“There is that, yes. I’ve got some personal issues overwhelming me. You may be able to help with that.”
“And why exactly is it that you’re engaged in active anima crystal trading? It’s a huge affront to my divinity. It’s illegal. And it requires you to deal exclusively with the fleshy masses.”
Nin-Agal rose from the anvil and walked over to a blank spot on the great curving wall. He traced a finger down the surface until it was about chest level, then prodded inwards. The steel yielded to his touch as if made of butter. He sank his hand into the wall and pulled out a small platinum box. From this, he removed a key. He thrust the key into the center of the anvil he’d just left, and it sank down into the floor. Moments later, a towering case rose to replace it. It was stuffed to the brim with crystals, all of them broken and empty.
“I’m not proud of myself,” he said. “And when this is over, if you want my operation shut down, you can destroy it yourself. There are more of these in my private storage, untapped. These are just the ones I’ve had to use. I’d always planned to present them to you for inventory purposes. I can no longer control my impulses.”
“And what exactly have you been using them for?”
“We’ll come to that, friend, we will, and soon,” he paused and leaned back against the wall, examining his cobbled-together hands. “They forgot me up there. This was the only way they’d come to find me. I’ve lost sight of it. You know how great it feels, don’t you, when they call your name? When they beg you for favors, even when they curse you. It’s all gone. I have so little to sustain me.”
What is it with these self-pitying gods? First The Righteous, now this.
“I was made for one thing – ruling the Forge of the Gods, wielding the Hammer of Infinity. Crafting the metal, the steel, the elements that protect the Divine! And what have I now? Not even my body. I’m falling apart. They gave up on me so long ago. On Earth and down here. You let them build. You let them live. You let them have free will. They don’t need me. They don’t fear me. Outside of Copperopolis, I am nothing. And inside, I can only rule over animals twisted to my liking. You see my work floor. I have to make my own worshippers. It’s pathetic.”
He fell silent, his shimmering eyes reflecting the great case in front of him, piles of used anima crystals. There was a sound like sizzling bacon as tears rolled down his cheeks, molten gobbets of metal hot enough to melt divots into the floor where they fell.
“It’s the finest work I’ve done since the last thought of me danced through the brain of a swordsmith.”
“What would that be?”
He reached into the pile of discarded anima crystals and brought out an ornately carved box. The metal was jet black, and the box didn’t appear to have a lid. Each side of the box had one small raised glass oval window, glowing red from whatever was inside.
“Pretty,” I said. “What is it?”
“You can’t tell? You don’t feel it?” Nin-Agal looked surprised. “Amazing. I’ve done better work than I imagined. I’ve been keeping something from him.”
“From who?”
“The next king. Yaotl. The Adversary.”
“What would you know about him?”
“He’s here.”
I jerked out of my seat, scanning the room. Checked the shadows to see if anything was coalescing, sniffed the air for the smell of cinders.
“Not here , in the physical sense. But close, and getting closer. There’s been a great rupture, surely you know about it, even in your weakened condition.”
“We didn’t arrive here by lucky accident, did we?”
“When the girl was here, I thought she was yet another mortal bargaining a sack full of anima crystals. She was holding this! In her bare hand, mind you. The instant I saw it, I knew what it was.
It took everything I had just to contain it, to hide it from him, and you see what it did to me.”
He held up his battered hands, gestured to his body.
“Yaotl felt its arrival, and he’s been demanding it every day since. Pulling at the atmosphere around us, tearing the fabric of reality. I’ve been hiding it as best I could, feeding him what I can, I thought you would arrive sooner—”
“You’ve been helping him?” I yelled.
“Not in the sense that you’d think, no. Just feeding him, keeping him sated and distracted to give you time to recover what’s yours. I think we have a chance to start making things right.” Nin-Agal approached, hunched and conspiratorial. “Is he with you? The angel?”
“Mostly,” I glanced at Lenny on my shoulder. Nin-Agal’s eyes followed mine.
“Mostly? What does that mean? He’s either here or he’s not. I’ve never been allowed to see the Heavenly Hosts. It was God’s way of stopping them from coming to me behind his back for weapons and armor. Describe him to me!”
“Well,” I started. “He has…hair. And a very strong grip on my shoulder.”
Nin-Agal’s eyes lit up. “A hearty warrior!” he whispered. “I felt him come through the rift when it opened the first time. I saw him in the Mirror.”
“What Mirror? The Mirror of Smoke?” Lenny asked. Nin-Agal didn’t react.
“The Mirror of Smoke?” I repeated.
Nin-Agal’s eyes darkened. He hung his head in shame. “Flesh is pain. It’s the hardest truth I’ve discovered. I didn’t mean it to come to this. I had to find a way out. I have to relinquish who I am. It’s part of the bargain.”
“What bargain? Find a way out of what? Spit it out!”
Nin-Agal nodded and reached back into the wall. He withdrew a slender black obelisk that stood about three feet high.
It looked worn down by wind and time, carvings on each of the four faces reduced to faint lines and ridges.
“What is it?”
“Evil. Pure and simple.”
I consider myself a high authority on what constitutes pure and simple evil. It’s been my stock in trade for so long now. But I wasn’t getting any vibes off of this oversized paperweight. He set it on the floor next to the box containing my anima crystal. The designs on the side of the obelisk hazed out for a second, and Nin-Agal’s skin flashed red hot.
“You getting anything here?” I asked Lenny.
“It’s a void. It looks solid on the surface, but beneath, I can see…eternity.”
“You’ve always been known as the great seducer, the most alluring of all the gods to ever exist,” Nin-Agal said. “But you’re not. This was delivered to me by the Brothers. I was at work in my forges when they made their way in. They didn’t kill a single member of my staff.”
“They only kill things with souls.”
“You may consider my creatures half-formed, but I assure you, they have souls. It was odd, though. Every creature I’d ever created was trailing behind them, focused on them, rapt. Abel presented me with this obelisk, bundled in a cloth of velvet midnight. A gift, they said. If I made them a set of knives, they’d exchange it for this piece. I scoffed at first, until I touched it. All of my prayers were answered. I received a blessing, a warning, a curse, a prophecy, all in an instant. And to work the forge? To feel useful again? To have purpose!”
“Where did they get the stone?”
“They didn’t say, and I never bothered to ask. Once I touched the stone, I knew all I needed to know. All the stone asked for was anima crystals. All it needed was to be fed. And in exchange, it shows me whatever I need to see. And when it asked for more, I was only too happy to give. It drained my anima, stole my essence. I can no longer subsist in alloy. I’ve had to begin patching myself with flesh to survive. Many of my most loyal subjects have sacrificed parts of themselves to maintain my life. I’ve done my best to keep them alive. Sometimes,” he motioned to the hybrids standing in the room, “they’ve had to share bodies and organs to survive.”
“What does the stone show you?”
“Everything. It gives me everything. I look in, and I become a god. The power is fantastic, and frightening. He create
s, he consumes, he discards, all to serve himself. I don’t want to see it anymore. But I can’t stop going back. I have to gaze on its surface every day. Bring anima crystals to the Mirror of Smoke each morning. And it kills me a little more each time. So I take a little more flesh each time. But Flesh dies, it rots, it putrefies, bruises, tears and bleeds! Do you think I want to continue butchering the only subjects I have left, only to have to put flesh into the temple of my body?”
He dragged his wrists across the surface of the stone and exhaled.
“We will get your anima crystal back where it belongs. And you’ll take this stone away from me. All I ask is one favor. Kill me, Morningstar. Don’t leave here with me drawing breath.”
I stood up and moved to the stone.
“Don’t touch it!” he shrieked.
I noticed the box was beginning to tug in his hands, inching towards me.
“Your crystal is calling out to you. And he hears. He’s coming. It can feel his approach. We must hurry! Do you think you can handle taking your crystal back? Are you in good enough shape?”
“Does it matter? We either do it or we don’t.”
“Your angel is the only one who can handle the stone safely. Tell him to carry it from the room.”
I blinked. I looked at Lenny. I looked at the stone. No telling how heavy it was, but it was taller than Lenny, and certainly not small enough to clutch in his teeth.
“About that,” I said. “Lenny—the angel, he can’t exactly carry things right now.”
Why not? You said he was here. If he’s manifested in this room, he must help you! The fate of the—”
“We kind of chopped his head off.”
“We–who–you what?!”
“Well, I didn’t do it. Not the chopping, but it was my fault that he was…uh…in position to receive said chopping, and uh…”
“That’s as close to apologizing as you’ve come yet. I’m almost flattered,” Lenny drawled.
“But if you touch your crystal while the Mirror of Smoke is in the room—” Nin-Agal said.
The room suddenly went dark. A ghostly whisper shot around the room.
“… you betray me …”
The box glowed brighter. The glass eyes on each side of the cube were red hot, threatening to melt at any moment. Nin- Agal’s hands began to smoke.
“Tell the angel to stand before the Mirror. The way is not prepared yet! You have to take the crystal now, take it—”
Everything slowed to a crawl, the room suffused in a red glow. Lenny struggled mightily to get before the Mirror, but he was drifting as if in deep water. The cube slowly shrank in Nin- Agal’s hands, down to the size of a breadbox, then a fist, then a deck of cards, then just a twinkling red light hovering between his open palms. I could see drops of melted metal frozen in midair as they came off of Nin-Agal’s fingers. The walls to the room bowed in. Everything was pulling towards the collapsing anima. My crystal.
I reached a finger out to the glow, it was like moving through standing water. The light from the crystal spread into a thin oval, then collapsed again into an intense speck of light that began circling around Nin-Agal’s body. It hovered before him, then grew into a seven-foot-tall rectangle. I tumbled headfirst into it. The world became red, a peaceful warm glow. I saw a floor beneath me, delineated only by its slightly darker shade of red. It was growing rapidly, moving towards me. Or was I falling towards it? I felt my skull impact the floor first, bursting in the back like a dropped melon. It was the fall from Grace all over again. Every bone in my body shattered. The red room, once a cavern, was pulling down, dripping.
My heart slowed down to a few beats, then nothing. I blinked. Inhaled hard and deep. One beat more. Then nothing.
I tried to move my arm, but it lay across my chest at an impossible angle.
Breathe. The room wavered a little. Two heart beats. Then silence.
The ceiling above was cracked, a huge hole that I assumed mirrored the mess on the floor beneath me. Outside was darkness. A void. No. Sentience. Smoke and silence.
Breathe. A shard of red, hanging from the ceiling, breaking away and falling towards me. It slammed through my head, a jolt of pure energy. My energy. My essence.
Three beats. Then a fourth. A deep breath. I felt the hole in my skull creaking, the plates grinding and shifting. Drew in a breath to scream, perhaps my last. And my skull, my brain… inhaled red . The entire room shrank down, continued melting towards me, rushing towards the wound in my head. My heart began to beat. Then it began to sing.
Above me, the blackness rumbled and roared. Something out there wasn’t happy. A shape drifted by as my view of the expanse above me widened. I shook as the last of the red room bled into me. Half of me. Of what I was, what I am. Back where it belonged.
The darkness furrowed, folded, and a face formed above me, indistinct, but present.
“ Not yours. Not anymore …”
I didn’t hear the words, instead I felt the voice in my lungs, down my spine.
Tendrils of smoke tore across me, flaying my shirt from my body and sinking into my chest, hooking around my ribs, pulling outwards. My chest groaned, cracked, and then split apart. I hung suspended by two nacreous hooks in my midsection, staring down at my own heart, beating, but wrapped in a wiry black mesh. A mesh that began to shrink. Slowly. One beat at a time.
“It beats if I allow it. It stops when I desire.” The voice again.
“Yaotl,” I croaked.
The wires cinched tight for an excruciating minute, stopping my heart, lighting my nerves on fire.
“I wanted you to be aware. That’s all. Fully aware of who is your universe. I am all that is, all that was. I am awake. And I’ve waited for the pleasure of this moment.”
The wires on my heart slacked a little, allowing my vision to clear. I could see smoke wafting around, patterned and dark, like the flanks of a great jaguar. I noticed a thin trail of smoke leading from my heart into the darkness.
“I’ve allowed you half of your Self. Enough of your essence that you could crush any other god you chose. Enough that you could create worlds and end them with a thought. And even so, you are no match for me. No sport.”
“Why don’t you give me the other crystal and let’s see what happens,” I said. Actually, I felt like having the other crystal would help me survive about ten extra seconds with this beast. But I was trying to buy time.
A dull red glow gathered before me, growing more substantial until it was a solid, shining sphere. My other anima crystal. “Take it. You are nothing! No match for me. Take it and die with honor! Though you will die here today, part of you will be responsible for the achievement of your greatest dream. The Fall of Heaven. The Rise of a New God.”
“NO!” A new voice, ripping across the sky, reverberating around the room. It was loud, distorted, could have been male or female, animal or spirit. The smoking pulse of Yaotl drew back from me. The voice continued, “It is too soon. You are great. You once were the universe, and you will be again. It is not time yet. Please, Lord…”
I took advantage of the momentary distraction and flailed against the smoky hooks which had me flayed open. My left hand bounced off of one tendril, solid as stone. My right hand passed through the smoke, cutting it in two.
Hold on a sec…
My right hand. It was there. Sort of. It was a hand, my hand, but composed of solid energy, my anima. And that had been enough to break part of Yaotl’s hold on me.
He realized it at the same moment I did, and his wiry cage clamped down full force on my heart. I wrapped my fingers around the trailing edge of the cage, feeling his energy fighting against mine, before my hand squeezed through, shattering the bond. The smoke dissipated, the cage disappeared. I chopped at the other tendril holding me up and cut myself loose. It felt like I was falling, but I didn’t appear to be going anywhere. I was in too much pain to care. I folded my arms across my torso, pushing my ribs back into place, feeling the flesh knit closed with my last b
urst of energy. I was fading.
The sky ripped open around me, shards of white light pushing back against the shadow. There was a hand, wielding a dagger, massive as a moon, reaching in and trying to snag the crystal from where it floated before me.
Another shout, and this time another hand reached into the void, clutching the crystal tight. A familiar hand, but I couldn’t say why. I’ve seen many a giant mitt in my time. The flesh on the hand sizzled and smoked, and my sinuses felt as if they’d cave in.
A great shriek echoed across the vastness, Yaotl roared in fury. “He has a crystal! He has one of the—”
And then a great rending, and a shape, forcing the darkness back and tearing a hole in the world. The white scar across the sky began to grow, to widen, and I saw Nin-Agal standing above me. We were in his private quarters. Everything was as it had been before, with a slight difference. His hands were melted to stumps, the remains of the cube he’d created puddled at his feet. My clothes were tattered, and I was covered in blood, exhausted. All of Nin-Agal’s arclights had shattered and exploded. The room was bathed in a pale red glow from my hand. My right hand.
Nin-Agal’s chest was torn open. The blood in the room was his.
“Welcome back, Lightbringer,” he hissed. His fingers clenched and unclenched. They were dipped in blood.
I looked down at Lenny, still standing before the Mirror. It had shrunk to the size of a long pencil. I brushed it tentatively with my new right hand. Nothing. I’d have to take my chances and carry it out.
“You all right, Lenny?”
“I saw things…terrible things…” His hand… my original hand, was charred, but healing quickly. He’d reached in to seize the crystal. He held it for me, and now I had it back. One down, one to go.
Nin-Agal’s left leg, rusted and worn, finally shattered at the knee. He slammed into the floor face first. I saw the wall behind him. Apparently he’d been scrawling a message for us in case he didn’t hold on until I made it back.
Run.
Chapter Thirteen
Out of the room, up the stairs, frantically trying to find Goliath, Eve, and Monkey. I needed to study the Mirror of Smoke, see what it was and what made it tick. See if I could turn it against Yaotl.
Angel Falls Page 14
