by R. E. Carr
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said softly.
“I’m always here,” he said as he reached for her.
“No. You left me,” Jenn muttered, shaking her head. “In my dream, I mean. We had a fight and you left me. Alone, in the dark—”
“I’m here now,” Ian said. “Now come back here. Come back to bed, and when you wake up, I promise I’ll be right beside you again.”
“I love you, you crazy fool,” she said as she slid back next to him.
“Hah, you love me because I’m crazy, fool,” he said before kissing her. “Now just close your eyes, dream of me, and when you wake up . . .”
“You’ll be right there, won’t you, Kukulkan?”
Jenn grabbed her chest and gasped as her eyes snapped open. She huffed and puffed, choking on the air as she looked around the room. She yanked at the black fabric tied around her chest and kicked her heels against rough stone. She stared in awe at the red blood she saw dripping from her feet.
“I told you that I’d be here,” a soft voice whispered in her ear. She smiled and reached over to tug the tattered ends of his hair.
“Yes, yes you did, my love,” she whispered with a little smile before yanking his head down to her level. Instead of kissing him, however, she spat in his face. Then she shoved him across the room.
“I see you remember how we parted,” Kukulkan said as he staggered to his feet.
“Ji-ann?” a new voice asked from the shadows. Jenn squinted to see a bruised man with feline eyes and gray skin stumble toward her.
“Guess again,” she said. “But I do know you, Sora-khar of Beasts. I have been waiting to meet you for a very long time. Your lost god has been found after all.”
“Great Spirit!” Kei said as he fell to his knees.
Jenn shook her head and let out a deep sigh. “I would prefer it if you’d call me by my name. I am Rheak, and I am here to save your people,” she said.
“If you are Rheak now, then where is Ji-ann?” Kei dared to ask.
“Her work here is done,” Rheak said. She stood up and immediately stumbled. “Damn this human form!” she snapped as she stretched and fought to find her balance. She then crouched down to Kei’s level. “Never fear, loyal one. I will—”
“How will she be able to return home if you have her body?” Kei asked, still keeping his eyes to the ground.
“Once we return to Gracow, I will release this mortal shell and . . . release her, of course,” Rheak said sweetly. “But we have many pressing matters to attend to, do we not? You must go defend your home and defeat those who would silence your noble people. I must prepare for my ascension. Leave the business of the gods to the immortals now.”
“Once you ascend, though, can Ji-ann—?”
“Enough of this, mortal!” Rheak cried. “Leave my sight, and begin making your preparations—unless you want your people to die.”
This time Kukulkan approached Kei and helped him to the door. “You had best listen to her, Kei. Awakening in a human form is traumatic enough without being reminded of the host’s feelings,” he said. “Also, she has quite the temper.”
“You know . . . my god?” Kei asked.
“Better than anyone in the universe. I wish there was more time to explain. Just let the gods tend to the divine, and concern yourself with your own people.”
Kei walked from the room in a daze, his once-bright eyes glazed over and listless. He hadn’t walked ten paces from the divine chamber when a pack of guards in black encircled him.
“The empress and her Oracle wish an audience,” one said.
“I am sure they do,” Kei muttered as he allowed himself to be led down the hall.
Convergence
“There are already reports of a Machidonian force landing in Jasturia, Lord Zhanfos,” the empress said the moment Kei walked into her throne room. With a wave of her hand, a part of the floor began to morph into the shape of a map table. An image of the northern plains flickered to life. Kei did a double take as he looked for the source of the picture.
“We prefer to hide the hand of God in our cities,” the empress continued. She nodded to the Oracle of Water at her side. “Not all of us need the grandeur of Delphi.”
“Jasturia?” Kei asked as he watched silvery dots move across the map. His ears flattened when he saw the green line that marked the edge of Beast Lands.
“Yes, their scouts are definitely heading north,” the empress said. “Not that any of them will make it to Gracow.”
“Is there any word from my father?” Kei asked flatly.
“No, but there are movements of Beast warriors along your southern front,” the Oracle of Water added. “We tried to warn the Warlord that the Machidonian troops already outnumber his by two to one, but he would not accept any offers of assistance from Delphi—”
“Even ten Machidonians are no match for a single Beast warrior,” Kei said as he watched the screen. His eyes turned to slits when he saw a large silver circle hovering over the water.
“I’m sure you’ve realized by now what that is . . . ?” the empress said.
The door to the throne room opened again. Kei didn’t repress his snarl. Both Mihasu and Licia flanked him.
“Nice to see you too, Zhanfos,” Licia said. “I’ve gotten word from Delphi. Our sisters Thunder and Shadow are able and willing to fight, Aubergine. Wind was taken.”
Kei kept his eyes locked on the big silver dot while the women continued to discuss troops and tactics all around him. Finally, Mihasu leaned over. “Lord Zhanfos?” she asked.
The empress pointed to the ocean and even more silvery dots. “Reinforcements will be coming from Machis Prime through Eleven. There has never been an attack of quite this scale before. They are stripping the southern deserts. Even if your people survive this first onslaught, more will come,” she said.
“Are you simply telling me that my people are going to die, or are we going to do something about it?” Kei said flatly as he turned his lifeless stare toward the empress.
“Excuse me?” Aubergine asked.
“In one day, my god has returned to judge me and I have lost my wife. You all know what I have seen. Your spies are clearly skilled, so why not skip the unnecessary talking and get to the point? Tell me what you are going to do—and what you want in return for helping my people,” Kei growled.
“I think you know what I want,” the empress said.
“It is still my father’s decision,” Kei said. “However, I will . . . I will make him consider your request. I am more concerned about what the Oracles might want.”
“The Machidonians attacked Delphi, Lord Zhanfos,” Aubergine said. “We want Farris Adair’s head on a pike.”
“Is that all?” Kei growled.
“Oh, we want his wife dead and his entire family line obliterated, but I believe that the Phantoms will take care of that. You just need to take care of him,” the Oracle of Water said.
“I will face Farris, then. Now, how are you planning to stop the Machidonians?”
“The reinforcements are travelling by sea. That is my domain. My priestesses will cut off their advance,” Aubergine said.
“And you?” Kei asked, his voice still guttural. “How is your army going to get to Jasturia before the Machidonians, Empress?”
She waved her hand over the map. Hundreds of little black dots popped up in every city and every forest south of the Beast lands.
“As you can see, my army is already there, Lord Zhanfos. I only need to call it out of the shadows,” the empress said.
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you, Empress?” Licia asked. “That’s why the streets are empty—”
“I like to prepare for any possible outcome, Young Oracle. As does our Lord Kukulkan. While you, Mihasu, and Lord Zhanfos get to engage Farris, Lord Kukulkan and Lady Rheak wil
l go to Machis Prime—”
“What?” Kei asked, his eyes suddenly alive again. “I thought that our Great Spirit would return to protect Gracow.”
“Do you presume to tell a god what to do, Lord Zhanfos?” the empress asked. “That technological terror the Machidonians use as a weapon is made from the essence of Lord Kukulkan himself. They must stop it and destroy the copy at the source so that the Machidonians can never construct another. The Lord Serpent has assured me that they will stop this Quetzalcoatl once and for all.”
“Then there is nothing left to say. Show me where I am to go,” Kei snapped.
The Oracle of Water and the empress both bristled, but Mihasu stepped between them and the Beast-Man. She bowed to both of the older women.
“Lord Zhanfos is right. There is nothing more to say. With your leave, Lady Oracle, Mother?” the princess asked.
“Take him to the docks and see that he is prepared,” the empress said. “May the Serpent Lord watch over you all.”
Kei said nothing as he was led through the palace. Mihasu needed only to motion to the sentinels in black and they darted back and forth to gather weapons and crates of supplies. Licia stormed ahead and started demanding new equipment from the throng.
“Lord Zhanfos, might we have a word before we go?” Mihasu asked.
“I have nothing more to say.”
“Anything you might know about Farris and his tactics would be useful—” she said.
“Eon faced him, not I,” Kei said with a grunt. He pushed through the swarm of Westerners at the port only to see the same style of skiff as the stolen wreck from Delphi docked and awaiting him. “Damn it,” he growled.
Mihasu pushed past him and pressed her hand against the silver hull. Kei’s ears perked up as the ship hummed and lifted off the ground. He raised his arm and gawked at the cysts on the back of his hand—they had started to glow blue.
“H-how?” he stammered as he approached the ship. The closer he got, the brighter his hand became.
“Most Phantoms can only take away the abilities of the great tribes. I can enhance them, future husband,” Mihasu said.
“I can feel the engine this time. It’s not so distant,” he said as he finally dared to touch the craft. The moment his skin met the hull, his eyes glossed over with a metallic blue. The side door popped open and a ladder extended to the ground. Kei jerked away, but the ship didn’t shudder or shake. “I did this?” he asked.
“I helped,” Mihasu said, stepping closer. She took his furry hand into hers. “And that is not all I can help with . . .”
She hummed a soft tune and swayed in time with it. Kei’s eyes shifted again, from Machidonian inky blue to their feline slits. After a few more bars of music, he closed his eyes. The next time he opened them, he could see rounded pupils reflected in Mihasu’s mask.
“By the Lost God!” he gasped. He watched as the fur receded into his skin and his left hand straightened into four human fingers. He jerked away from the Phantom. “Stop this!” he roared.
“As you wish,” Mihasu said. The fur sprouted once more and his hand twisted back into a paw.
Kei took a deep breath and paced around the ship for a few moments. He finally approached Mihasu and gave her a half-hearted attempt at a smile.
“I am sorry. I know that you meant well, but it is not anyone’s place besides the Spirit of the Great Snow Leopard to lift my curse,” Kei said softly. “I am also guessing that you intend to fight Farris with me and Licia.”
“In the Western lands, it’s a woman’s duty to fight by her husband’s side,” she said as she climbed onto the skiff.
“I am not your husband yet, Mihasu, and I may never be,” Kei said as he followed her. “We are going to fight a Knight.”
Mihasu strapped herself into one of the front seats and started typing the destination into the controls. After a few moments of awkward silence, Kei reluctantly took the pilot’s chair.
“I do not fear this Knight, future husband. After all, I have the only Beast that has ever bested a Knight fighting on my side—and a pair of gods watching my back.”
“Not to mention an Oracle warrior,” Licia said as she entered the ship. The moment she saw Kei behind the controls however, she turned green. “Of course, we are going to die before we get there, aren’t we?”
Jenn stared at the blazing sunset as she shuffled her way across the Mass Avenue Bridge on a blustery autumn evening. The fiery sky contrasted with the gray all around her—gray buildings, gray cars, and the turgid gray waters of the Charles River.
She paused halfway between Boston and Cambridge and leaned over the rail so that the breeze could cool her face and toy with her hair. She watched her shadow grow longer and longer over the water until it no longer seemed human at all. For the briefest of moments, she thought she could make out what looked like horns curling from her head.
“Jenn!” someone cried behind her. “Jenn, can you hear me?”
“Is this all there is to my life?” Jenn whispered.
“Jenn, please! Can you hear me?”
Jenn continued to stare over the rail. She pointed to a little purple boat. “That’s the third duck boat, same as last time. The BU rowing team is packing up down there.” She then looked up to the sky. “But it’s too late in the day for duck boats. How is it that I know that, but I can’t remember the name of my first boyfriend or my tenth-grade homeroom teacher?”
“Jenn!”
Jenn turned to see a flickering form hovering just over the 182.2 smoot mark and the lovely message of “Halfway to Hell.” The flicker solidified into a woman with bright red eyes and equally bright red hair. Jenn raised a brow as a stranger in little more than a tinfoil bikini manifested on a sidewalk in Massachusetts.
“I . . . know you,” Jenn said as she reached out to touch a face that looked just like her own—if she had a rather large ruby stuck in the middle of her forehead, that is.
“Jenn, it’s me. It’s CALA,” the stranger said. “Do you remember me?”
“CALA . . . ,” Jenn said softly before turning back to look at the water. “Now I’m hallucinating while I’m awake. Great!”
“Jenn, please. We don’t have much time. Rheak is already dismantling—”
“14B-Rheak,” Jenn whispered. “Just like in my dream.”
“Jenn, you aren’t dreaming. I need to talk to you before it’s too late!” CALA pleaded.
“You know that terrible feeling like there is something in the back of your head, rattling around in there, but the more you stop to think about it, the farther away it seems?” Jenn asked as she finally turned to face CALA again. “I keep walking back and forth, sometimes around in circles, but it always comes back to today. It starts when I help with some drywall, and it ends with a rock on my roommate’s desk. I always have chicken for lunch and ramen for dinner, and I’m really, really sick of schlepping a pile of mail. It’s like that movie where I just keep living the same day over and over. Little things keep changing, but it always cycles back to the same day, the same moments. Why is that, CALA? Why do I dream at night of being a hero in some faraway land but keep waking up in this same tired loop?”
CALA remained silent. Jenn smiled.
“It took me a while, but I think I’ve finally figured it out.” She pointed to a hooded figure across the street. Shocks of violet hair could be seen flashing out from time to time between the blur of traffic. “I see my friend is here again. He’s the one who helped me see the truth. No matter how much it changes, it always comes back to this one day—as if this day is all I’ve ever had. You know, I’m starting to think that I never was transported halfway across the universe, or wherever the hell that Hykeria place is supposed to be.”
“Jenn, my programming would not allow me—” CALA said.
“That’s what no one wanted me to see. No one but him,” Jenn said. “That’s why there is another copy of me, isn’t there? We are both
just copies.”
The traffic stopped completely as the man across the bridge slowly walked their way. He pulled back his hood to reveal Eon’s familiar face.
“What are you doing here?” CALA asked.
“She deserves to know the truth, just as I was given the bitter truth about my own existence,” Eon said. “You can’t hide it from her anymore.”
“Downloading an entire consciousness is time-consuming and difficult. In order to expedite the process, only a small packet of data was exported. The remainder of the being can usually be extrapolated from the sample. Only a single day’s worth of information could be retrieved before the connection was closed,” CALA said.
“So what am I?” Jenn asked. “Am I just some partial download?”
“You are a base-level algorithm. A test model to see if the data could be stabilized into a functioning human construct. That is why you have alpha-level access to the construct assistant. Later models would be fully integrated into one unit—”
“I was a test?”
“We are all little more than experiments, Ji-ann,” Eon offered.
“There was a system failure with the finished construct, the one with the completed personality designed by 14B-Rheak. Instead of being routed to the Beast Tribe’s conduit, she was intercepted by Machidonian technology—”
“Drawn to the program stolen by Farris, the Quetzalcoatl,” Eon added.
“There wasn’t time to complete a new potential host—” CALA started.
“So Rheak used the original, incomplete copy?” Jenn asked. “Ann was the better version of me after all.”
Eon leaned next to her. “It is Kukulkan’s plan as well. He had the Phantom Tribe build him many bodies so that he can live out his days as a mortal. He uses us to learn and grow and change as the world changes. I was merely the lucky one who happened to be there when he finally woke up,” he said. “I’m just a shell, a puppet who finally noticed his strings.”
