The two giants of exact same proportions and apparently equal strength wrestled high up over the deserted city, locking hands together in attempts to push the other down. Every step back or forward caused greater destruction as their giant feet stomped down everything the people of Clairvert had built over decades.
The blasts of energy blinded him; the thunderous crashes deafened him.
When he looked back, he saw Phoenix Atlas’ eyes light up weakly, and then die down. His wife was still inside—dying but not dead.
Garros ran down Ares’ limp body, down its leg, past its knee, and up its huge foot—the closest he could be to Phoenix’s all-but-severed head. It was alive. He began to scream again.
Lazarus outdid him with its own roar—that shrill scream that was almost animalistic in nature. He’d never forget it, even if he hadn’t expected to live for much longer.
As though it had only been playing with Milos Ravana, Lazarus shoved the Armor of God aside. It fell on its back, taking down the tallest building in Clairvert.
The monstrous Creux lunged towards Garros then—an angry child against an ant.
It didn’t intend to just crush him with brute strength, but to burn him. The monster raised its hand towards Garros. The tips of its fingers and its palm glowed the same menacing orange of its eyes. Garros closed his eyes.
Then came another deafening roar—lower, but no less menacing.
The purple giant turned around. Milos Ravana was standing on the square where he had married—
She’s here; she’s not dead yet.
—where he had married Erin.
Milos’ hand hovered over the pillar.
The structure began to glow. Soon it was entirely covered in blue light—not unlike the light of the Asili. Garros could hear the energy consuming the heat in the air, making the city a cold graveyard, causing a windy maelstrom. Light poured from the pillar’s base in the form of white-hot lightning that burnt patterns into the dais.
Then came the explosion. He covered his eyes with his hands.
When he could focus again, Milos Ravana’s stance had changed. He was holding the pillar on his hand, but it was only the part of something much larger—it was the hilt of a sword.
Past the carved blue pillar was a long beam of focused energy.
Milos Ravana held it before him and pointed it towards Lazarus like an extension of its arm. The tip of the sword coughed sparks, as though the earthly air could not handle its power, and was breaking. Lazarus recognized what he saw as a threat, because its scream was not one to establish power or dominance; it almost looked afraid.
And now, five days later, Lazarus lay motionless by the edge of the city, pinned, like a marionette hanging from a hook. The sword had gone through its heart, and into the crystal wall behind him.
That’s how Milos Ravana ended their encounter; Lazarus had tried to fight, but had lost. Its eyes were no longer fire—they were dead.
Garros climbed down the endless ladders and staircases built to reach watchman’s post. The exercise would not help him recover from the pain in his shoulders, but this climb was a necessary evil. The city had no protection except Milos Ravana and its new weapon.
Satisfied, he smiled; they had finally found the second piece of the Armor of God. Only the third remained, and then Akiva would be ready to fight Lys, whose true power he couldn’t even begin to imagine. If it had taken the most powerful Creux to bring down its proxy—Lazarus—what would it take to destroy the real thing?
At least, despite all the death and loss, it felt like there had been progress to his quest.
And, well, the loss hadn’t been his. Not yet, at least.
Garros walked past the city square and up the stairwell leading to the chapel, and the Asili. He was greeted by a man in armor, one of Farren’s men, who had finally recognized him, his team, and his Creux, as allies.
“There is nothing out there,” said the man. “You should be here.”
“I can’t be here, not all the time,” replied Garros, his voice still hoarse from the day of the battle.
“Are you here for her?” he asked.
“Brother, I’m only here for her,” Garros replied, and walked past the man, who escorted him the rest of the way to the room that used to be Heath’s office. The nurse saw him and smiled, letting him pass.
She was still sleeping, still covered to the chest in bandages and bedsheets. It smelled of blood and oil and herbal medicine. All the treatment almost felt unnecessary—she was a warrior: unstoppable, unkillable.
Erin felt his presence when he knelt down by her head, and opened her eyes weakly. She smiled. “I’m glad you’re here,” said his wife, though her voice was barely a whisper.
“Took the words right from my mouth, you have no idea,” he said, and kissed her as though he could give them back. “Stick together—we’ll be all right. Right?”
ф
The world had died.
Why were they trying to bring back something that was already dead? It was futile.
Even through every pessimistic reverie in which he imagined herself finally making her way out of Roue, outside of Zenith, she had imagined a world that was at least a little bit less desolate. There was nothing—not even the Laani.
And then, when this disillusionment had already drained any fresh sparks of hope from her, they found something: a clean patch of land. They took this miracle as an opportunity to rest, and then moved on. They found others during their trek. Several others.
Neither herself nor Felix understood their nature at first, and it filled her with anxiety. Why were these almost perfectly circular spots in the desert so clean and beautiful when everything around them was dry and dead?
Had she the time, she would’ve taken time to explore them. There was only one thing that could drive the Laani away, and it was fueling Rose Xibalba; could there be deposits of energy at the center of these havens?
“Did you know about these?” Vivian asked.
“I didn’t. I knew there were places where the destruction wasn’t so severe, but—no, nothing like this,” Felix spoke back into the aural link the director had set up for them.
She would lie if she said that stepping into the capsule hadn’t been terrifying. After seeing what happened to Jed—the cruel death Tessa had prepared for him even before she crushed him alive in Isis Nineteen’s hand—it took her minutes to find the peace to reconnect with Rose, whose spirit felt warm and content to see Vivian again.
Her soul had settled into Rose almost like a water, like air, filling every inch of the vessel. Her voice was a motherly whisper, and suddenly there was light back inside her.
Rose kept walking behind Iron Seraphim. The Creux had gotten its name due to its deliberately angelic design. It was tall and slender, with a collar that remitted to the image of a thin golden halo behind its head, and two twin segments in its armor that were, according to him, mostly useless, simulated four wings falling behind its shoulders.
According to her pilot’s guide, Iron Seraphim was one of the quickest and most nimble Creux on the roster—second to the defunct Isis Nineteen, and comparable to the also-defunct Nebula 09.
A pilot’s life was a horrible thing to waste in these end times.
“Stop,” said Felix suddenly and raised Seraphim’s right arm.
Rose stopped and looked around for the unseen threat, hoping she wouldn’t have to fight anyone; she had only shared a battle with Iron Seraphim once, and they hadn’t displayed much chemistry. “What is it?”
“Look at that,” he said and pointed ahead.
She followed Seraphim’s finger towards a small hill on the wasteland. Rose’s eyes weren’t as gifted as Jade Arjuna’s, but she definitely could see a dark lump on the cracked floor. It was moving, or rather, trembling.
“What is that?” asked Felix.
“I can’t tell,” she replied, and followed Seraphim when it started towards the unidentified object.
As they came
closer, the thing slowly took shape. “It’s a Fleck.”
“But why is it so small?” she asked.
—He doesn’t give Vivian time to do so before a long spear—
The thing was several times smaller than any she had ever seen before—small and helpless enough to be crushed under their feet if they wished. Unlike most Flecks, all of which could be identified as humanoid or animalistic in their physiology, she could barely give this one any sort of shape. It was almost like—
“It’s a—it’s a baby.”
“That’s impossible,” argued Vivian. “Laani don’t reproduce like animals; they can only infect.”
“Yes. I know,” Felix agreed.
Looking down at the unfinished thing, its huge bulging eyes that couldn’t even fully open, its small arms and legs curled around an overgrown stomach, she finally understood what it was.
“It used to be a baby. Now it’s a Fleck,” said Felix.
“A baby what?” Vivian asked, terrified of the answer.
Thinking his answer through, Felix took his time to reply. “Not a human baby, that’s for sure. Or . . . well, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell, it’s so deformed. I’m sorry about this, little guy. Look away if you have to, Poole.”
—She follows Seraphim’s finger towards a small hill—
He didn’t give Vivian time to do so before a long spear of purple light stretched from his hands and he brought down a sharp end on the creature’s grotesque body. Thanks to Rose’s fully activated field hearing, she heard the monstrous baby squeal in pain. Black blood oozed from the point where Felix had pierced it, until it oozed no more, and the poor thing was dead.
“How did it get here?” Vivian said, finally looking away from the creature. “I don’t understand; there’s nothing here. Was it abandoned?”
“By whom?” asked Felix. “Rushes aren’t exactly families; they move together for strategic reasons, not affection. My guess is a newborn animal got infected and this is what happened to it. I had never heard of something similar, though, so I’m not sure. I had never been this far away from Zenith. But look, see over there?”
He pointed towards a long mountain range they couldn’t possibly walk around, much less climb.
—a long spear of purple light stretches from his hands and he brings down a sharp end on the creature’s—
“We’re gonna have to climb up there,” he said. “I think behind those mountains we’ll finally be able to see the peak Director Blanchard told us about.”
—Rushes aren’t exactly families; they move together for strategic reasons, not affection—
“What’s going on?” she asked, and looked around.
“What?”
“Felix, something’s strange. Something’s happening to me,” she said.
—Rose keeps walking behind Iron Seraphim. The Creux got its name due to its angelic—
“I think there’s something wrong with my connection to Rose,” said Vivian and began to feel her own heart beat faster. The fear was making her lose her synchronization with the Creux. “I feel like—it feels like things are repeating themselves.”
“Oh. Damn. You feel that too, then?”
She looked back at Seraphim.
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he said.
—something wrong with my connection—
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he said. “But I feel it too. Like my brain isn’t perceiving time right, like something’s twisted.”
“Yes,” she said. “So it’s not me? Not Rose? What is causing it?”
“I don’t know. It’s not our Creux. I don’t think it’s Hormesis either; I know you had the Blues, but I never did. Something’s causing interference in the T-Core, I think. Did you see that?”
“See what?” Vivian asked, and looked around her, spinning on Rose’s heel. “I don’t see anything, did you—”
“That,” he said.
And then she saw it. Between them and the mountain range, there was a distortion in the light that wouldn’t stand still. She tried to focus Rose’s eyes on it, but the bizarre thing appeared and disappeared with apparent randomness.
It looked like a pool of water—a mirage—but it was not parallel to the floor, but perpendicular to it. The distortion was an almost circular vortex of waving gray light, a two-dimensional whirlpool which went nowhere.
“Don’t get close to it,” warned Vivian, but Seraphim had already drawn its long spear. “Felix, hold on!”
She took one step towards the distortion, and it appeared to want to meet her halfway—for every step they took, the distortion moved closer, and its impossible construct created more and more dissonance in her T-Core. It was hurting her own head; it couldn’t wrap itself around something so bizarre, so unnatural looking.
—blood pours from her mouth and she collapses to the grassy land. Someone else’s scream is the last thing she hears—
Thoughts and images flashed chaotically in her mind: things that had happened and things that hadn’t happened yet: her childhood, her first day in the army, the day she met Ezra Blanchard, a large forest, a goddess, and then her own sudden death.
—what he does now will determine all of humanity’s future and there will be no way to know if the choice taken was the right choice to take until it’s too late but it may not be too late create a fork another fork a third fork—
She felt everything shift for a moment before the world slammed itself against her.
Vivian opened her eyes and there was only darkness. Finally, after two terrifying failed attempts, she managed to draw some air into her lungs. Her eyes begin to focus, quickly recognizing the white dot of light that told her she was no longer in control of Rose Xibalba.
The capsule’s lid slid open and she rose to the cold and windy world outside of the Creux’s Apse. It had to be something very powerful to send both Rose and Seraphim flying back. It had forced desynchronization—something she had never experienced before.
Seraphim was worryingly still, flat on its back, just a few body lengths away from her. She held her breath until she saw its Apse open, and Felix climbed out.
He yelled something at her, but he couldn’t hear him through the noise of the wind traveling across the wasteland. He raised both his arms in a V, and she knew he was all right.
She looked for the distortion, but it was gone.
Beginning to remember some of the things she had seen in that watery mirror, she was running short of breath again. It had been so quick it hadn’t given her time to be scared, but now it felt as though it had taken a piece of her away.
Just interference in the T-Core, she told herself. What you saw wasn’t real.
Blind hope was all that kept those thoughts together. She could only hope she was right.
No one should have to see a vision of their own sudden, violent death.
ф
Time had become an even more abstract idea.
Ezra had seen people come and go, walk by, ask him how he was feeling. He had seen the sun rise and then fall. He had taken food from a plate and eaten it. Had seen Jena’s face looking down at him as though she pitied him.
He knew time had passed, but he couldn’t know how much.
“I really wished you were here,” he whispered.
“I am, if you want me to be,” replied Elena.
Elena hadn’t left. Even after realizing that the girl of the shifting features, who always knew what he was thinking and what he wanted to hear, was merely a symptom of his own madness, she lingered.
At least, the visions of her had become less and less common as his communion with the energy that had cursed him with madness. He considered the possibility of never approaching Nandi again—not if it meant he would have to question everything and everyone he saw.
That would be a demon he could never learn to live with, not unlike Elena.
“Can you see her?” Jena asked.
He hadn’t even seen her arrive. Ezra had found a place
near Lazarus’ cradle where he could be alone. It had been the same spot where Garros and Jena had built a fire. Where he had heard her singing voice.
“No,” he replied after looking around. Elena wasn’t there.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” said Ezra, and stretched his hand to touch Jena’s.
“I’m here,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “I’m right here. See? I’m here, and I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about me too,” he said, and chuckled.
“We’ve come so far. You can’t give up now,” she said, taking a seat on the moist grass in front of him. “You understand that, right?”
“I’m not giving up,” Ezra said. “I didn’t say I was going to give up. I just need time to recover. Something happened to me, right, and I’m not okay right now. It’s hard for me to trust anything I see or hear. The cure should never be worse than the illness.”
“If you’re blind I’ll be your eyes, Ezra,” Jena said. “I can help you if you need help; I just need to know you’re here, and that you’re not done. I don’t want to scare you, but I’m worried. I’m worried that Garros, Erin, and Akiva aren’t here.”
“How long has it been?”
“Five days.”
“That’s too long,” he replied, and saw Elena standing among the trees behind Jena. He ignored her; it was a habit he would have to practice, at least for a while. “I don’t want to pilot Nandi, Jena—I’m not ready yet.”
“I know,” she replied. “But you should get ready to get ready. Pretty soon you’re gonna have to make a choice, and it won’t be easy, but you’ll have to make it either way.”
Behind her, the ghost of Elena mimicked Jena’s words as she spoke them.
“I believe in you,” said Jena and put her warm hand on his cheek.
“And I need you to believe in me when I say that the end is very close now,” Elena finished in Jena’s voice.
The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) Page 27
