by Sarah Chorn
“I thought you should like to die under the stars,” Vadden whispered, pushing some of Eyad’s hair out of his eyes. He was crying, tears fell from his eyes like raindrops, pelting his face with sorrow and promise. “I will make it quick, beloved.”
“Vadden,” Eyad whispered. He was suddenly so afraid. How long had it been since he’d felt real fear? He tried to probe into Vadden’s mind, but it was closed off. Wherever his husband had gone, it wasn’t somewhere that Eyad could follow. “I’m sorry.”
Those words were so tiny, so insignificant. Half lie, half truth. He was sorry, but not for the things he should be. He was sorry he’d loved Vadden and sorry Vadden had been fool enough to love him back. Sorry he’d brought the two of them to this point, laying under the watching sky, a dying world splayed all around them, a reflection of their union.
Eyad squeezed his eyes shut. His heart hurt. It was giving out, shuddering and trembling in his chest. He could feel it stuttering along. His end was moments away; by poison, or by his husband’s hand, either way, it was almost over.
“I’ve left the office of Premier to Samson,” he said.
Vadden grunted. “I suppose no one could ever accuse you of being smart.”
He opened his eyes, fixed them on his husband’s face, the face he’d held in his mind every hour of every day since they’d first met. A knife flashed in Vadden’s hand, and he felt the prick of the blade against his chest. It was right that Vadden should stab him there, in his heart, giving his emptiness form and shape, allowing him to bleed all of his sick, poisoned love into the world as his life faded.
“I am so sorry,” Vadden whispered, “but this world cannot survive with you in it.”
Lightning arced in the sky above him. Storm clouds were gathering again, but the hole in the clouds above Eyad remained, so he could see the sky as he died. It was a kindness he didn’t deserve. Vadden sat back on his heels and looked at the stars, his dreadlocks shifting over his shoulders. He was gathering himself for Eyad’s final act. His face was painted in the silvery light of the moon. He was a statue, frozen grace, so cold and beautiful it burned.
“I think that somewhere between the heavens and the earth, no matter the age or the era, no matter if I had ever seen your face before, I would recognize you, Vadden. Your soul calls to mine. We will always find our way back to each other.
I am ready to die.” Eyad said, clutching Vadden’s arm, staying the blade. “We have always belonged to each other, and we always will.”
“Eyad—” Vadden began, but whatever he was going to say was cut off with a gasp.
Vadden’s body went stiff. The knife fell from his fingers and clattered to the ground. Clouds covered the sky and rain fell in sheets again, rivers springing up in an instant, the wind roaring so loud he couldn’t hear anything but Vadden’s sudden, terrified roar.
“Neryan, no! He’s going to…” Silence. Vadden’s body went rigid and stiff, eyes white, lightning flashing all around them. “I can feel him. I can feel Neryan, and he’s…” Nothing. “He’s going to kill you!” Vadden roared, but he wasn’t facing Eyad anymore. He wasn’t even speaking to him, his eyes were staring at something Eyad couldn’t see, his words meant for someone else, somewhere else. “Run!”
Suddenly, Eyad’s black-and-white world was painted with the color of screams. Indescribable screams, a cacophony of them, howls piercing the air, coming from the palace.
Seraphina, he realized. He’d never heard anyone cry out like that before, like their entire world had broken, and life itself had stabbed them in their heart. Like they were feeling a pain worse than anything a body could handle, all that anguish pouring into the night in her odd, multi-tonal voice.
Seraphina.
Seraphina was breaking. No, Seraphina had broken. Fire burst out from the wall of the palace, through the space where the tiny window had been. Vadden picked Eyad up in his arms, hissing something under his breath. Lightning crackled around them, stabbing into the ground like spears.
“Neryan!” Vadden bellowed, entering the palace and skidding on a puddle of water. He caught his feet. “Neryan!” he yelled again.
Seraphina screeched. Heat filled the air, blistering his skin. Vadden found some tunnel’s entrance, and shoved his way into it.
“Where are we going?” Eyad asked. Behind them, the heat grew more intense, and Vadden cursed.
“Down,” his husband whispered. “Down to that fucking voice. Down to see what happened to Neryan. Down into the bowels of hell itself.”
Interlude
Burning it All Away
Rain fell.
She’d never seen a storm like this before. It was as though the heavens had spent the past year holding its breath, and now it was finally exhaling, all of that air blowing everything away. A year of tears were cleansing the world. So much sorrow, so many deaths, an ocean of sadness from each of the stars.
“Mama, the first floor is flooded!” Her daughter, Irina, was a woman grown now, but still lived under her mother’s roof. Irina hadn’t received permission from the Premier to marry, or to move, so they’d been imprisoned in their own house; living like spiders haunting the cobwebs left by days gone by. It was just the two of them, alone in that big mansion. Her heart wept for her daughter. Irina would have been a wonderful mother, and she’d have loved to have been a grandmother, but it was too late now.
“We need to go up,” she said, her hands shaking with palsy. She’d aged a lifetime in the ten years since that dark, dreadful change from monarchism to collectivism. Her loneliness and sorrow, the constant, all-pervading fear she’d lived with since that day, had etched itself in her bones, and now she was a twisted, wounded thing. Irina helped her up, her hands braced under her mother’s arms, waiting patiently while she grabbed her cane and lifted herself to her feet.
Walking was hard. They’d been on the landing between the first and second floors, sitting on two divans, watching with clenched hands and anxious glances as the water rose, and then rose even more. With that wailing wind, all of the windows had blown in, showering the rooms with glass, but here they had been safe, sheltered in the center of the house. Now the first floor was completely flooded, they had to go up.
Up they went. The once elegant carpet, now tattered and worn, was soggy. Every step was a fresh agony in her bones.
Years ago, she’d been beautiful, full of such vitality and life. Now, she couldn’t even walk up the stairs with her daughter’s help. How long had it been since she’d been up to the second floor of her mansion? Ages, at least. It had been the floor where private balls were held. This house had been so grand, and she’d been so proud of it. For a moment, the storm abated, the howling wind died down and she was young again, watching as the ghosts of finely dressed men and women, nobles with the world at their feet, moved around her. All of them admiring her beauty, her wealth, and her power.
In a world run by men, she’d been a woman at the center of events.
Then, it all changed. Everything. She was no longer a noble, but a prisoner. She had guards, but they were there to keep her in. She wore the rags her guards brought her and clung to her memories of better times. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been allowed to stand with her feet planted in the naked earth, and her head turned up to the sky, with no roof over her.
The second floor had been closed off years ago, the furniture covered in white sheets, grates closed, doors shut and locked. It was too expensive to heat the whole building, and with only two of them, all they really needed was a place to eat and prepare what little food they had, a fireplace, and somewhere to sleep. They’d moved into the servant’s rooms off the kitchen long ago.
It was cold and musty up here, stinking of years past and regret.
The damp and the chill, the fear of washing away in this supernatural storm, filled her with anxiety, stiffening her joints and making her muscles cramp. Her back was bent, and wet, gray hair clung to the sides of her face. Her daughter didn’t look
any better.
They looked around. The problem with this floor was that it was all so very open, every room fitted with huge, wide windows to let in the natural light. Now those windows were broken, and rain poured through them, saturating carpets and curtains, couches and beds. They could go up to the third floor, she supposed, but she wasn’t sure her body could manage it. She found a soggy seat and sagged onto it. Lighting flashed. The sky roared.
“Go,” she said to her daughter, pointing at the stairs to the third floor. “Survive.”
“Mama,” Irina replied, sobbing, her tears washed away by the rain, her eyes red, flashing sorrow in the lightning. “I can get you up there.”
“No,” she replied, cupping her daughter’s cheek. “I am old. There is nothing left of me, Irina. I have lived a long, full life, but I am tired, and my heart hurts. I should like to die now. This is the one thing I can control. Let me have it.” This was her fate. She would die along with the city that had created her.
Her daughter didn’t reply. Couldn’t reply. She just choked on her tears, overcome by regret before the water even lapped at her feet, but the truth was resting between them. One of them would live on, and the other would finally give her soul over to the earth.
She sighed, and looked ahead, out the broken windows, to where the palace should be, if it wasn’t raining so hard.
“I would like to die looking at the palace.”
Looking at my son, she thought.
Irina pressed her lips, cold and wet, to her mother’s cheek. There was a finality to the gesture, a goodbye of the sort that could never be put into words. Her daughter turned and ran. She watched her go, her heart full of love for her. Lightning flashed again, closer now.
Come on, she silently goaded the sky. You can do better than that.
She’d been so happy once. One perfect son, and a beautiful daughter, a grand house, and enough wealth for them to be more than comfortable for the rest of their days.
More lightning. Right outside, now.
Then it had all changed. Her son had fallen in love. Turned dark.
Flash.
Her world had collapsed that day.
Boom.
Now, the sky was crying all of the tears she’d locked away, hidden down deep in the most secret part of her soul.
She wondered if her son, Evgeny, ever thought about her.
Lightning, and the rain washed it all away.
Neryan
He’d never realized how constrained his humanity made him, how caged in, until he was nothing but water. Water gave life; it was gentle and comforting, but it also carved a path through mountains. It gave and it took away. More than that, water was in everything and everyone. He wasn’t just Neryan anymore. Now he was a part of everything. He could feel all that life, feel the water buried far under the crust of the world, feel it in the bodies all around him, sense it in the storm raining down on Lord’s Reach. He was… everywhere.
He’d spent so long fighting this, without realizing just what it was he was fighting. Neryan had been just a man; a fumbling, bumbling sack of flesh with a pumping, broken heart and a tattered, wounded soul. The Water Lord was none of those things. He was a creator and a destroyer. He was strength and promise. He was the future, and he was terror. He’d finally discovered that it was impossible to chain water. This was the freedom he’d spent his life chasing.
What he was now was heady and intoxicating. He had power. This was who he was meant to be. No more fighting his nature. He’d been scared for too long. Now, it was time to act.
He left Eyad behind him. Felt his presence, felt the poisoned water in his dying body, but he had no time for that. In this form, he could hear the call he’d only heard hints of before, clear as a struck bell. A man’s voice, a stranger’s, far beneath the earth, calling his name. Not calling for Neryan, but for the Water Lord. He was needed, desperately needed, and he couldn’t deny him. It was impossible. He had no other destination in mind as he surged forward, his water urging him on.
He washed through the palace like a tidal wave, splashing up the walls, rolling along the floor. Everyone in the palace seemed to either be dead, or devouring everything in sight. Something was happening to them. Something was changing them in fundamental ways. Belatedly, he remembered Mouse, eating everything in sight, like these people. Already rooms in the lower levels were flooding, and that made his journey that much easier. It took hardly more than a thought to merge with the water from the storm, and to move through it to where he needed to go.
Seraphina was up there still, but he spared her only a moment’s thought. Soon, she’d change. Water and fire would both Become, and then she’d understand. She’d break through all her pain, all her fear, and step up beside him—the way they were always meant to. It made so much sense now, why they’d been born with such rare talents, how the earth was changing, preparing to use them as conduits.
He looked forward to Seraphina Becoming, but for now, he had more important things on his mind.
He moved on instinct, a determined current flowing toward that pleading voice. The palace was easy to navigate, not only because he’d grown up there, but also because everything was so wet, which made moving so easy. He almost missed the small trapdoor Seraphina had shoved him through all those years ago. Without hands he couldn’t open it, but water could fit anywhere, and soon he was through the tiny cracks and into the tunnels that honeycombed the building. He found one that seemed to slope downward and surged on, turning the dirt to mud, leaving a trail behind him.
He’d had no idea tunnels these extensive existed below Lord’s Reach. The one he traveled down was wet, covered in a small layer of water from the storm, but otherwise dry. He didn’t think to wonder how such a thing was possible. Shouldn’t it be flooded? It didn’t matter. He found one that went down, was drier than the rest, and took it.
He hardly took the time to study his surroundings, but he saw ancient, crumbling buildings to either side of him. He was traveling further down, into an ancient world populated by darkness and ruins. Time had been cruel down here—collapsed buildings, dried up fountains ruining the ancient city that he was traveling through, but darkness and lack of air had kept things shockingly preserved. Whatever this place had been once, it had been large.
Down, down, down he moved, until he thought there could be nowhere else for him to go. Down, until he felt like he was scraping the belly of the world. Down, until he felt smothered by the fertile loam that had spent the past year in hiding from the surface, waiting for the moment it could be used again. Down, until he forgot what which way was up. One tunnel after another, until he lost himself in this world of earthy darkness, his water skimming along the surface, feeling all that promise, all those things waiting to drink from him and grow.
Not yet.
Soon.
The tunnel he’d escaped out of five years ago had been pretty straightforward, running parallel to the streets above; but perhaps he’d been too panicked, too worried, too lost in his own head at the time to notice this vast network of passageways. It had been pure dumb luck that he’d made it back to the surface at all. The tunnels he was in now were extensive and kept going down until he felt like there’d be no way he’d ever go back up again. Hadn’t Vadden said that Lord’s Reach was built above other, far more ancient cities created by civilizations long gone Perhaps this was another city, another street trod on by the long-forgotten people who’d dwelled in the past.
Down.
He moved until he emerged into a large open space, glowing with pale white directionless light. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like chandeliers, pinkish in hue and dripping, beads of water pulled toward him, becoming part of him. He saw pictures on the walls, paintings of people and events depicted in rainbows of colors, as though the walls were a journal, and the pictures were entries, logs of life in times gone by. There, a group hunting. There, a group praying. Over there, an altar of some sort.
A man stood at the cente
r of it, tall and covered in lean muscle, with a face he did not recognize. He waved a hand in the air, stopping him.
“You need to assume your human form for this conversation,” he said. The ground shifted around him, holding Neryan’s water in place. The sudden loss of control, motion forced by someone and something outside of himself, was jarring. He fought it but it was no use. He couldn’t fight the earth. He was powerless here. He suddenly felt very vulnerable and very unprepared for whatever this was. He was a dog showing his belly to a master he didn’t know or understand.
He was moved in one smooth motion until he was a puddle on a huge stone slab in the center of the room. The stranger was close enough for Neryan to smell the earthen scent of him, the loam that seemed to be as much a part of him as it was the ground under his feet.
A sense of wrongness washed over him. He barely understood what was happening to himself. No, he didn’t understand what was going on, yet this man did. He wasn’t surprised by Neryan showing up, much less as a puddle of water. He knew exactly what he was, and what he had been. What he could be again, somehow.
Who was he?
The man’s voice was thickly accented, full of letters that sounded like they’d been hacked out of the ground with a knife. Neryan shuddered. He didn’t want to feel his skin again, to be closed in like that, but more than that he wasn’t sure if he’d know how. Would he be water forever? He almost wanted that, the freedom of it. His body was just another prison.
“Just think it,” the man said, reading his thoughts, or perhaps sensing his hesitation. “It will happen.”
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. It took him quite a while of thinking, trying to move the water into a man’s shape with no results. Eventually, it happened and the transformation was an acute, unforgettable torture. Assuming a body after understanding just how limitless his being could truly be was nothing short of agony. He felt like he was dying. His skin clung to his bones and his joints felt swollen and aching. Water flowed, turned into flesh, and he was Neryan again but different; less man, more element. Belatedly, he realized he was laying on a rock, with manacles of warm earth locked around his wrists and ankles.
