Evangeline hummed affirmatively as she continued to sip her wine, remaining detached from the conversation.
“So what, you just send me to kill Iilil-ja and you go home? I find that hard to accept.”
Mr. White appeared to be shocked. “Why would you say that, Daniel? I told you from the beginning that I would keep your dirty little secret so long as you cooperated. I have no issues with you, or that girl for that matter. Once you kill Adam Evans you can take her back as your own and return to the life you had before he ruined it. I get what I want, you get what you want, and we’re all happy. That’s how a partnership works.”
The Creator didn’t seem pleased at all by Mr. White’s association with him as a partner. Nor was he happy with the arrangement he had been forced into. Even if he did benefit from it, the damage that had already been done and the cost that was yet to be paid was hardly worth it.
“I can tell you’re upset, Daniel,” said Mr. White. “Even though I’ve been perfectly fair, you still feel like things aren’t going the way you want them to. I’m sorry you feel that way. Let me phrase it in a way that makes it sound as if you actually have a choice in the matter, since you are so keen on preserving your antiquated notion of free will: kill Adam Evans and allow everything to return to the way it should be, or defy me and you’ll lose everything you hold dear. I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.”
Mr. White took the cheese knife and stabbed into the mound in front of him, cutting a generous piece that he spread onto a long slice of bread. “Do let me know when you’re ready. My team will stay away from the melee, but I intend to be present when he dies. Take your time, though. Just remember that the sooner you get it over with, the sooner we’ll all get what we want.”
The Creator almost missed the last statement as he left the dining room through the door. Mr. White sunk his teeth into the cheese-topped bread and savored the taste. His pulse quickened in anticipation, for he knew that soon a lifetime of work would come to fruition. His hand trembled, and he laid it upon the top of the skull, stroking it with slow, deliberate movements. Evangeline tried her best to ignore the act, pouring another glass of wine from the diminishing bottle.
Chapter 27
Permanent Scars
Under the glaring sun of the desert, Adam and Dee trudged along as they continued on their path to the coast. The empty stretch of sand was a wasteland, but it was the only path left for the desperate fugitives to take. They were at least out of the way of people here, for it was an inhospitable land to live in. Even in autumn the days were dry and hot, while at night the cold could be felt in force as temperatures neared freezing. It was a cruel system, but Adam and Dee did what they could to adapt. During the night, Adam stoked a fire and slept with Dee curled up beside him. It was a feeling he had grown accustomed to during their flight, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy that intimacy.
The days were the worst, as the warmth that they longed for under the moonlight returned with terrible weight that made them wish for relief. For a time, Adam resorted to using his influence over ice and wind to create a bubble of cold air around them, but the sun’s work countered his efforts and led him to waste his energy for nothing. Eventually they decided to bear the heat, and in the safety of the empty desert they discarded their protective cloaks and took to wearing as little as they were comfortable with. This left them with exposed skin that was quick to burn, so it became necessary time and again to cover themselves. At all times did they keep their heads covered to prevent sunstroke, which would only slow their already languid pace through the unforgiving desert.
After enduring five days in the desert, the effects of their environment began to show on the pair. Dee’s normally pale, fair skin had grown quite tan after having burned and recovered. Adam was just as bronzed, shown more so as he carried on now without his shirt in order to relieve the heat. As Dee walked a few paces behind, her eyes fell once more on the designs in the shape of wings marked on Adam’s back. She had first observed them in Khanka weeks earlier, and during their desert travels she had seen them daily as Adam alternated between covering his torso or not. She hadn’t mentioned them at all since that day in Khanka, but after all this time she was starting to run short on topics of conversation, and her curiosity was getting the better of her.
“Greg?” she asked, her voice cracking from the dryness in her throat.
“Yeah?”
“Will you tell me about the marks you have on your back? Why do you have them?”
“It’s kind of a long story, Dee,” he said.
“I’ve got the time,” came her answer.
Adam cleared his throat. “When I was travelling across the universe, a few hundred years ago, I found myself on a planet that I don’t remember the name of now, but it was not a very pleasant place to be. It was a desert world, but not like the endless stretches of sand dunes we’re forced to cross right now. It was more of a wasteland, a dry, arid place where there wasn’t much growing. But what was most impressive were the rock formations. All across the planet, there were these splendid mounds that seemed like they were shaped by the hands of a sculptor. There were expansive cliffs too, looming over deep valleys where once there probably was water running. It was apparent that some natural force had once been there to shape that planet, but whatever had done it was long gone by the time I showed up there.”
He coughed as the dry air parched his throat. He reached for his canteen and took a swig of the warm water before continuing.
“As you can imagine, the place wasn’t exactly a good environment to live. The only wildlife I found were a few solitary carnivores, terrible, ugly lizards that thankfully spent most of their time hiding in crevasses in the cliffside. One of them came after me while I was passing through a canyon below the cliffs but I was able to kill it. The sound of the fight attracted others, but not the predators. There were people there, well, not humans, but they looked very close and they were a lot friendlier than those lizards.
“They all had pale skin, despite living in the desert, and they had white hair and gray eyes, each and every one of them. It was the damnedest thing. They were all pretty thin as well, which was to be expected living in a place like that. They didn’t pose a threat, and they didn’t seem worth killing, which at the time was a consideration I took towards anyone I encountered, so I went with them back to their civilization.
“The people were cliff dwellers, and had their whole village propped up on stilts and platforms along natural ridges of the cliffside. They seemed rather primitive, just a hunter-gatherer society with no advanced technology. They barely had any kind of useful weapon to hunt or defend themselves with. It was a simple society, but they seemed happy enough with it. The most striking thing I noticed was their deeply involved practice of religion. Their altars and temples of worship were all marked with sigils of Aeris.”
“They worshiped the Creator?” asked Dee.
“No, that was the most surprising thing. They seemed to recognize the Creator for his role in shaping the universe, but their main object of worship was the Legend fallen from Aeris.”
“You mean Fatum?”
“That was what I first suspected, but based on their demeanor it was clear there was no malevolence in the group. I came to understand that it was not a particular fallen Legend that they worshipped, but rather the idea of the fallen Legend. It took me a while of listening to them speaking, but I finally figured out that their language was actually based on the language of Aeris, and when I spoke to them in that tongue they were able to understand. These people, these cliff dwellers on a strange planet floating somewhere in the Other Universe, spoke the language of Aeris and carried physical traits of Legends. I realized that they were actual descendants of Legends, ones who left Aeris and intermingled with humankind. They called themselves the Seraphi.”
“I thought that the only Legends who fell from Aeris were the ones who followed Fatum?”
“Not all,” said A
dam. “I fell, so to speak, but I kept my own path. So was it for others, who left for one reason or another, though their departure and the choice to take human mates displeased the Creator. He would have turned his back on them, letting them live their lives out of his presence.”
“That’s terrible,” Dee said.
“After everything that’s happened, would you really put it past him? Anyway, this civilization had been going on probably for thousands of years. The Seraphi were not true Legends and therefore not immortal, but I learned that even after diluting their bloodline from countless generations that they were gifted with longevity and were slow to age. One woman in particular I met appeared not much older than you, but she was actually closer to 260 years old.
“After I started speaking the language of Aeris, I explained what I was. They were in awe of it, and started bowing down and whatnot because I was, essentially, the very thing they worshiped come before them. It was a little uncomfortable, and given that I’d pretty much resigned my claim to divinity long before, I asked them not to treat me any differently than them. That was when I saw their tattoos, the wings on their back. It was part of their culture, a way of identifying themselves with their distant ancestors. True Legends, aside from the Creator, all had wings like a bird coming from their shoulder blades. The half-breed Seraphi lost that trait, so they developed a ritual where upon achieving adulthood they would mark themselves with wings on their backs. Since I was made from the Creator, I didn’t have wings either. When they learned this, they wanted me to have them tattooed as well.”
“So you did?”
“Not at first,” Adam went on. “I found it to be a little pointless, and like I said I had already really forgotten that I had any divine connection. I was intent on going on my way, but there was some trouble in the village. A few of those carnivorous lizards attacked and killed some of the Seraphi. That was something else I learned about them: while they maintained long lives they could not heal their wounds. I killed the creatures and secured the village, but some of them still died. That woman I mentioned before was one of them. After that, I allowed them to mark me.”
“So what changed?” Dee asked.
“Seeing that woman die made me realize just how fragile that culture was, and how desperate they were to keep themselves alive when even the Creator had turned his back on them. I wanted to make sure that I kept a part of the culture with me, something to help me remember what I really am.”
Adam stopped walking. As he had been talking, the two had been climbing a gradual slope up a sand dune and Adam was the first to reach the top and look out over it. When Dee joined him, she saw his reason for pause. Beyond the dune the land sloped gently downward for another quarter mile or so, but beyond that there was a cliff that extended as far as they could see in either direction. Judging by the appearance of the land beyond the cliff, it looked like the ridge dropped hundreds of feet to the lower sands. They had reached the Great Ridge, an obstacle that Adam and Dee would have no choice but to overcome.
“Will we have to get down that?” Dee asked, staring at the immense chasm ahead of them.
“It would be to our benefit,” Adam said. “We could remain on the higher terrain, but we would have to spend almost a month travelling through more desert. The land below, if memory serves, is a little more tolerable.”
“I’d rather not have to climb down that, but I’ll do anything to get out of the desert.”
“Don’t expect it to be like walking through a garden,” Adam quipped. “We’re still travelling through miles of empty wasteland.”
Dee’s already wilting attitude took another turn downward. Adam sighed, realizing he was allowing his growing negativity to drag Dee down as well and tried to reverse it. “But it will be better. And there are a few oases to stop at out there.” He was lying, of course. There wouldn’t be any real relief until they reached the eastern coast weeks later, but depressing Dee wouldn’t help their situation one bit.
“We should get going,” Dee said, faking a smile. “The faster we get to those oases the better.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about climbing down,” Adam told her. “I can use my powers to carry us down with a rock.”
The two made for the edge of the Great Ridge, and it wasn’t until they stood over the ridge that they had a real appreciation for the immense natural construct. There was a steep, nearly vertical drop of hundreds of feet to the desert floor below. Beyond them was the southern tip of the continent, a valley depressed well below the ridge that stretched out to the horizon, where the land blended with the hazy blue sky. It was an awesome sight that for a moment took Dee’s mind off of the trouble that she was still in, that she continued to dig deeper into.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Adam asked. “In a world as cruel and broken as this one, such beauty can still exist and almost make up for everything.”
Dee’s eyes scanned the panorama, coming to an abrupt stop at the sight of something unnatural jutting out from the cliff to their left. “Greg, what is that? Down there?”
Adam peered down the edge of the cliff and saw what she was talking about. There was some kind of massive structure coming out of the cliff and rising up nearly to the top. It looked to be hewn from the rock, or at least built with the same stones that came from the cliff. From the ground rising up along its sides and front were thick, massive walls that enclosed the structure in a protective semicircle. Within these walls, the rest of the structure resembled a castle, but with fewer flourishes. It had not been built as a means of impressing people; it was purely a defensive structure, and given the wear on the outer stone it was clear that the fortress was ancient and abandoned.
“It looks like some kind of stronghold,” Adam said. The structure was a mile from where they were, but such an opportunity was too much to ignore. They travelled along the edge of the cliff and stood over the fortress. Adam shot a flat rock part way out of the cliff side, using it like an elevator to descend with Dee to the upper levels of the fort. Dee looked around in awe, captivated by the ancient remains of the place she had only just now realized they had discovered.
“This is Rosa Wist,” she said, captivated by the historical bastion. Rosa Wist had served as a crucial defense for the forces allied against The Baggins during his war over a millennium earlier. It was here that an army comprised of the collective forces of Carul’s nations gathered in a last stand to prevent The Baggins’ soldiers from moving ahead towards Leapador, and in a stunning upset they were victorious. The war ended soon after when The Baggins was defeated by Cody Moon and the world began to rebuild. But as things got better, the need for cooperation faded. Petty wars broke out between the once cooperative nations, the grand fort was abandoned as its occupiers spread out to their own lands, and the lessons learned through the war were forgotten as The Baggins faded into myth, thanks to the Creator’s desire to erase the horrendous event from the history of the world.
“You think?” Adam asked.
“It must be,” said Dee. “What other fortresses are there along the Great Ridge?”
“You would know better than me.” Adam looked over the ridge of the level where they stood, seeing that the structure went down for quite a ways with many other floors and pathways that honeycombed throughout the fortress. The abandoned stronghold, despite its mild decay, was still a suitable defensive position and would at least make a decent place to hide. “I think we should rest here for a while.”
“You don’t want to keep going?” Dee asked.
“We’ve been going at a steady pace for a while. We can afford to stop and rest here for a night. Better to start off tomorrow rested and reenergized.”
“Well I won’t argue against that. Besides, how many chances am I going to get to see Rosa Wist? To be honest I’m surprised no one else ever comes here, what with all the history surrounding it.”
“You forget that the Creator turned that history into legend,” Adam pointed out. “This place has
become just an old fort in the desert.”
“Well it’s too bad,” Dee said, still taken by the wonder of standing in one of the most crucial places in the history of her world. “We should climb down some more and look around.”
“Weren’t you just griping about having to climb down the Great Ridge?”
“Well that’s different. That would have been a chore. This is exciting.”
Adam was glad Dee was able to enjoy herself after the drudgery of slugging through the desert for a week. He wished he could displace his overwhelming sense of hopelessness as much as she could. He had done well to hide it, but ever since the fall of Wensfell Keep, Adam was beginning to wonder if there was any chance at all that things would improve. Every opportunity to make things right again, for himself and everyone he had wronged, seemed to dry up and die before it could be realized. He thought of Magid, the home he had been fighting so hard to return to and reclaim, and in those thoughts came a bleak vision of the future where he knew with ever growing certainty that he would not ever return.
“Are you coming, Greg?”
Adam looked up and saw that Dee was already standing near the ledge facing out over the vast southern desert. She motioned for him to follow her as she skipped to a set of stairs going down to the next level. He tried his best to smile, and gathered the effort to keep going for just a little while longer, following Dee as she set out into the fortress that history had forgotten.
Chapter 28
Sanctuary
Exploring the ruins of Rosa Wist proved to only depress Adam further. He and Dee spent hours going through the abandoned rooms, seeing relics of a bygone age scattered about like unwanted toys in the room of a child who had grown up. Dee was captivated by it all, but she was not as close to the brink as Adam was. By the end of their exploration through the crumbling and often dangerous halls of the old fortress, Adam had reached a level of exhaustion that he hadn’t known since his return to Khanka. The two found a large room that stretched over much of the front side of the fort, empty except for a few scattered crates and a couple of broken wooden chairs, and it was there that they decided to stop for the night. The outer wall of the room was nothing more than a few columns of stone bricks that otherwise opened the room to the air and gave the pair a view of the sun setting over the desert that lay ahead of them. High above the ground, the heat of the desert and the cooling night air mixed to create an environment that felt more like late autumn than Adam and Dee had been used to as of late.
Fallout (Tales of the Other Universe Book 2) Page 30
