The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  * * *

  They had been practising the movements, pulling up those precious drumbeats that Eli still hadn’t figured out the source of. But from what he’d gleaned from the Dragon Opal when he and Roan went inside it together on Skye, dancing had to do with Cecelia. She’d even written to Roan about how dancing had helped her find her fire. That may have been the key to getting Roan in any shape to fight Zabor in such a short window. But Cecelia was long gone now, as were her secrets — likely fled to the same holding place where Demelza had gone.

  There was something primeval about it, this dancing, and it did give Eli some hope that not all was lost. That maybe the gods weren’t really dead, if the two of them could still command their power. Moving with Roan like this made him feel stronger, more hopeful. The days went on, and though they got closer and closer to articulating exactly what was between them, Eli still thought he knew better than her.

  He had been showing Roan parts of herself in small increments, unlocking all those things about her before she’d found out anything about the Realms of Ancient: they walked the halls of her high school. They opened doors leading to greenhouses and looked objectively at stone statues of five animals, but Eli didn’t go too far. They told each other their stories, because Eli wanted it to be fair. He wanted her to know him as he knew her. She did, too. It was a partnership of equals, growing back to who they were, together, and as they made their way through the wilderness, this shared knowing made them a stronger unit. Eli felt the wind move inside him in a way it never had. Roan made the fire something marvellous to behold.

  They were the new gods. For a while, Eli allowed himself to forget what, exactly, he needed to help Roan with, because he knew that giving her back everything might truly break her.

  But the more they held to one another, and the more secrets built up between them, the harder it was for Eli to keep up the lie. He decided it was time for Roan to know everything about Cecelia.

  Roan didn’t agree.

  “But she’s a part of who you are,” Eli insisted, voice rising. “We are everything that’s happened to us, the good and the terrible. This is how you get back to yourself. Knowing her will help you know who you are.”

  “I do know who I am!” Roan had snarled back, sharpening her dancing form like her garnet blade as they practised one night in the cavern. Eli should have known to quit then.

  He stepped out of their choreography and threw a zephyr in her face. “I am the only one who knows you, because like it or not, we are the same. Always have been. Pigheaded and running away from the dark. But neither of us can outrun it forever.”

  The air had pushed her out of the circle, and she’d barely waited for him to finish before rushing back at him. They knew each other too well by then and could predict each falter and feint, every arcing fist. A different dance. They met each blow, turned each strike off, but neither gave ground.

  “Roan, enough.” Eli caught both of her hands and tried to speak gently despite her thrashing. “We have to be finished hurting one another. Whatever power we’re sharing — we have to put it to its intended use. Protecting lives beyond just ours.”

  But some things were impossible to change, and she got free of him, striking him hard across the face with a hot, open palm. All at once he threw more than just Cecelia at her. He fired everything he knew about her in a hundred-mile-per-hour arrow — and made sure it struck home and stayed there.

  Roan collapsed like a rag doll.

  At first, he thought it was just another of her wild-thing tricks. “Roan?” A cautious step, then he threw himself down on her, lifting her up, shaking her. “Roan, come on.” Her mismatched eyes stared into nothing. He sent his mind into hers, and he cried out like he’d hit an electric fence.

  Eli held Roan close, all the corded strength he’d come to admire completely fled from her. She still breathed shallowly, but she felt so fragile just then. And she was. So was he.

  She didn’t wake for days, and he was sure he’d killed her mind.

  He remained by her side. He didn’t sleep. Self-flagellation became his only companion. The shades, even Baskar, kept silent vigil. They blamed him — they had every right to. Eli promised himself that if Roan did awaken, he’d leave immediately. He’d done enough damage.

  One morning, he’d fallen asleep only for a second, but when he jerked fitfully awake she was sitting up beside him, staring. She could burn him to ashes, and he would gladly allow it.

  Instead, she pressed his chest in the place the Moonstone had been. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for all of it.”

  He took her in his arms. She was warm as hers slid up his back. They did not let go of each other for a very long time.

  “I’ll leave,” Eli said into her hair. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

  She grasped him the tighter. “Leaving will hurt me,” she whispered. “Don’t let go of me.”

  He didn’t. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t.

  Eli was certain they could move forward now. But then Roan began asking him about the Calamity Stones. She was tentative at first, wondering aloud where they could be hidden in the new world they were forging.

  “What does it matter?” Eli asked, but the idea had already taken hold of her, and Roan had always been like a dog with a bone.

  “We might need them again to finish what we started,” she said. “After all, some things never change.”

  Eli was reluctant to argue with her. They had been at a stalemate in this Deadland, and the gods hadn’t shown themselves. No one was coming to help them and never was. But weren’t the gods part of Ancient? It did have a terrible logic.

  Of course they would go looking, and they agreed to do this thing together. There was no other way to do it.

  * * *

  “They went out in search of the Moonstone, first.” Baskar’s voice had become strange with this recollection, in a way it hadn’t with the others. “When they returned, Eli was different and his rage terrible. We found Roan bloody and weeping, and it only renewed her resolve to build Cinder Town and fight Eli. He made his own kingdom, and we all became a part of their never-ending dance. Whatever happened between them is a part of the story I did not want to know, and even now it frightens me. I could not fathom such pain.”

  The Heartwood was only a half day’s walk away, on the other side of this night. It was still dark, and Saskia was too wide awake, but she kept still and let Baskar hold her tight. The closer they got to the Heartwood, the harder it was to ignore the Onyx, crying out to be reunited with its sister stones. If Calamity had to be restored, and Roan and Eli couldn’t do it, how could Saskia manage it alone?

  “There is one worry I wish to share with you,” Baskar said very quietly. Saskia turned over, looked up at them in the dark.

  “What is it?”

  They still wouldn’t look at her. “If we find the end to this story, will you stop needing me to tell you any others?”

  Saskia pulled Baskar’s mask towards her, looking them square in their coin-winking eyes. “I’m not going to leave you behind. No matter what happens or how this story ends.”

  Baskar held her hands to their face, and sighed, mimicking the sound of what Roan might have once called perfect feeling. “Are our stories connected now?”

  Saskia closed her eyes and put her ear to the place where Baskar’s heart might be. It was quiet. The Onyx hummed, and Saskia wondered if it did this because there was death rattling around inside Baskar’s shell, and the stone carried death inside it, too.

  “Roan may be touched by Death,” Baskar spoke, as if they could read Saskia’s thoughts, “but you are honoured by it.” Somehow, Baskar sounded sleepy. “I am honoured by your story, Saskia, and my part in it.”

  She felt herself drifting off, clasping tight to her friend who, poppet or not, alive or not, had made her feel known in a way she’d always
wanted to be. And in that moment, it was enough.

  * * *

  This close to the doomed tree on which she planted all her own hopes, Saskia dreamed within a dream.

  “Saskia.”

  It was no longer a message bleeping red on a screen, or in her head. It wasn’t a signal, either. It was a simple plea. And she knew, without a doubt, it was Barton.

  She followed the roots of the tree, stabbing deep down into an oblivion. An emptiness, complete in its lack.

  Below the tree, in the darkness, something was pushing up, using the tree as the weapon. The tree pushed back, blocking the way. At the heart of the tree was a green light, held close to what had been a man’s body. He and the tree, together, had fought back against what tried to push them away, away from a doorway that had been opened in the world above.

  The dark shone. And it moved.

  “Please, Saskia,” the tree, the man, said as he felt her awareness. “Please turn back. The message wasn’t me —”

  The thing in the dark pressed harder. The man tangled in the roots cried out and fought back. He would always fight, if it meant preventing this.

  “It’s too late,” Saskia said, “the story is already being told.”

  Then she was moving up the tree at an alarming speed, and the ground was splitting, sending the tree up and piercing the land and the sky, like a spear, and Saskia was still climbing higher, unable to stop herself until she realized the spear was pointing towards a black inevitability in the sky over her home, tracking closer to the sun, slipping over it like a hood.

  The ring around the moon was red. It sang into the ground and opened the way for the tree, which the man Saskia had known and loved and wanted only to save could no longer hold back. The tree would break into her world, split it apart, and bring the darkness along.

  The Brilliant Dark was not a place, but a plan. A story, lying below, waiting for its chance to be told.

  * * *

  Saskia woke feeling like she was being crushed, but it was just Baskar’s arms tight around her, wood arms crackling. The nightmare was slipping away, and Saskia wanted to banish it, but it left a terrible taste in her mouth.

  For a second she thought, Damn Eli, and Roan, and all of them. I’m going to that tree, and I’m going to pull Barton out of it. I don’t need them, I don’t need their stories.

  Then she looked around the thicket where they’d taken refuge overnight, the trees filled with the narrow bark bodies and sharp-horned helms of the Eyes of the Owl King. His soldiers, surrounded them, pointing their primitive, sharp weapons.

  They weren’t getting anywhere near the Heartwood today.

  “It’s okay,” Saskia said, low and quiet, to Baskar. “Just stick to the plan. This is how we move forward.”

  Baskar didn’t reply, but their hands loosened.

  The Owl soldiers were on them like darts, and Saskia and Baskar were separated in a flurry of wings, carried through the wild Deadland canopy, and yanked skyward and screeching to the Roost.

  * * *

  Six months this conflict had gone on. Mi-ja didn’t know how much sleep a person could miss before their heart eventually stopped, but she was certain, by now, she’d blown past the point of no return.

  Two sides, the same message: We will not stand down. We will protect this world.

  The rest of the world swivelled its head from side to side, unsure which to pin their hopes on.

  The violence couldn’t be avoided. Hard decisions were made that Mi-ja hadn’t ever been prepared to make, and they were wearing her down with every executive order, every emergency council, every call for armistice that had to be put aside. Chancellor Grant had started all this and he wasn’t even here to deal with the consequences. Could he have? If he did return, she’d shoot him herself.

  Mi-ja’s hatred for him was gradual, then at once all-consuming. She tore through his ridiculous memoirs, his treatises on his vision for the world, burned any copy she came across, and knew that if she didn’t pull it together, the Task Guard would just replace her with someone as bad as Grant had been — she just had to play the long game, hold it together a little longer.

  She looked to the leaders of the current Denizen incursion, to try to understand how it had begun and got so out of hand here — in Winnipeg, of all places. Of course it wasn’t just happening in Winnipeg: it was everywhere else, too. But in this prairie river city threatening to flood, Mi-ja had to make a decision that no one in the world was willing to make.

  There had been nothing more from “the other side.” No more signals or messages. The Apex was silent. Just the dark moon in the sky like a promise, that entity that made no sense and could be seen by everyone, around the globe, at any given time. Mi-ja came to believe the moon was just punishment for what Denizens and regular folk did to one another, what humanity itself had done to the world since they’d crawled out of the primordial fire.

  She read the reports every day. The Darkling Moon was on a path to the sun, to an eclipse. There was no telling what would happen and given the state of the world — overrun with element-wielding miscreants and monsters that didn’t discriminate — it could be anything. It could be nothing. It could be the end of everything, and then, at least, there’d be blissful quiet.

  The files on Nattiq Fontaine and Phaedrapramit Das were extensive, but what of it? These women fought for more than ideals. They fought for what had been lost, and the possibility of what could be reclaimed in the aftermath. They fought towards a hope that Mi-ja dreamed of. Too many times, she wished she could just talk to them both, wished she could just give what was left of this ragged world to them, close her eyes, and embrace the dark.

  Then she would sign another executive order, address new troops, feel herself readjusting to her skin, the skin of a leader that the powerless still needed.

  She would keep fighting, for now. So would the Denizens. And she would beat any attacker back until victory was assured. Project Crossover had been shelved and a new one had taken its place — Project Annihilate. If they had to, they would blast that dark moon out of the sky with whatever firepower they had to bear. The world was already getting ready for it.

  And if it didn’t work . . . well. Then maybe Grant had been right about something — there would be a new dawn. Just no one left to see it.

  Strains of Adamant

  They put Saskia in a cage, high above Roan’s realm and the other broken ones below. She didn’t know where the Owls had taken Baskar, but she’d caught a glimpse of the archivist and sent out a kind of prayer to them — I’ll be all right. Stop struggling or you’ll break in half. She wondered if the Onyx could transmit messages to the dead; after all, it could suck them into it.

  The Owl soldiers were afraid of it, and even though she would never use it on them, she let them think she would.

  “We have been watching you,” one soldier said, the voice a grating screech. “We are the Owl King’s eyes, and he will take that stone that kills the dead away from you.”

  Saskia stood at the back of her cell, wiping any expression from her face. “Tell him I’m here to give it to him. Because I want to help him.”

  The Owl shades seemed to cringe. “Even looking upon that stone, it makes me want —” One shook its masked head. Another grasped their arm and pulled. “Come away. She is a pretender. We will tell the Owl King as we are bidden, and then we will throw her over the side.”

  They left her alone, and Saskia waited. She was used to jail cells by now, and though they’d taken her pack from her, she’d come prepared and slid a hand inside her beat-up denim jacket for the crowbar.

  As a Cinder Kid, she’d scurried around like a rodent, able to move with the shadows and strange sounds of Seela’s world. She remembered how that felt now, breaking out of her cell just as the soldiers returned to set a watch, but by then she was already going up through this compound, pressing int
o walls. It was only a matter of time before Eli, with his powerful mind and his own Calamity Stone, found her. She wanted to get to him first, though, on her own terms.

  She had to use the Onyx.

  She was scared, crouching there behind upended, cracked marble, hearing skittering footsteps coming for her. But she’d been scared a long time. Maybe fear could be a power. She flipped the switch on the Fractal, and whatever was inside her answered the stone on her head. The dark came sluicing out of the stone, and she wrapped herself in that shadow. She saw it separate into tiny little flickers, little triangular wings floating up the corridor, past guards who dashed past her without seeing.

  The moths flew ahead, waiting for her at the end of one hall, up stairs, until she was back out in the open air, the wind too loud and everywhere at once.

  The moths kept waiting, and she kept following them up and in.

  “I always liked Phyr,” Phae had said, during one of her many lessons. “Though she seemed like the god that all the others despised because she represented authority and all-knowingness.”

  The conversation from the past kept pace with Saskia’s hurried steps. She didn’t want to use the Onyx for too much longer. Whatever part of its power that had been touched by Death she sent out to find Baskar, to tell them she was safe. She kept climbing, following Phae’s voice, remembering how it felt to be outside of the story instead of inside it.

  “I thought I read somewhere that Phyr was the reason all the realms were separate,” Saskia had said. “I guess we won’t ever know, though. Can’t ask her.”

  “That’s right,” Phae had agreed. “Phyr’s realm, the Roost, was above the others. Some said the top of the universe, or the underside of the moon, which is the Owls’ chief symbol.”