by Sam Sykes
“We did. But that was different.”
“How was it different?”
Lenk couldn’t answer that.
Back then, things had been simpler. It hadn’t just been him doing the killing. They fought together, bled together, survived together. That was worth fighting for, worth killing for.
But back then, there had been the promise that whether he won or lost or ran or got knocked flat on his ass, she would be there. With a curse, with an insult, with a bandage sometimes or maybe just with a hand to pull him back up.
But now … things were different.
She hadn’t slept in the tent with him, sleeping outside instead. She looked at him in cursory glances now, the same eyes she showed everyone. Even now, she put a deliberate space between them, a space reserved for someone that wasn’t him.
Now, win or lose, she wouldn’t be there when he got back up.
Those weren’t the words she needed right now, though. She needed something shorter.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his face. “Yeah, all right. We’ll figure something out.” He found his boots, shirt, and belt. He tugged them on, plucked up his sword, and got to his feet. “Something with shooting, I guess.”
“Food would be nice, first.” Kataria shoved her arrows into her quiver and grabbed her bow leaning against the tent. “We ran out of meat this morning.”
“There’s still some fruit left, I think,” Lenk said.
“Excellent. I’ll save it for later. Like when I decide to give up on life.” She sneered. “Come on. I saw some dead trees farther back with bird nests in them. Eggs are nature’s meat.”
“That doesn’t make any—”
“Who’s the fucking outdoorswoman here?”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his head. The wind was slow and hot in his face, plastering hair to his brow with sweat. The days of riding and failing made him feel positively ancient.
Yet to look at her, he would have thought it was just another day.
She was sweaty, still, and grimy, with patches of dirt painting her face, her arms, her belly. Her leathers were coated in dust and her hair hung in damp strands. But through the mask of grime, her eyes were still a bright, vivid green. And her grin, sharp as the knife at her hip, made a white scar through the dirt.
Filthy. Feral. Smiling obnoxiously. Just as she had been when he had first met her. Just as she always was.
Still so gods-damned perfect.
That thought brought him some comfort, at least. Comfort that couldn’t be found in elusive sleep, or stale food, or even in the chill breeze that he felt on his back as—
He paused.
Ah.
“You go ahead,” he said. “I’m going to check that the horse still has water.” He pointed over her, drawing her gaze farther down the dunes. “You said they were back there, right? I’ll catch up.”
“The horse is fine,” Kataria grunted. “Just come on. You can’t plan anything if you’re hungry.”
“I said I’d catch up, didn’t I?” he said. “If I start to starve, I’ll have some fruit.” He waved a hand down the dunes. “You’re the fucking outdoorswoman. Go take care of it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She hiked her bow up over her shoulder and stalked off down the dunes. “You better come up with something amazing.”
“I already did.”
He waited until she was out of earshot to say that—and to be out of her earshot, she had to be well out of sight. And when she was, he calmly drew his sword from its scabbard, closed his eyes, and whispered into the chill breeze:
“All right. I’m ready.”
No answer but the wind.
Growing colder. Stronger. Closer.
The sound of the beating of great wings, like a bloodless heart, filled his ears. When they were too loud to be ignored, he finally opened his eyes. He looked down at the sand.
And saw the great shadow looming over him.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said as he turned and beheld the beautiful ruin before him.
And through empty eyes, Oerboros stared back.
In the ugly light of day, the wreck of the Aeon’s body seemed even more cruel. His wounds still glistened as though fresh, great holes had been carved in his starved frame. His withered legs hung beneath him as he hovered in the air before Lenk. His branchlike arms looked incapable of wielding the great sword they carried, its metal so twisted and ancient it looked like stone.
One would have thought the Aeon not alive at all, if not for the majesty of his wings.
Brilliant white feathers and emerald scales glittered in the sun, making his wings a sky all their own as they slowly beat behind him, keeping him aloft. His face, an emotionless mask of bronze, looked over Lenk’s head toward the direction of Kataria’s departure.
“She seems nice,” he noted in his bell-rung voice. “Perhaps a tad crude.”
“She is,” Lenk said, “and she is. But you’re here for me, aren’t you?”
The Aeon said nothing. Lenk studied his reflection in the bronze of Oerboros’s face.
“I was wondering when Khoth-Kapira would send you after me.”
“The master has no knowledge of my presence here. In fact, he requested I stay away from you. Or perhaps you did not wonder why I did not pursue you when you and the female escaped.”
“Then why are you here?”
The beating of his wings stopped. Oerboros alighted upon the ground. Even earthbound, he towered over Lenk. His ruined skin crinkled as he looked over the desert, face betraying nothing.
“The air is foul down here,” he said. “I cannot breathe without the taste of dirt and salt. I have long wondered why he enjoys it as he does. After much contemplation, I believe I have an answer.”
He looked down at Lenk. “Up there, we had no concept of love. Whatever you may believe of kind and adoring heavens, they are myth. We knew only what we must know, decided only by what we needed. But here, we were corrupted by mortality. We were so enamored of the diseases that afflicted you, we never once stopped to think of the ones you might spread.
“Everything is so fleeting here, so short and brittle. It makes one desperate to hold on to what little things they can seize. In time, it even drove him to do what he did. He loved mortals, loved the adoration they gave him that heaven would not. It infected him, as it infected me. He could not bear to part with them, just as I could not bear to part with him.”
“When I saw you last,” Lenk said, “you cursed his name. You called him a manipulator, arrogant and cruel.” He cringed at the thought. “I saw Kyrael, your friend. She bled forever into the water, cut open by his hand.”
For all of the terrifying emptiness in Oerboros’s voice, Lenk had never felt truly unnerved until he heard the Aeon laugh. It was a stilted, halting thing, as though Oerboros were trying to imitate something he had heard long ago.
“She does. He is. And I meant everything I said.” The Aeon’s laughter died. “It is humorous to me. I recognize all these things about him—his vileness, his wickedness, his terrible needs—and I know that he shall never not be those things. And yet I love him.”
“Why?”
“In all sincerity, mortal, I was hoping you might be able to tell me. I am aware of what Khoth-Kapira said to sway you to his cause. Why did you send the female away?”
Lenk felt a pain in his chest, a question he had been avoiding for a long time suddenly clawing its way up into his throat. He would have rather thrown himself on the Aeon’s sword right then and there than answer it. But even then, he knew he would have to, eventually.
“Because she’s everything I should have fought for to begin with,” he said. “She was all I needed and I lost her.” He shut his eyes. “But she hasn’t lost me. All I know is how to fight. And all I’ve got left to fight for is keeping her safe, even if I’ll never have her again.” He let out his breath and his pain with it. He looked up at the Aeon. “And you’re here to kill me.”
Oerboros inclined his head. �
��I am.”
“For him.”
“For him,” the Aeon said. “I do remember all his flaws. But I remember, too, the joy he felt at his creations, the brilliance of his mind, and his laughter when he made something new. I wish to see that again. And here, at the dawn of his greatest triumph, I will.”
“What?” Lenk narrowed his eyes. “What triumph is that?”
“You could see, if you wanted. You could leave … but you will not.”
“And you wouldn’t let me live, if I did.”
“I would not.” He raised his massive sword, the metal groaning as he did. “I confess frustration. I am stricken with your mortal malady and yet I do not understand why I do these things.”
“No one does,” Lenk said. He hefted his sword. “You just try to get through it as long as you can.” He paused. “Whatever happens here … she’s got nothing to do with it.”
“She is incapable of harming him. No harm shall come to her if she does not interfere.”
“She won’t.” He nodded. “Thanks. For that.”
“He will miss you, mortal.”
Lenk didn’t see the swing.
Just a flash of ancient metal, the sand beneath him, his hair whipping about his face as a great burst of wind followed it.
Oerboros was a little too tall. He was a little too short. All his scars still remembered the hard lessons and had taken him to the ground.
That was all that had saved him from decapitation.
Those same scars told him what to do. They sent him up to his feet, sent his hand clenching around his sword hilt, sent his legs burning as he rushed forward.
He darted to the side as Oerboros’s sword came down, bit into the earth. Sand sprayed up in a wave, splashed against his cheek, and clung to the sweat. He felt the shock of the blow in his feet. Frail as he might have looked, the Aeon’s sword was still almost as long as Lenk was tall. One cut would be all it took—wouldn’t even have to be a good one.
But old pains taught him old tricks.
Get inside. It was the scars talking, not him. Get close. He can’t use that thing close up.
He didn’t know enough about Aeons to know if they could read thoughts. But it seemed Oerboros at least knew enough about fighting to know what Lenk was doing. As the young man rushed forward, he backpedaled, long legs carrying him great strides backward as he tried to maneuver his massive weapon to strike. But Lenk was a short man and short men knew two things: how to fight tall foes and how to fight when it seemed like a bad idea.
He pressed on, kept low, darting beneath the Aeon’s swinging sword. Oerboros reached out, trying to seize him. He lashed out with his blade, nicking the Aeon’s arm. Blood spattered the sand.
He can bleed, Lenk thought. Just like a demon.
Made sense. Demons were Aeons once. And he had killed plenty of demons before.
Few of them had swords that big, though.
Oerboros tried backpedaling again, leaping away from Lenk, swinging his sword as he did. Lenk ducked low, hacked up, caught the Aeon at the wrist. The sword wavered and fell, and with it, Oerboros’s guard.
Lenk rushed forward, beneath a fist that came crashing down behind him. He leapt low, darting between a pair of long, withered legs. He came up the other side and his blade came with it. He carved a long angry red line up the Aeon’s back, sending Oerboros’s ruined body twisting with agony.
That’s not agony.
Lenk saw the swing this time, but not quick enough. Oerboros’s entire body seemed to snap as the massive sword came around in a great backswing. Lenk’s sword shot up to catch the blade. The metal groaned as the momentum of the blow carried Lenk off his feet and sent him skidding across the sand.
Shock waves traveled down his arms into his chest, tearing the breath right out of him. He could barely feel his arms as he picked himself up. But the scars wouldn’t let him stay down.
Oerboros’s great wings were flapping, emerald scales stained with his blood. He was getting ready to fly, take the fight to the air. He wouldn’t give Lenk another chance.
And Lenk wasn’t about to give him this one.
He tore forward, kicking up sand behind him. He ran straight into the blade as it came down, twisting away only a breath before it hit the earth. He leapt onto the blade, launched off it, and reached out, wrapping an arm around the Aeon’s neck. Oerboros let out a brass note of alarm, reaching for him as he wormed his way around, out of the Aeon’s grasp. He hung there, one arm wrapped around Oerboros’s throat, his heels digging into the fresh wound in the Aeon’s back. He saw the meaty joint of Oerboros’s wing, the sinewy muscle beneath the feathers twitching as it carried them both off the ground.
Lenk raised his sword.
Steel wailed. Blood sang. Muscle glistened as the wing twitched and fell limp, hanging to the Aeon’s shoulder by strings of meat.
Oerboros let out a noise, a freakish rusted trumpet note that made no sense to Lenk. It was as though the Aeon had no idea what it was, this pain he felt, and no idea what to do with it.
But Lenk did.
One more stroke of his sword finished the job, sent them both crashing to the ground. They landed in a spray of sand, Lenk falling clear from the impact to tumble across the earth. He rose to his feet, sword at the ready, but didn’t dare approach what was on the ground.
Oerboros spasmed on the earth, making that rusted noise, limbs flailing wildly. Beside him, his severed wing flopped about like a living thing as they spattered each other with red. After a time, and after much screeching, they both fell still. Oerboros’s sides moved with soft, labored breathing. The wing moved not at all.
Lenk glanced at the wing and sniffed.
“I’m guessing that doesn’t grow back.”
He began to approach Oerboros, slowly, cautiously, sword at the ready.
“He’s using you,” Lenk said. “He used me, too.” He gestured to the severed wing. “There’s no reason for you to lose more today. Give this up. He doesn’t deserve what you’re doing for—”
“I am aware of that.” Oerboros let out a crinkling gasp. “I have known him for centuries, I know what he does.” He rolled onto his side, groping at the stump where his wing had been. “I simply do not know how. How, time and again, he does this to me.”
“He knows what people want,” Lenk said, taking a step closer. “He offers them what they need. What they think they need. He pretends it’s real.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe it is. But he never tells you what he’s going to do to make it happen. He never trusts you to understand the whole thing. To him, you and me, we’re just … children? Amusements? I don’t fucking know.”
“No,” Oerboros said. “We are animals to him. Rare and beautiful creatures he wishes to protect, but cannot conceive of a way to do it without caging us.” He drew in a ragged breath and lay still. “Every time, the bars grow thicker, but harder to see. This time, though … the city would never even know what happened to them.”
“The city?” Lenk took a hastier step closer. “Which city? Cier’Djaal?”
“The names are unimportant to me. But he sees how they teem with life, how they cry out for a savior. He craves to be that for them. He already is.”
“What do you mean?” Two more steps closer. “Oerboros, tell me. Don’t let him get away with it. What’s he planning?”
“You suggest he has not already done it.” Oerboros’s sigh was ancient. “It would not do for a great demon to arrive, heralded by thunder and the wailing of men, and be loved, would it? They had to be waiting for him. They had to know his name.”
“No one in Cier’Djaal knows of Khoth-Kapira.”
“That is but one of his names. To many others, he was known as the God-King. To a few, he was Mocca. And to them … well, you have been there. You have already heard his name, have you not?”
Lenk’s eyes went wide. The realization fell upon him, nearly bore him to the earth.
“Ancaa.” He whispered the name. “He m
ade his own fucking religion.”
“He has done so before. He merely did so deliberately this time. They have waited for him, the suffering and the weak, without even knowing him. And when he arrives, he shall be welcomed with open arms, no matter what calamity he brings.”
Lenk rushed forward. “How will he do it? What’s his plan?”
“Already, his prophet works. She gathers the faithful and waits for his arrival. Even she knows not what he’ll bring.”
“She …” Lenk shook his head. “Teneir. Is it Teneir? The fasha?”
Oerboros said nothing. Lenk knelt beside him.
“Oerboros, tell me,” Lenk said. “Tell me how to stop her. Tell me how to stop him.”
“Would that I knew.”
Oerboros’s hand shot out and seized Lenk by the throat. He tore Lenk from his feet, the sword falling from his grasp as he rose up, holding the young man aloft.
“There is still so much I do not understand.”
He raised his hand, brought it down, and Lenk with it. He slammed the young man onto the earth and held him there. Lenk let out a scream, a curse, a plea—he had neither the sense to tell which nor the breath to let it out. He squirmed, kicking his legs and clawing at Oerboros’s hand as the Aeon raised his massive blade.
“Deception, too, is something we did not know. I am sorry to have used it in such a way. I am sorry that I do not know how to stop.” His voice was empty, water spilling from a bronze cup. “I am sorry that, even after all this, he will one day hurt me again. But I will be glad that he is alive to do so.”
Lenk croaked out a word. He wasn’t sure what it was. He couldn’t hear his own voice. He could only hear the blood clotting in his ears, the skin tightening around his throat, the groan of the sword’s ancient metal.
He never even heard the arrow until it lodged itself in Oerboros’s hand.
The Aeon looked at it, the head jutting out between his fingers, as though uncertain what it was. He turned his hollow eyes up, toward the distance.
And, in a breath, another arrow lodged itself in his right eye.
Lenk craned his neck. There she was. Bow drawn. Eyes hard. Staring down the arrow. Lips peeled back in a snarl.
