword can cut through anything," said Jazz, as Shay dropped to his knees. "Still want to fight?"
He shook his head mournfully. "I never wanted to fight you," he said. He looked into Jazz's eyes, into whatever tiny echo of Jandra remained, "I love you."
Jazz's left eye twitched shut. Her head twisted until it pressed against her shoulders. Her lips trembled as she whispered, "I love you too."
Seconds later, she screamed, "ShutupshutupSHUTUP!"
"Nooooo!" a second voice howled from her back.
"If you like him so much, we'll keep the head!" Jazz snarled. She lunged forward once more, swinging her rainbow sword in a powerful arc.
Shay fell backwards, pulling Jandra's pack off his shoulder with his left hand. He let go as the sword sliced through the bag. He prayed it would slice open the impenetrable crystal ball within it. When the severed pack fell to the ground, the only thing to tumble out was Jandra's blue silk coat.
Above the roar of wind came the howl of ghosts.
Jazz was plucked from her feet by an unseen hand and thrown into the temple. Shay clamped the severed veins of his wrist shut again and rose on wobbling legs to follow her.
Jazz bounced across the marble floor, sliding past Hex's sprawling golden form. Her face and shoulders were no longer silver. The shell coating her skin was being peeled away by invisible fingers.
"Shay!" Jandra screamed as she was sucked toward the pit.
Shay didn't need his hands to use the wings. He shot forward, letting go of his bloodied stump, reaching out with his left hand. Her right hand closed around it. He tried to lift off, but the wind was too strong and he felt too light-headed as even more of blood gushed from his wrist.
Jandra looked at him, fear and confusion in her eyes as they continued to slide toward the pit. Her feet went over the edge, then her body. He clamped onto her hand with all his dwindling strength as his arm and shoulder slid over the edge.
They suddenly halted. Shay felt pressure on the tip of his left wing. He looked and saw that Hex had snagged his wing with his hind-talon, piercing the metal feathers with a single golden claw.
The ghosts continued to howl around him, even louder than the wind.
Below him were stars. The cold within the pit was far worse than any winter. Jandra looked up at him. The silver skull cap that Vendevorex had worn had crawled onto her brow. She reached out and grabbed the stump of his right hand. There was a sizzling sound and the bleeding stopped.
The ghosts slowly fell silent. They'd had their chance to tear Jazz free from Jandra and banish her into the far reaches of space.
And they'd failed.
A silver-skinned woman, an exact duplicate of Jandra, had the metal nails of her left hand sunk deep into the flesh of Jandra's calf. Her eyes were utterly empty. It was the hollow shell of Jazz's genie, still clinging to her new body. She swung her right arm up and sank it into the flesh of Jandra's thigh.
Tears welled in Jandra's eyes as the goddess clawed further up her body. The hollow woman pulled the nails of her left hand free and swung them higher, sinking them into the dimples that sat at the base of Jandra's spine.
Jandra screamed as the goddess advanced another foot.
"I'm sorry," Jandra cried, as she let go of Shay's stump. Her fingers loosened in his left hand. He squeezed with every fiber of muscle remaining to hold on to her.
"Let go!" she begged. "We can't let her climb back!"
The shell's hollow eyes gazed at Shay. Its lips curled into a smirk.
He turned away. He knew he would save the world if he let Jandra go. He knew that she was willing to make this sacrifice. But he couldn't release her, and he couldn't meet her gaze to let her know this.
He saw, as he glanced across the pit, that Skitter and Zeeky were safely out of the temple, clinging to the trees.
The goddess sank her claws into Jandra's shoulders.
He couldn't let the Goddess back into the world.
He couldn't let go of Jandra.
His wings responded to his thoughts.
So he told the wings to let him go.
As the hyperfriction field between his shoulders shut off, he was sucked over the edge. A rough-knuckled hand brushed his neck as it closed around the collar of his coat.
A white-hot flaming sword thrust down, sinking to the hilt between the goddess's empty eyes. The goddess hissed as her body began to twist and warp, distorted by the sun-like flame within her. Her hands pulled free of Jandra's shoulders.
She fell the length of Jandra's body, catching Jandra's right boot with hands tipped with tentacles instead of fingers. She dangled there as she swung her arm to climb again.
Jandra kicked down with her left boot, planting the blow on the hilt of the sword, shattering what remained of Jazz's face as the weapon sank deeper into the hollow of her body. The silvery tentacles loosened and Jazz tumbled free, limp and lifeless, trailing smoke.
As Jazz fell, her silvery form folded in on itself, looking less like a woman, and more like a heart pierced by a flaming sword. It fell, further and further, until the white hot flame of the sword dimmed in the thinning air. At last, the speck of her heart was lost in the yawning darkness.
Shay finally looked up. He was dangling in the grip of Bitterwood, who had a bright pink rope tied around his waist.
Jandra shouted above the wind, "Bant, as always, your timing is flawless."
Shay pulled Jandra closer as some force pulled the rope upward. They were locked in an embrace when they passed back over the lip of the pit onto the marble floor.
"I don't suppose you know how to close that hole, do you?" Bitterwood asked Jandra as they reached the marble pillar to which the other end of the rope was tied.
"Not a clue," said Jandra.
They climbed down the temple steps. There was a disturbingly large pool of red fluid where Shay's severed hand rested. Beside this was Jandra's bag. Shay was now more dizzy than he'd ever been in his life. Jandra's arm around him was the only thing keeping him on his feet. He dropped to his knees as they reached her bag.
He picked up Jandra's coat. She was naked save for her boots and her silver skull cap. Silver, he thought, really wasn't a good color on her.
"I kept this for you," he whispered. But as he tried to hand the coat to her, he fainted, tumbling face first into the pool of his own blood.
JANDRA WASN'T WEARING her skull cap when his eyes opened again. Her hair looked freshly washed. She was dressed in a tight-fitting green velvet gown decorated with elaborate patterns of yellow lace. She smiled gently at him. It was mid-day, judging from the light.
"How long was I asleep?" he asked, raising his hands to rub his eyes. He stopped in mid rub. He opened his eyes and stared at two unscarred hands.
"You're really good at this magic stuff," he said.
She shook her head. "You can thank Vendevorex. I gave him back the skull cap. It had been his far longer than it had been mine. He's much more experienced. I'm good with it, but he really is magic. He stitched your hand back on without any scars."
Shay sat up. He was in a large bed with white cotton linens in a room with large open windows draped with sheer curtains that fluttered in the breeze. He could hear waves crashing in the distance. The air smelled of salt.
"I'm glad he wasn't dead," said Shay.
"Just banged up," said Jandra. "I could never have escaped Jazz's control if he hadn't put my genie back in contact with my nervous system." She leaned down and gave him a brief, soft kiss on his brow. "I definitely couldn't have escaped if you hadn't been there to fight for me."
"Some angry ghosts helped," said Shay. "Bitterwood also played a significant role."
Jandra grinned slyly. "One day, when we tell our children this story, we can emphasize the parts that make you look good."
"Our children?" Shay asked. "Are you… um…?"
"No, silly," she said, rolling her eyes. "But one day. You're the first man who's ever made me feel joyous that I'm human. You're the one I want to spend my life with."
"Are you certain?" he asked.
"You held on to me when I begged you to let me go," she said. "Who else could there ever be?"
They started to kiss, but halted when someone nearby cleared his throat.
Vendevorex, Master of the Invisible, stood by the bed.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said. "I wanted to check in on the patient."
Shay held up his hand. "Good as new." He stopped to feel his pulse. "I guess you found all my blood, too."
"It was easier to grow new blood," said Vendevorex. "Your marrow is quite healthy."
"Didn't you have a hole to outer space to close?" Jandra asked.
"Done," said Vendevorex.
"You know how to open and close underspace gates?" asked Shay.
"Not yet," said Vendevorex, shaking his head. "I do know how to reconfigure the molecules of the roof of a marble temple into a ball with a radius larger than that of the gate. It makes an efficient plug. The earth is no longer in immediate danger of having its atmosphere sucked into orbit around another star."
"That's good news," said Shay, though he hadn't realized that was a danger until just now.
"Weren't you going to check on the boy that Zeeky rescued?"
Vendevorex tilted his head to the side. "Daughter, are you anxious to have me leave?"
She smirked. "Possibly."
"I'll go," he said. "You can open the gift later." The air shimmered and he disappeared.
"Is he gone?"
"I don't know," said Jandra. "He's really good at this invisibility stuff."
"I'm gone," said Vendevorex from the hall.
"Now for that kiss," said Jandra.
Shay leaned forward. But, as he closed his eyes he noticed a bright blue box sitting on the bed by his feet. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Now what?" asked Jandra, her face only inches from his, looking perturbed that he wasn't focused on her.
"That must be the gift he mentioned."
Jandra picked up the box and lifted its lid. Inside was a silver skull cap, a duplicate of Vendevorex's own.
"Do me a favor," he said. "Change it to different color when you wear it. I don't want to see silver against your skin for a long time."
"Oh," she said, lifting the hair at the back of her neck and twisting so he could see the upper part of her back. A strip of silver metal ran along her spine, into her hair, where it clung to her scalp like a three fingered claw. The silver turned to jade before his eyes. "Done," she said.
"You're already wearing a genie?" he asked, puzzled.
"Ven's genie has always had the power to spawn new ones. He's simply been cautious in sharing."
"Then whose…?"
Jandra lifted the skullcap from the box. "It's your genie, Shay."
Shay took the skullcap, staring at his reflection. His hair was a hopeless mess.
There was a note in the box. "Thank you for saving my daughter," it read. "Study hard in case you need to do so again."
"He has nice penmanship," said Shay. He shook his head. "I adjusted to the wings, but I don't know if I'm ready to learn magic."
Jandra took the skullcap from his hands and set it back in the box.
"Learning magic can wait," she whispered. "Making magic is the order of the moment."
Her lips brushed against his. He closed his eyes.
And then there was magic.
VENDEVOREX FLOATED DOWN to the fishbowl garden. The fish, he noted, were still doing well. Jazz's antenna was dismantled, spread on the ground before the young boy who studied the pieces with ancient eyes. He was dressed in a white toga torn from the scraps of a larger garment.
Zeeky sat near him on the lip of a large flowerpot. Skitter foraged at a nearby tree, ravenously devouring the ripe avocados that weighed down the branches.
The boy looked up as Vendevorex's shadow fell over him.
"The jamming signal is gone," said Vendevorex.
"Yes," said the boy.
"But you still can't communicate with the nanites that populate the city?"
"No," said the boy. He looked toward the towering spires. "I can no longer hear the voices of my children." He looked back at the dismantled antennae. "I don't know how she managed it, but she's locked the parts of my mind that would let me talk to all the pieces of myself."
"What are you?" Vendevorex asked.
The boy smiled. "I'm Atlantis, of course."
Zeeky shook her head. "He knows who you are. He's asking what you are." Vendevorex looked at the girl. She shrugged. "I'm good at understanding what folks are really talking about."
Atlantis swept his hands across the garden, toward the spires, then gazed toward the ocean. "I am all that you see. I am the city."
"Again," said Vendevorex. "I'm aware of that. Cassie told me you weren't from earth."
"Not from this earth," said Atlantis.
"That's an odd word to emphasize."
"There a many, many earths. More are created with every tick of the clock. Underspace is the medium in which these infinite earths float, each existing in a slightly different space than the others. You can't be blamed for not knowing. The earths are separated by dimensional membranes. Under ordinary circumstances, the only evidence of the other universes is their gravitational bleed. They create the illusion that there's far more matter in a universe than there truly is."
"I take it that these dimensional membranes can be crossed," said Vendevorex.
"Yes. The technology of this earth would have required eons to develop it, however. I come from an earth where the dinosaurs never died. They evolved into a tool-using civilization fifty million years before the clever apes of this world learned to master fire."
"You don't look like a highly advanced dinosaur," said Vendevorex.
"No," said Atlantis. "I arrived here as a seed. A tiny nugget of intelligence wrapped in a shell of nanites, programmed to serve the race of beings that had designed me, colonizers of other realities. I didn't find the race I was programmed to serve, however. Instead, the first intelligent being I encountered was a human. I sampled his genetic code and constructed this body in his image. I gleaned the myth of Atlantis from his memories. I was programmed to serve others in perfect altruism, providing for every need. So I allowed the children of this world to share in the bounty of my abilities."
"I'm not certain that your children have thrived under your guidance," said Vendevorex.
The boy's forehead wrinkled. "How can you say they haven't thrived? They're immortal, or at least they were. They had no reason to fear hunger or thirst or heat or cold, until I was crippled by the goddess."
"The fact that you have a city of six billion people who've forgotten how to feed themselves, or sew a garment, or start a fire, is rather convincing evidence that you've done your children a disservice."
Atlantis frowned. "It's all I know how to do. It's true, perhaps, that unlimited altruism has not been as successful an advancement strategy for humans as it was for the quinveris."
&n
bsp; "The quinveris?"
"The race that long ago created my kind. You know them as earth-dragons."
Vendevorex was puzzled by this revelation. Earth-dragons could, plausibly, be evolved dinosaurs. They definitely weren't part of the genetically engineered lineage that had produced sky-dragons and earth-dragons. But, as a race, they hardly seemed advanced enough to create the miraculous technology Atlantis commanded. However, if the quinveris had relied on this technology for millions of years, was it possible that their minds had devolved? Were they near-sighted, cannibalistic dullards when stripped of their technology?
"There are earth-dragons on the planet now," said Vendevorex. "Why didn't you assist them instead of humans?"
"Because they weren't here when I arrived. I was drawn to this world by a false signal. I arrived at the correct place, but almost a century earlier than my coordinates indicated. I didn't know this; I thought I'd arrived on the wrong world, with no way of turning back. By the time the quinveris colonizers arrived, I was already imprinted on humanity."
Vendevorex shook his head. As clever as he was, he couldn't begin to fathom time travel. "How is it possible to arrive a hundred years ahead of schedule?"
The boy's white toga slipped on his shoulder as he shrugged. "I got lost."
"He's the lost city of Atlantis," said Zeeky.
Vendevorex knew the girl had said the words innocently. She didn't possess the cultural background to understand the joke. Vendevorex turned and said, "I'll leave you to your work."
"Thank you," said Atlantis.
He walked away. Zeeky hopped down from the planter and followed him. When they were far out of the range of the boy's hearing, she whispered, "You're figuring out if you should kill him."
Vendevorex looked down at the strange little blonde girl. As Shay was recovering, Jandra had filled him in somewhat on the powers of perception that had resulted from the goddess's genetic engineering.
