by Zamil Akhtar
Tusir sat up, rubbing his neck.
“Finish it!” Kav said.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? You went to all this trouble to cheat yourself to a glorious victory. So finish the game so I can go sow a quilt or something.”
“Where in Keldan you from?”
“Fuck you.” Kav turned to walk away.
“You’re from Kerb, aren’t you?”
That stopped him cold.
“I can tell,” Tusir said. “The way you talk, your accent. It’s subtle, but having lived my life around you people, I can tell. But more than anything, I know because of how you fight. No people were more blessed with Nur’s light than the Kerbians.”
“Don’t talk like you’re Keldanese. You Shirmas lived in a walled-off little world.”
“You and I are the same. That’s why you want to win so badly. You want to be the strongest, don’t you? Whether or not winning matters, you can’t let yourself lose.”
Kav stared in silence at a mashed ant hill.
“Tell me,” Tusir said, “why is it you want to become stronger? Who are you trying to protect? Or...who are you trying to destroy? What happened to you, Kav?”
War happened, four years ago, after the Second Uprising began in Kerb. Kav awoke during Universal Hours of Rest, his sweat smelling of salt. His brother Mezzin wasn’t on his mattress, nor was auntie home.
Outside, the deafening whine of hovering levships drowned the roar of fires. Kav ran through the streets toward the Deep Blue shore. The people of the city stampeded the opposite direction, away from the levships toward the outskirts of town.
On the way to the shore, the Shrine of Saint Ad’deen stood radiant — a domed mausoleum for the dead saint. A throng of Keldanese clung to the tomb, their palms facing heaven, seeking his intercession with Nur.
And then fire rained from the sky. The dome exploded, spewing white marble. A piece hit Kav’s head and knocked him onto the dirt road. Blood gushed from his ear.
Clutching his dripping ear, Kav wanted to run away. His ear drum had burst, a piece of flesh dangled out the hole: a broken part of him. But it didn’t matter how many parts broke; all that mattered was the girl he sought.
So Kav got up and treaded to the shore. Something whirled above, free flying over the water — a levship, much bigger than any he’d seen. It seemed to be leading the armada. Most levships look like birds, but this one was flat and geometric, resembling an octagon. Like an eight-sided black hole, sucking the light of the sun. And it sang. It hummed a dead song that drove the world to its end. Kav ignored it and continued.
He pinged, and spectrum showed Layla, not too far from where he stood, a blue-glow upon the rainbow. Then he received a message.
Kav...run. Don’t let me be the cause of your demise. Our bond will outlast this world into the next. We’ll see each other again, in the Garden, so run.
And he replied.
I can’t. I can’t run from my own soul.
The gates of the Palace on the Shore were open. Kav ran into the courtyard, breathless. She was here, somewhere.
Tusir got back on his feet, blade in hand. “You joined the army that destroyed your home. Why?”
“I’ve got reasons.”
“It’s funny, your reasons may be too similar to mine.”
Tusir ripped something off his belt — a black piece of cloth. “This is a black absorber. It has a ninety percent chance of absorbing low intensity light hitting within its field.”
Into the wind he threw it. With the raging leaves it flew away. Then he pointed his blade at his chest and conducted a soft charge. A jewel turned red.
He did it again. “Let’s complete our flight.” And once more. Now it really was 3-3.
“You know,” Kav said, “I beat you already. It’s 4-3 to me.”
“Actually, remember when you hit my foot? Well, feet don’t count, they’re outside the belt’s range. Should’ve listened to the rules more carefully.”
“Whatever.” Kav pointed his blade at him. “Let’s finish this.”
CHAPTER 2
UNFAMILIAR CEILING
TRANSCRIPT 0073 BETWEEN MESSENGER 01 and PILOT 01
Merv: Zauri, you listening? That didn’t overwhelm you, right? Hey?
Zauri: I swear to Nur, I missed. My calculation was off. I swear on my life.
Merv: Calm down. It doesn’t matter. We knocked over the target.
Zauri: No! It’s not right. Someone died, and I watched him die.
Merv: Listen, if you say that you didn’t do it, then it’s not on you, right? There’s nothing you could’ve done, you couldn’t have stopped it.
Zauri: That’s not the point! What you ordered me to do was wrong. He spoke our language too. You said these people don’t speak our language.
Merv: Some of them might, but it doesn’t make them one of us, okay? Listen to me and relax. Taste the pure air around you. Just remember, it’s not on you, it’s never on you. I’ll take all the blame. And never forget, you’re the only one who can make this whole thing happen. You’re our sun in the sky. The one who will bring our people home, after eighty years in the dark.
Kav stared at the fireflies whirling around the otherworldly tree. Their light strengthened as they whirled, more luminous than the sun. Fixated by their motion, Kav began to wonder.
When did I get here?
The grass was muddy and soft. The dew was cool, wetting his lips and eyelids. The breeze seemed to be whispering.
Then the otherworldly tree groaned and opened its mouth. The garden shook with fury, the tree parted, and a path to its insides appeared.
The wind told him to go.
It was dark inside the tree, until a firefly fluttered next to him. Kav followed its light as it zigged and zagged its way through the tree’s innards, toward its swarm, where hundreds of fireflies lit the end of a hallway. They glowed around a throne made of shadows, upon which someone was sitting. From the shadows grew snakes, and they slithered across the one on the throne, holding him in place. No, it was a she. Her pale skin sank beneath the snakes, strangled by their coils. Her blue hair was slowly devoured.
“Layla.”
Kav pulled at a snake, but their mouths were inside her flesh. He feared he would hurt her by yanking them out.
“Nur, help me save her!”
More snakes bit her. There was hardly a spot on her that wasn’t bloody. Then a message appeared in Kav’s mind.
Do you want to see her again?
Who sent it? There was no frequency, but he could still respond.
Can you help?
And hundreds of snakes grew out of the throne and bit Layla, until she was entirely eaten. Another message hit Kav.
Soon, I will come to you with an offer. Accept it if you wish to save the one person who ever mattered to you.
An unfamiliar ceiling stared at him — metallic and bare. Blankets shrouded him, engines hummed. Kav sat up in bed and noticed a wire coming out of the aperture slot in his wrist. The wire ran into the wall of this narrow room.
Of course, this was a levship. The hell am I doing here?
Fog swarmed his mind, weakness weighed down his jaw. Kav swallowed the metallic bitterness in his spit, pulled out the wire, and jumped to his feet.
The metal floor felt warm in patches where current flowed. A window slit at the corner revealed strands of cloud, shining with the sun’s glaze. The twicrys inside Kav’s wrist glowed.
“Am I dreaming? What time is it?” He pinged Time Service.
No response. Of course not. He was in the air, probably hundreds of miles from a Time Service station.
In the corridor outside, cadets sat against every part of the wall where the sun shone through the plexiglas windows. Wires were running out of their apertures. All the wires here ran into the ground, through the walls, then up to the sunsink which rotated counter-clockwise as it dangled from the ceiling. The sunsink would channel the sunshine each cadet was absorbing, like a gia
nt twicrys for the ship. On the wall was written “CONTINENTAL ARMY LEVCLASS — 409.”
Through this room and into another, Kav walked to what he guessed would be the air artillery section of the craft. Where he guessed he would find Kyars, if the boy’s unit was indeed on this levship.
The next room was not unlike the one before, with boys against the bare walls, plugged in: some drooling in sleep, others snoring, some half awake, others bored with eyes wide open. And Kyars, asleep, head drooped, hair over his eyes.
Kav shook him.
He jolted awake. “Kav? For real?”
“Nah, this here’s a dream,” Kav said. “I’m an angel, sent to tell you Nur Himself is angry that you didn’t buy Kav that steamed salmon.”
“Don’t blaspheme, you ain’t no angel.”
Kav slid down to sit, cold metal beneath his thighs. “Tell me, why’re we in the sky? And where the hell we tugging off to? There’s this gap in my memory. I was in the forest with Tusir, and then I’m here.”
“For real? You don’t know? I guess you wouldn’t.”
“Tell me, ‘cause I’m losing it. I think I’m dreaming, but damn, I know I’m not.”
“Man, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to start, it’s just so messed up. Lemme just...start from the beginning...”
As per the usual routine, Kyars was with his squad doing targeting exercises. At levtrack seven in a training ship, he was in the air when it happened. In the gun room with the big plexiglas window, while plugged into the sunsink.
From this high, you could see the forest with its colors — red, yellow, green, purple — extend all the way to the city. You could see levships soaring a mile above their levtracks like red falcons — wings outspread, noses sharp. You could see the HEX Research Tower dwarf every building of the Ekrah skyline. It stood like a sword, protecting the city even if the sun were to fall.
“We’ve adjusted the targets up to five miles in the fields, north fourteen degrees east,” their instructor said. “So get to your targets. I’ll be checking the accuracy of your volleys on spectrum.”
Fun stuff, and Kyars, the only islander in the squad, was the prime conductor. He stood near the sunsink, eyes closed. One of the boys found target one on spectrum and shared it with the rest. It appeared in Kyars’s consciousness, and he used it to direct the intensity of everyone’s conduction at the target.
The ship’s mock cannon readied. Kyars willed the trajectory of the cannon to align with the target on spectrum, wrote a standard volley blast, then released.
An area of field many miles off glowed.
“About eighty yards variance,” the instructor said. “That’s enough distance to completely miss an entire company. The enemy would be alerted to the artillery fire and scatter for cover, meaning you gave away your best chance. Fix your calculation and do target one again!”
To understand what went wrong, Kyars studied the field to eyeball his target. At that moment, it happened.
Light scathed the world like a flashbang, blinding him. It came from the sky and eclipsed everything and everyone. Pure, milky light.
Seconds later, the world came back. But the scenery had changed. Everyone shouted something: “What the fuck.” “O Nur.” “Holy hell.”
Smoke steamed off the top of the HEX Research Tower. It began to lean over. Like a sword standing on its tip, it bent over slowly until it fell.
The tower crashed upon the city, a sword drowning in fire. Dust fogged the skyline. Kyars wondered if the city was gone.
It didn’t sound real. It sounded like a ridiculous Kyars tale. But he was too serious to be lying.
“A few hours later we were given orders to mobilize and now we’re here.”
“A Haemian attack?” Kav said.
“That’s what everyone’s saying, I mean, it couldn’t be anyone else. No one has that kind of deathly power. But it gets weirder.”
“Weirder? How could it?”
“Because we’re going south, our destination is the South Almaria Deployment Base.”
Kav played with his hair. “I’m not a geography expert, but Haem’s the other way, no?”
“I know man, that’s what everyone’s been saying. I heard the shot that took down the tower came from the south, which is why. But aside from that, what happened to you?”
“That’s what I was gonna ask you next.”
Kyars puffed his cheeks. “Didn’t all this happen about the same time as your match with Tusir? That shit doesn’t matter now.”
“Did I...win?”
“Did you? How would I know? I don’t even know what sent you to that hospital bed. Damned if I know. You get mobbed again by Tusir’s boys? All I know is when departure orders were given, they wheeled you out of the infirmary and onto the ship, and wired you in. They weren’t gonna let an islander stay home asleep while the rest go and fight.”
“Shirmians — won’t even let a fish take a nap without whoring him out.” Kav jumped to his feet. “They put all the best on the 409, right? So Tusir’s probably here. Any idea what his specialty is?”
Kyars shook his head. “Prolly gunner? Seems like the go-getter intensely overly aggressive ‘I need to calm the hell down’ gunner type.”
The ship shook — up and down. Kav grabbed onto a wall handle. Nausea swarmed his stomach. The shaking got violent. Kav felt light-headed.
It finally ended.
“Damn birds.” Kyars gaped like he wanted to vomit. “Don’t they know not to pass through a levtrack when a ship’s flying over?”
“It’s the levtracks that are the problem. I remember one of the sergeants saying we should have free-flying ships in operation soon.”
“Ships that fly WITHOUT a track? How? Without the levtrack’s levitation surface, what could keep a ship in the air?”
“I don’t know, don’t ask me. The Haemians do it,” Kav said. “Anyway, you need to stop thinking so hard. I’m gonna go find Tusir. In the meantime, relax. Sing yourself a lullaby.”
Kav wandered from area to area, stepping over sleeping cadets and carefully avoiding wires, to find the gun room. It was probably the largest area of the ship after the cargo hold. On a big mother like the 409, there were twelve guns — two stern, two bow, four portside, four starboard — and this one room controlled them all.
Did I win the damn thing or not?
The gun room’s rotating sunsink seemed the biggest on the ship. You could see the sunlight shimmer through its cylinders. Kav looked for Tusir. Sleeping bodies lay shadowed against the walls, the wires connecting them coursing the floor and ceiling. You could take the sweat dripping off the bodies and make a swimming pool.
At the farthest end, a viewing window streamed light into the room. A landmass of clouds floated endlessly outside.
“Kav?”
It was Tusir, leaning against the corner wall, his face and hair darkened by shadow.
The boy seemed like he wanted to say something. Their eyes locked.
“You know why I’m here?” Kav asked.
Tusir’s eyes said he knew. “Can’t say I do.”
“You’re stance ain’t that of a champion. I expected more swagger.”
“What does that matter now?”
“The world could end and it’ll still matter. Who won?”
Turbulence again. More violent. Kav grabbed a handle to keep from falling. Nausea filled his throat.
“A pilot with vertigo?” Tusir was steady, like an experienced levship traveler. “Really, Kav?”
“Shut up.” Kav clung to the handle. “Us fish were made for water, not sky. Anyway, it was 3-3, and then I woke up in some bed.”
“That isn’t right. Not at all. Listen...”
The two were fighting amid trees that obviously hated Tusir. Tornados of leaves swept up to block his vision. 3-3 it was, and Kav would be on him any moment. Tusir could feel the end.
He thought he might as well get some elevation, being a quick climber of trees. Up the tree in
a blink, he crouched on a branch, blade aimed down. Spectrum showed Kav moving around his position, about thirty yards north. Tusir watched his movements.
That’s when he saw it. Another person appeared on spectrum, behind Kav.
Shit, one of my boys. He needs to know I want a fair fight.
Tusir messaged Kav.
You need to turn around, there’s someone else here! I swear I didn’t call him.
But there was no response.
So Tusir jumped back to earth and stepped toward Kav’s position, careful not to allow him a clear shot. The forest was savage and provided little clarity anyway.
According to spectrum, Kav and the unknown boy were just ahead, through a thicket — possibly fighting, hopefully just talking.
When Tusir finally reached them, Kav was laying on the ground. Over him stood a creature wearing a crimson robe and a gold mask. Feathers seemed to grow out of its right ear, curling upward like a single wing. And clinging to its neck, chest, stomach: gold rings. Hundreds of them.
Fear loosened Tusir’s grip. His weapon thumped onto the soil. The Magus didn’t look at him, didn’t even acknowledge his presence, as it picked up Kav and strung him over its amorphous shoulder. And then it glided out the forest.
“The hell are you telling me, Tusir?”
The boy was sweating. His right arm shook as he clenched the wall. “I’m telling you what I saw...and wished I didn’t.”
“So...no one won!?”
“Honestly, who cares at this point? We’ve got an actual war to fight. Haemians, the real deal.”
“Haemians-khaemians,” Kav said. “Once we land, we’re gonna finish our fight. Amid Almarian evergreens.”
“Fine. But tell me something, what’d the Magus do to you?”
Kav didn’t know. He tried to pinpoint the memory.
“Maybe it knows about you,” Tusir said. “Knows what I know. Could that be it?”
The ship shook, violent like an earthquake in midair. Kav hung onto the handle with both hands, eyes closed. Nauseated and light-headed, his body collapsed — but his soul went somewhere.
