Poe had gone too deep, his silhouette blocking the fountain’s light ahead. Flynn wondered what he was looking for or examining—or if he just sought a few moments’ distance from the group, clearly unused to having companions.
Following Flynn’s cue, Chari lit another candle and took one to light the smaller candelabras along the right wall. The darkness was still pervasive, with only a dim corner illuminated when a woman’s voice murmurred.
“So many have lost their way,” she observed. “Turn back now, and I’ll forgive this trespass.”
“No fuckin’ way!” Jean retorted. “You know what it’s like out there? Least let us cool our heels first!”
The voice had come from atop the stairs. It may have been Jean’s rebuttal, but for proximity, it was Poe who bore the brunt of it. She came down like a crescent moon, a flash of silver borne in black. Any other among them would have been cut down, but Poe reacted instinctively, his Dark Sword raised, deflecting the blade. Though the two could not effectively see each other, they clashed with urgent ferocity. Sparks kicked up at each strike, and Flynn caught glimpses of a young woman’s face, of bright blonde hair, of her twin, arcing horns.
Snatching a candle, Flynn hurried to light the nearest candelabra as steel clashed. Scytha. Poe’s right arm, clutching his sword underhand, barely held the blade of her scythe at bay. With his free hand, he snatched her throat, strangling. Scytha bit at her fingers, tugging at the tips of her gloves. Her slim wrist became exposed, the fabric pulling taut.
“Pull him back!” Flynn yelled to his companions, not knowing who would react. Jean looked at him like he’d lost it, but still moved—and Mack joined her.
Flynn dove for Scytha, and they fell against the fountain. Her back smashed against it, and she reached for his face unaware of what she was grasping for. Not knowing what horror he faced, Flynn instinctively drew back. Whether she intended to crush his skull or choke the life from him as Poe had tried to do to her, there was something to be rightly feared. He shuffled on his backside as she groped blindly toward his silhouette. A light came close, banishing the oppressive shadows. Flynn glanced back as he scuttled to safety, to see Chari gripping the shaft of a candelabra.
Scytha’s revulsion turned to recognition. Realizing she faced no common prey, she withdrew body and hand both. Snatching up her glove from the floor, she concealed what little skin she had bared. Secure that she had not done something terrible, something she would regret, she made eye contact and smiled.
*
The horned girl lit the last of the candles herself, bringing light to the once-dark hall. “So sorry for attacking you.” She offered a strangely polite laugh. “I don’t lock the doors, and—once in a rare while—the lost souls that wander in prove … ornery.”
Something in her innocent smile made Poe’s skin crawl, like she wasn’t sharing the whole truth. The candles’ orange flame flickered on the walls and shadows, cast by statues in the alcoves and other objects alike, danced and receded. The horned girl walked past Poe, like a momentary annoyance to be forgotten. His pride stung, but he kept his blade in check, for this was her home. She walked right up to Flynn, crossing her arms over her belly and smiling.
“You’ve come to visit me. That’s a first. Most often, I’m the one who knocks.”
“I’d … speculated,” Flynn confessed, “but I didn’t expect to really find you out here.”
“I’m most often here,” she replied. “And I’m most often alone. I do welcome the company of interesting people.” Her eyes drifted to the others in Flynn’s party as though she were sampling hors d’oeuvres.
Jean tugged at Flynn’s sleeve to get his attention. “Yo, Flynn? Who’s this broad and why’s she talkin’ like yer cozy?”
“This is Scytha,” he replied. “She’s the Mystik of Death.”
Standing removed from the group, Poe raised his eyebrows. Knowing now what he had faced, he knew himself inadequate for it. Scytha, a god, could have cut him down. She had gone easy on him, played with him. Shown him mercy … or pity. Poe flushed, blood coursing to his face. She could have ended him, and had she done so, his flame would have been extinguished, leaving his soul forever charred. Chari was less impressed. Breaking from the group, she circled to the side, scrutinizing the goddess.
“A real Mystik,” she breathed contemptuously.
Poe was tempted to cut her down, lest she incur Death’s wrath. Faltering, he wondered, Am I just looking for another excuse to kill?
Standing in place, Scytha twisted only a little as the beaded girl circled her like a predator. “Like what you see?” the Mystik teased.
“I expected something more,” Chari replied. Whether she was relieved or disappointed, Poe could not tell. She drifted across the room and leaned on the railing to a stairwell, excusing herself from the conversation.
“Scytha,” Flynn broke the silence. She turned to him with an innocent smile, unfazed by Chari’s hostility.
She seems so genial. Can this really be the face of a goddess? The closest Poe had ever come to meeting one was the Archangel, gatekeeper to the Mystik of Love’s ivory tower, and so low had he stood at her feet that he could never imagine looking her in the eye.
“This isn’t a social call,” Flynn said apologetically. “There might be something out in this expanse that we need.”
“Enough to come all this way?” she asked. “And what would it be? You can tell me—maybe I’ve seen it.”
“The lost will of Unamia,” he said simply. It was hubris—baiting the Goddess of Death, seeing what she knew and would share.
“I … may have seen it,” she reluctantly confessed through pursed lips. “Some time ago, I would admit. It might be lost. Why is it important, though? Why would you need it?”
Poe, unwilling to play Flynn’s reprobate games, answered. “It is I who needs it. I am the Guardian to Heaven’s gates, and I must learn the limitations of my heritage. I have sinned grievously.”
“I know what you’ve done.” Scytha grew cold, Death’s piercing eyes cutting through him. “So that’s who you are. You had the stink of blood on your soul, but I thought …” She trailed off, her eyes falling on his person. “I misunderstood,” she said simply. “It’s clear to me now.”
Nothing about this was clear to Poe, on the wrong end of the conversation. He asked, “You grasp why I need to free myself? A call has been made, and I wish to follow it before my final destiny consumes me.”
Whatever cordiality she had shown him before evaporated, and Scytha looked away as though Poe was no longer there. Flynn was the only subject of interest to her now. “He’s the one, isn’t he?” Whatever Poe was, she didn’t sound thrilled at the discovery. Flynn nodded heavily. “I feared this … I could tell by looking, but to see it confirmed …”
Scytha turned her back to them and moved up the stairs. She didn’t pause or make eye contact. “Follow, Guardian,” she ordered, and so Poe followed.
She was a goddess. He had no other choice.
*
The halls of Death’s home stretched deep and lonely and showed no signs that she kept any other company. Room after room was furnished yet empty of life, each meticulously clean. Where were the servants who tended Death’s little needs?
“We have no other company?” Poe asked.
“I live alone.” Poe didn’t press for further information. It wasn’t his place to. Even so, Scytha granted it. “I used to be surrounded by people. Not here. I like my space. Prefer it.”
“I’ve been alone longer than I can recall,” Poe shared. “Even this is more company than I’m practiced for.”
She faltered before finding the “I know” on her lips. “I’ve heard of the role of the Guardians. And you’ve had a tumultuous legacy.”
Without knowing him, Scytha scorned him. Poe stressed over not knowing how to change her mind. Never before had he sought to make amends. They walked on in unease and contempt. When Scytha stopped at a door, unremarkable in the sea of
rooms through which they’d passed, the Mystik locked her hand upon the knob. Whatever she meant for him was inside. She was the gatekeeper.
“Guardian,” she posed, “what would you do with your freedom?”
She knows the blood I’ve spilt, my soul’s thirst for absolution. She knows too, then, my eventual destination, the Hell I am to find myself in if I cannot escape the path to which I’ve become enjoined.
“Whatever is necessary,” he said. “I know that I have been sent for by a power greater than I.”
“And if the one you serve denies your release to the other who seeks?”
Poe had no answer. He knew what he needed, but if Unamia’s will was found and failed and the Archangel could not be made to change her position, then he was stuck. Scytha reached out, resting a gloved hand on Poe’s cheek. It was a clinical examination, and her left hand reached back and pulled out his Dark Sword. Poe offered no resistance.
“You tethered your soul to this thing,” she spoke with disgust. “To a cursed blade.”
“I was young,” Poe apologized. “There was no other way to match it, use it to its full. I had not yet inherited my family’s strength nor learned fully the blade’s way. I did what I had to.”
Sheathing the sword, Scytha withdrew, and was relieved to do so. She looked a little sick, and finally opened the door. Poe stopped at the threshold. The room was vast, much larger than the others. Its bed was broad, its colors personal—it was strong where the other rooms had been modest and subdued. Cold leather furniture attended the walls. An open text with quill and inkwell rested on a desk by the window; untended clothes were draped over a chair.
“Come in,” she prompted.
Poe’s first steps into the Mystik of Death’s personal chambers were delicate. She moved to a bed stand and bent over it, rifling through a drawer as the Guardian pivoted on one foot awkwardly, suppressing the urge to scratch an itch. His body grumbled with hunger, and he hoped Scytha hadn’t heard such embarrassing mortal sounds. Most of all, he restrained the urge to stare, for her skintight outfit assisted the imagination with shameful readiness. When at last she found what she was looking for, she tossed it to him. He caught it with both hands, and was surprised she would treat a thing of such importance so thoughtlessly. Did she think so little of him that she may have hoped his catch would fumble and the shell might break? Unlike the seashell in the library, this one was plugged with sand.
“Do not review the contents of this shell until you have left these lands,” she warned. “Do so here and they will slip out and be forever lost.”
The temptation was already strong to listen, to glimpse. The chance for resolution was in his hands, waiting to be unbound. But without restraint, he would know nothing. He had had a decade to cultivate patience, never before drifting from the gates he was even now supposed to be protecting. Poe tucked the shell away on his person.
“I know why you’ve been tapped, and I fiercely disagree,” she told him. “Do not disappoint.” Scytha left him in her room then, untended.
Despite her obvious disgust for him, Poe was overwhelmed with a sense of hope for what might come. It was not something he’d felt since he’d first laid hands on the Dark Sword and made it his own. This, he was certain, would end better—a farewell to a bloody past.
*
Zaja stood in front of a mirror, her shirt hiked up and her belly exposed. She checked carefully, ensuring no new blemishes had formed on her skin. As fingertips brushed along her flesh, she took care not to release any cold through them. It was a strange talent she possessed, the result—near as she could figure—of another failed cure.
Satisfied that her Nyrikon’s Syndrome hadn’t gotten any worse, Zaja covered herself back up. The others were sleeping, and though she’d gotten some herself, she knew she wouldn’t rest easy until she’d left Death’s manor and escaped this dreary land.
With little else to do, she wandered the halls until she found herself back at the main entryway, where there was a balcony overlooking the great sand vortex. As she stepped outside, the color in the world and in herself bleached once more out of existence. She leaned on the railing, watching, entranced by the conduit to oblivion. A few lost souls had wandered near and were even now surrendering to the sands.
“What can you tell me about the afterlife?” Zaja asked.
Death was standing behind her. Even in her weariness, Zaja had known she was close. Scytha tittered softly in amusement and joined her at the railing.
“I’ve never been,” Scytha replied. “I know that passing life is summarily drawn there. Human life, animal life … even seemingly insignificant plants and insects. The Beyond is a place where faded sparks coalesce.”
Zaja glanced sidelong at Scytha. The young woman looked gaunt in this climate, her yellowed hair less lively. Her black catsuit had washed out to the faintest gray, proving that even Death herself was not immune to the way this land altered perception. Only her scythe, the crescent of which dangled over the railing between them, was untarnished.
“Would I be better off?” Zaja asked. She wanted to live, not knowing where this trail would end, where she might find a place to settle and be of use. But if she had to choose now between a longer life of comfort and warmth or a peaceful death, she could no longer discern the difference between them.
“You would be you, just someplace else,” the Reaper replied. “And you would be her forever.”
“That … doesn’t sound terrible.”
“I sometimes hear whispers of the dead, when I’m at rest,” Scytha continued. “They are haunted by matters untended and mistakes made. It is an everlasting discontent in which they can find no closure, for it is in life that we grow and become who we are. Once defined, our essences become impermeable in death.”
There had been times when Zaja had wept and raged at her lot in life. When she had wanted to snuff her flame prematurely rather than face the prolonged suffering she knew awaited her as her sickness progressed. She had at least escaped the worst of that turmoil. It didn’t soothe the certainty of what would come. Would finding peace now assure her some comfort when her life passed? Or would it simply make certain death harder to accept?
“And if I come back here?”
“I wouldn’t plan or count on reincarnating,” Scytha told her. “It’s an uncertain process, one that cannot be guided or dictated. The right sort of discontent or attachment will draw you here, it’s true, but even if you were to suffer rebirth, you would lose much of yourself in the process.”
“How do you know that?”
“You need only ask Guardian Poe what he remembers of who he once was.” Scytha fell quiet after that, and both watched the oblivion spiraling endlessly before them. During the length of their vigil, a few souls drawn from the expanse wandered within.
*
Jean thought she remembered it all perfectly fine. The mountain on the place they’d landed after skipping out on Earth. Names were fuzzy, but the important parts were there—the bullets, the blood, the pain, the stitches, the fevered nightmares of being abandoned and alone. Missing was the horned girl watching while they slept.
“And ya didn’t think fit to mention that?”
“It had been a long day,” Flynn’s voice was heavy and tired. “I had hiked up a mountain twice, carried bodies, washed wounds—”
“Oh, come now!” Mack was sitting on a table, kicking his legs back and forth. “All you had was a little encounter with somebody purporting to be a paranormal being and the very embodiment of life’s end! Why wouldn’t you share that with your new buddies?”
“Well, gee, when you put it that way …” Jean rolled her eyes.
“That is actually part of the reason,” Flynn admitted. “At the time, it was simply strange. For a while, it didn’t seem like it meant anything.”
“So what about after meetin’ with Airia and hearin’ the word Mystik get thrown about like it’s goin’ out of style?” Jean pressed.
“We�
�re from a post-apocalyptic hell-hole. Is anything really in style anymore?” Mack interjected.
“Not the fuckin’ point,” Jean snapped. To Flynn, she added, “What about in Iceville? Didn’t think it was worth mentionin’ then?”
Flynn lowered his head in bitterness. He seemed more like a brat, caught red-handed, than the conman he claimed to be. Finally, he let out a sigh.
“It’s not been my habit to share everything I know. Having information is as important as knowing how and when to use it. It’s the same as how I haven’t told Poe why we were sent for him, or how we lied about where we came from when we first met Chari.”
“Yeah, but some of that shit’s just gonna sound crazy coming out of the blue,” Jean rebutted.
“Or damning. I didn’t tell you what kind of person I really was when we first met because doing so would have hurt both our chances of escape.”
“Yeah?”
“Even now, I …” Flynn trailed off. Jean squinted an eye, scrutinizing him. On the table, Mack stopped kicking his legs, leering with interest. “No, forget it.”
“Forget what?” Mack asked. “If you don’t tell us, we won’t know what we’re supposed to forget, which might lead to one of us forgetting the wrong thing.”
“There is something else I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Flynn admitted. “Something I’ve been doing. Something that I’ve done.”
Jean’s fists instinctively tightened. Her fingernails, chipped from the long journey, dug unevenly into her palms. “You playin’ dirty on us, man?”
“No, I …” Flynn was frustrated with himself. It had been a long walk, and they were all a little tired. He wasn’t at his best. A few truths might spill out. “What I tell you would make no real difference between us if you don’t let it.”
Outcasts of the Worlds Page 37
