Order of Dust

by Nicholas J. Evans

  His voice trailed off as her heartbeat sped up, and she began to feel the adrenaline build within her. She looked out over the crowd, and she could see these people study her carefully. They were so aged, so weak, or even sick, and they looked at her as if she was salvation. But it was when she turned around to Paisley that she truly felt her heart sink.

  This was not Paisley.

  The face was hers, the body, and all of the attributes. The clothing, however, had not been her at all. She was now adorned in armor, brilliantly glowing under the stage lights and held together by strips of leather. At her side, a wide and flat blade. She approached Sydney and stood on her free side. She rested a hand on the hilt of her blade, and looked at her with cold, unfamiliar eyes.

  “Wh-what is happening?” Sydney whispered toward her.

  “Eight-hundred-thousand!” screamed an older woman upfront.

  “Nine!” said a man beside her.

  Paisley ignored her entirely.

  What was forgotten, especially by Paisley, was that Sydney was strong. And, Sydney grew disgusted, and furious. Her anger and her fear filled her and gave her a confidence unbound by the company she currently kept. She could feel herself tense up, adrenaline coursed through her veins and put her on auto-pilot. From the stage, she noticed a much older man had a handgun in the waistband of his too-high-up dress pants. Then, she made her break.

  She lunged off the stage, and barely caught herself on the checkered floor before pushing off of her heel hard once more to shoot toward the man in the audience. She flung a hand forward, and right as she approached, she pulled the gun from his waist. She shoved him backward in his chair, where he crashed to the ground with a whimper. Sydney held the gun in her shaking hands and pointed it up at the stage. She moved it back and forth, first at the tall man, then at Paisley, and back again.

  “Tell me what the FUCK is going on!”

  “Do you see the athleticism? What a show of strength, good job my sweet Cindy,” the thin man said, with a smirk. “What say we raise the bid to a million?”

  The people behind her began to make their bids once more, even as she held up a gun.

  “It’s Sydney, creep. I will shoot you, I swear to God I will shoot you!”

  “Oh please,” the thin man said as he descended the stage and approached her. He walked as if he were nothing but a shadow. “Have you not heard the news of the century? There is no God.” The thin man laughed, and it was a hyena-like cackle that made her cringe.

  Sydney did not know what came over her, it may have been intentional, it may have been nerves, but Sydney picked up the gun, touched it to the thin man’s head, and began to pull the trigger until a cry pierced the air.

  “Carter!”

  Paisley was fast, and moved before the trigger even finished being pulled. Before the click of the firearm sounded, and before the glow of gunpowder burst forward, she was there between Carter and the gun. He grinned behind her and Sydney was motionless. Right below the gun, there was a flash of silver before another action could be made, and the blade sliced through Sydney’s stomach as if it were nothing but paper. A tear balled in the corner of an eye, and as it built it began to flow down her face. The droplet fell just as she witnessed Paisley and the thin man walk away as if she was nothing to them at all.

  Only a short time after this Sydney awoke in the vast nothingness of Paragon, and when the two presented her with their offer she had been the most eager Order of Dust to ever accept the role.

  She awoke in a cheap motel room to the smell of cigarettes and the sound of shouting from outside. The bed creaked as she moved and rolled herself off and up on her feet. The room itself was disgusting in more ways than one, with mustard colored walls and horrid floral print blankets that had the texture of thick newspaper. In front of her, right above the small television, was a mirror and she did not recognize the face staring back at her.

  She was older, the passage of time slipped through her callused fingers and all she knew was that her body, this body, was not the same as the one she died in. For one thing, she was taller. Her hair was dark with strands of silver and gray, her face was longer and her bones more prominent. She wore clothes she did not recognize, torn black jeans with large boots and a dirty white shirt, all enclosed in a black, hooded jacket. That is when the flash of purple caught her eye, coming from the odd gun at her waist. She touched it and the smooth handle was familiar to her, as if she once held it in a distant dream. It was only then, as she stood as the person she no longer knew, that she realized something inside her had changed as well: she no longer cared for anything but revenge.

  “I had wondered when you would wake,” said a voice that stood by the window, watching those who shouted outside.

  Sydney spun quickly, and almost instinctually reached for the weapon at her side. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Hmph,” the woman at the window sounded with a smirk. “Don’t say hell too loud, it’s been many years since anyone has spoken that word without reticule.” The woman, broad with dark skin, and armor similar to that of Paisley, looked toward her now. “I am Ayres, it is nice to meet you, Order.”

  Sydney did not respond right away, and instead she looked the figure over. She studied her carefully, and her eyes lingered on the blade that was on Ayres’s hip. Sydney looked at the armor, at the strong person who stood imposing before her, and kept her guard up.

  “And what are you doing in here? Where is here?”

  Ayres crossed her arms as she approached Sydney, who was still desperately trying to grasp what was happening. “You died, Order. Then, you accepted a position, and now you are back.”

  “Yes, sounds about right. I remember the training in the empty place, it was as if I was fighting nightmares that both existed and did not exist…”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the Order of Dust training is… difficult. But, to answer you more directly from before, this is the Valo Motel, right outside of New Ashton. It has been eleven years, Sydney, and I am here to assist you.”

  “Assist me how?” she asked as she removed her hand from the gun back to her side.

  Ayres said nothing but handed over a piece of paper. Sydney grabbed it, and just as she began to unfold it Ayres said, “Your first case, from the Ender. Unfortunately, he had come earlier to deliver it but you were still not awake yet. Normally, I would not deliver these cases but Azazel’s little pet doesn’t seem to be around. From this day on you shall receive these from Azazel himself, luckily. And, I will be here to guard you as you rest. But I am not permitted to assist you outside of here. I am afraid all that comes next is up to you.”

  “When do I find Paisley?”

  “Her real name,” Ayres said just as she turned back to her window, “is Pagiel, and she is of my kind. As to when you find her, well, that much is up to you.”

  As the seasons changed in New Ashton, so did Sydney with each new case presented to her. Some came in letters, left on the desk, but none were handed to her by Ayres who quietly stared out of the window for most of the time. Yet, some just came from the thin, pink lips of Azazel himself. Yet, every case altered her, changed her. Like single droplets of black ink plunged into crystal clear water, shading her darker and darker. While she always felt unresolved anger inside, this was something newer, something murky. The world for her was cold, and she had only grown colder.

  Ayres took notice.

  The motel was their only constant, in a world of ever-changing ideals that spun in a whirlpool of total madness. It was a base for them, and while it would never be a true home it sufficed for what they needed: solitude. The sights from the window changed and Ayres treated it as a television with a rotating list of shows. There were the homeless who battled for mere scraps or dollars, the drug exchanges between the fiends and the deranged, the prostitutes who winked at lonely men and offered a hand in comfort, and the occasional limp body dumped in the gutter just across the street.

  It was guilt for Sydney, as she watched the
revenge and death consume her like a vulture picking at half-dead roadkill.

  “Anything?” she grunted.

  “Not yet,” Ayres responded.

  The warrior stood at the window, and the sun that set over the distant buildings pierced the glass just enough to glow off of her rich skin and reflect on her dark knotted hair. Sydney sat on the edge of the bed, with a nervous jitter that shook her foot and bounced her knee up and down rapidly. In one hand, she held the familiar amethyst tinted gun with the gold trim, and in the other a rather large, flat serrated blade that read “Paisley” in near-permanent black ink. Her blank eyes looked down upon them, and her wrinkled forehead bore a scowl.

  “Anything?” she repeated.

  “Sydney–” Ayres began but halted her words. She knew this was not going to lead her anywhere, and looked at the Order with new eyes that could see through the hard shell that had grown to wrap Sydney. Deep under, Ayres knew there was a human, betrayed and scornful, just waiting for the end of her painful anger.

  “Order,” she restarted. “Where did you get that blade?”

  Sydney smirked as she stared down at the reflective steel; her eyes glinted back at her. “Grabbed it off a fucking Demon on the last job. Came at me with it, dropped him with the gun before he even got close. Makes for a good trophy, don’t you think?”

  Ayres stared hard, “And, the name?”

  “Doesn’t belong to me,” she answered. “Belongs to Paisley’s neck.”

  “This,” Ayres answered, reaching for the blade, “won’t–”

  The words had barely left her mouth when the knife plunged fast and hard through the air like a torpedo through still water. Sydney lunged to her feet as she swung the blade, and its tip shot for Ayres neck. Her eyes were cold and empty, as if she was in the distance watching herself attack her own guard. The blade launched upward, the grip firmly in her grasp, and cut through the air toward Ayres.

  The angel did not even blink. She caught the blade with her hand, wrapped her fingers around its razor edge and its sharp teeth, and squeezed it. It dug into her skin, but no blood dripped, and her skin remained unscathed under the razor edge regardless of how much pressure she added. Her eyes were fierce, and they stared at Sydney with a tension that could form lightning. What stared back was not fire to match hers. It was, despite all of Sydney’s rage, just pure sadness. Her hand shook on the blade’s handle and her eyes held the rain. The tears ran from her eyes, then down her cheeks, and in that moment, she looked so weak, Ayres had thought.

  “I… need answers…” She sniffled on with a rumble in her throat, “I can’t keep… I can’t keep fucking doing this! Where is she?”

  Ayres lowered the knife from her neck and pushed against the trembling hand of Sydney.

  “They will come…” Ayres said, and released the knife’s blade which had bent in her hand as if it were foil. It clanked against the linoleum below them. “Somehow, you will find her. But I need to ask…”

  Sydney looked her in the eyes, fighting to gain back her standard angered face, her grizzled attitude, or any remnant of the strong person that had fought all of this time.

  Ayres presented her hand, palm up, and Sydney stared in red-eyed disbelief. The hand had no cuts or gashes, nor wounds of any kind. It was free of any remote form of damage.

  “When you find her, how do you plan to kill her?”

  Two months brought Sydney’s time as the Order to just over a year. After that evening, where she had taken a passion-fueled swing at Ayres, she had not lost her composure again. But that did not change anything between them because Ayres had truly known what hid beneath the Order’s skin, and just how truly human she still was. It was on a night that carried in the first snow of the cold season that the emotions finally came back in the form of a burst through the door and a body that stood beaten, bloody, and dying.

  “Sydney!” Ayres shouted and caught the stumbling mess as she fell through the door.

  Her coat held three holes, soaked in red, two on the sleeve and one on the shoulder. Her hand held a cut that matched the one on her thigh and her face was swollen like it had just kissed a moving truck. Yet, she smiled.

  “Found her…” she grinned, with heavy breaths under shining eyes. “Finally.”

  Ayres rested her on the bed and ran to fetch an old bath towel to press into the bleeding wounds. As she applied pressure she asked sternly, “What happened? She did this?”

  Sydney laughed, “God no. Scored these from the pieces of shit who gave me the information.” She took a few deep breaths and cursed beneath each shallow one from the pain, then reached her free hand into her jacket pocket. “She is still with that guy, the odd one from the auction. She and the bastard are planning a big move tomorrow night, new bodies, down at some old church.” From her pocket, she pulled a translucent, orange plastic bottle full of chalky pills that knocked together as she shook them. She popped two, three, five, in her mouth and swallowed hard. “Fuckin’ Scarabs, infesting the entire damn city. Pulled these,” she shook the bottle, “from one of those deadbeats.”

  Ayres looked at her, beaten and bruised, “Sydney, look at you. You won’t make it long enough to take another breath. Forget trying to take her on right now. Not like this.”

  She returned a broken smile to her, “Gotta try.”

  “Order,” Ayres said, in her coldest and sternest voice, “you should reconsider.”

  “You know,” Sydney spoke. “It has been a year since we started this together, you and I.” She swallowed hard again, and her eyes had let Ayres know that the painkillers had begun to set in. “One year that you’ve patched me up, a year since you gave me my first case and a year that you’ve stared out of that window watching nothing at all.” She raised a hand up and placed it on to hers, which held down the blood-drenched towel. “I don’t think I ever thanked you.”

  “Thank me?” Ayres said in confusion. “This is my duty. I am here at a command of Usra and I would be here whether you bled out here or in the streets. I’m just here to hold that off as long as possible.”

  Sydney’s eyes shimmered, a smile cracked. “We both know there is more to it than that. I see you, Ayres. Not the act, the real you.” With her tank almost empty and with the last droplet of her strength, she reached up and placed a hand on Ayres cheek, and then fell back limp on the bed, unconscious.

  That night, as Sydney rested in a comatose state from her wounds, Ayres spoke. She spoke to no one, in a stern voice and an angry presence, as if awaiting an uninvited guest whom she needed all at the same time. The word she spoke, only a single one, pushed from the lips like steaming vomit, and she said it with the remorse that one would say the name of a scorned ex-lover, or a rival friend, or a worst enemy. She said this word, a name, as if she had spoken the name of the devil himself. And, in many ways, she had.

  “Azazel.”

  With a puff of heavy smoke, a swirling of black clouds, the dark one himself appeared. His teeth, which flashed brilliantly with a grin, were the first to show through the blur of smoke. Then his eyes fixated on Ayres sickeningly and he gave her a tip of his hat before inspecting the area briefly. He instantly found the severely wounded body of his employee on the blood-soaked bed beside him.

  “She looks good,” he sassed Ayres. “I see you’ve taken care of my valuables well.”

  “She is not your possession.”

  “Her title is the Order of Dust and,” he placed his thin hand on her shoulder, “she is more of my possession than you’ll ever know. Now,” he turned to Ayres, and wiped the blood from Sydney’s jacket that got onto his hand off on the bed. “Why did you call?”

  “I would have preferred your better half, but I know she is a bit preoccupied at the moment. I can feel it.” Ayres crossed her arms and stood imposingly. “You were my last, and only, choice here.”

  “Often am,” he grinned.

  “She needs to be relieved of this position,” she spoke with a firm sincerity. “I am afraid that w
hen she awakens it will be for the last time.”

  Azazel held his smile as he turned back toward Sydney. He admired how she lay, the wounds that doused her body like gasoline dousing a flame, and he nodded as he stared at every part of her. He could see her wounds healing, faster than any normal human’s would, and he gazed on the patches of blood that dried on to her coat. Then, his eyes fell on to the gun and blade that she carried at her waist, and he nodded at them as well as if greeting them.

  “No,” he happily stated without looking up.

  “What? Ender, she will not see her revenge, you know this!”

  “No,” he said again and looked up to Ayres, his grin fading. “And don’t tell me what I know.”

  Ayres was fuming in her anger, “I will not stand by while you walk your puppet to her death. She is human! You know what she faces!”

  “Silence,” he said in an old, deep accent. His eyes burned as they pierced her. “This is the place of the Order; they hold this title until they fall. She will fall, as she should, and that is final.” Suddenly, just as Ayres felt her volcanic anger begin to spill over, Azazel’s demeanor changed and he once again lightened and grinned. “Besides, she’s got the Guts,” he said and smacked his own stomach, “she’ll heal up just fine.”

  “Az–”

  “These feelings,” Azazel said as the smoke formed behind him. He took a step back toward it. “They do not suit you, Angel. If you care so much for her, then take that old oath with Usra and break it like the twig that it is.” Before she could speak again, he was gone and the smoke gone with him.

  It was three long, painful days before Sydney awoke in a pool of sticky blood, and as soon as she peeled herself from the bed, she had her mind made up. So, the two stood at the back door of the crumbling church as the light rain dripped and trickled off of them under the cover of moonlight. Sydney grinned as she took deep breaths, the sharp pains of old wounds remained, and Ayres stood at her side with a pointed brow. The night had come, and they were just in time.