Earth Honor (Earthrise Book 8)

by Daniel Arenson

  Marco bowed his head. "We are ready to unlearn."

  Addy nodded. "I haven't learned much in life, so it'll be pretty easy for me." At a glare from Marco, she bowed her head and adopted a more solemn tone. "I am ready to unlearn, Baba." She glanced up at the guru. "So can you teach us magical powers?"

  The guru smiled. "I can teach you inner peace, serenity, awareness, the illusion of the self, and the mysteries of consciousness."

  "But no magical powers," Addy said.

  Marco gave her a glare so furious she cringed. But Baba Mahanisha didn't seem to mind. His smile widened, and he placed his four hands together and bowed his head.

  "Then let us take the path to wisdom."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Abyzou floated through the darkness, burnt, bleeding, broken. Half his face had shattered. With trembling fingers, he fished out chunks of bone. The fire had stripped off his skin, leaving sizzling meat. He was a living wound. He was pain put to flesh. He was fury, purified, screaming for vengeance.

  You did this, Ben-Ari. You will suffer tenfold more!

  Abyzou clenched his fists. A bone in his hand snapped. He screamed.

  Blood coated his escape pod. It was the size of a coffin, dented, rumbling. Abyzou sneered. Ignoring the pain, he activated the engines.

  Prince of the Sanctified Sons, only son of Nefitis, he flew.

  He flew in darkness, alone with his pain.

  He flew, his screams a company of demons.

  There was no warp engine on this escape pod. He flew, slower than light, for long days. For eras. He did not know how long passed. He placed himself in cryonic sleep, but it worked fitfully. He woke up every year, screaming, still broken. He withered. He slept for a century. He woke, tormented by years of nightmares, thawing, bleeding anew. He slept again.

  He flew alone in the vastness, growing thin, growing old. He shrank in his coffin. His madness filled the empty space.

  He missed his wife and children. His wife—a human he had chosen himself, had plucked from Old Earth, had impregnated. His children—born with his large mind, with their mother's strength, hybrids who would someday return home, inherit the world.

  I love you, my Mila, my sweet wife, Abyzou thought, tears mingling with blood. I miss you. I miss my children. He wept. I miss who I was.

  He flew onward. He slept. He woke screaming. He shuddered in the darkness.

  He flew until he reached the portal.

  It shimmered ahead, a great metal ring in space, blue shining within. A hundred saucers guarded the portal, faces carved upon them, ancient sentinels. They flew toward Abyzou's escape pod. One saucer pulled him aboard. When they opened the lid of his capsule, when they saw him, fear filled their eyes.

  "Prince Abyzou!" they said, bowing.

  He saw himself reflected in their shimmering black eyes. He looked barely alive. A desiccated corpse, skin burnt off, muscles red and dripping. Half his face was a ruin, the shattered bone thrusting outward, the teeth gone. Prince? Yes, he was the son of Nefitis, prince to these warriors, yet now he looked like a wretch.

  You turned me into this thing, humans, he thought. You did this to me, Captain Ben-Ari. I will do so much worse to you.

  For the first time in centuries, he spoke. His voice was raspy. Every word was a struggle.

  "Bring . . . me . . . healers . . ."

  The Sanctified Sons glanced at each other, then back at him.

  "She has spoken to us, Prince Abyzou," one said, bowing deep. "The goddess. Nefitis herself, blessed of graces. She knew you would come."

  "Healers!" he screamed.

  The Sanctified Sons trembled. "Nefitis demands to see you first. Before any healers. We will bring you to her."

  She knew, Abyzou thought. Mother knew I was coming. She let me languish in the pod for centuries. She let me suffer for so many years. She could have sent a saucer with a warp engine for me. But she let me float alone. To suffer. He trembled. The punishment for my failure.

  He rose from the escape pod, this coffin where he had languished for so long. Some of his skin had fused to the floor. As he rose, it ripped and fell off. Blood dripped. A bone shard fell and clanged. He stepped out from the pod, sizzling, dripping, stinking. The hearts around his neck had died centuries ago. They lay against his burnt flesh like black, deflated balloons.

  "Take me to Nefitis," he said.

  The saucer flew through the portal.

  They flew through a rift in spacetime.

  They contracted, twisted, blasted through time, and Abyzou screamed. His muscles burst. A crack widened on his skull. Lights and shadows danced around him. Demons. Demons. His life unfurling around him, past and ever-changing futures. In the shadows, he saw himself as a boy, cowering in the corner, his mother striking, beating, ripping. He saw himself as a youth, tying down his deformed brothers, brutalizing, gouging out their eyes, laughing as they died. He saw himself as a soldier, rising high in the legions, leading battalions, commanding fleets. In the visions before him, he bathed the world of Sil Adrianis in blood, slaying the males and enslaving the females, fertilizing their wombs with his seed. In another vision, he lined the roads of Kalatoor with crosses, millions of crosses, upon them the screaming, nailed babies of his enemies. A career of pain, suffering, torturing, always climbing the rungs of agony. He—Abyzou, born of Nefitis, descended of the great priest Harsiese himself. Rising ever taller in the shadow of the goddess. He washed her feet with his blood, and he blessed her name. Abyzou, mightiest of warriors, Sanctified Prince, most wretched of slaves.

  They flew over their ruined, blackened world. A world of ash. Of despair. Of hunger. The mouths of volcanoes gaped open, molten fire gurgling within. Rivulets of black, hardened lava flowed toward the pits, frozen into forms like corpses falling into a fiery underworld. Soot rained from black clouds. The despair stretched into the horizons—dark hills, plains of charcoal dust, the bones of great creatures that had once roamed here, that had died like the rest of this world.

  We have destroyed a thousand worlds, Abyzou thought, but ours too is a wasteland. For we crave but one world. We do not crave to live anywhere but in our holy land, to raise homes anywhere but upon hallowed ground. Earth. Earth is our birthright. We came from a good, green Earth. To there we shall return.

  The saucer took him over Gehenna, city of the goddess. Archways rose above the boulevards like dark ribs, draped with banners likes scraps of skin. Obelisks pierced the clouds. The black city looked like the shell of some massive crab, fossilized, deformed, claws sticking into the air. Millions of the Sanctified lived here—thin, scavenging, hungry. Half the babies born into this wretched warren died of starvation. Only the warriors ate well. Only the strongest survived.

  But soon we will inherit Earth, Abyzou thought. Soon we shall live in sunlight, shall feed upon plenty. Soon the Sanctified Sons will be masters, and the humans will be our slaves!

  In the center of this dying, rotting city it rose—Golgalath. The pyramid of the goddess. It was ancient. For a million years it had risen here, the first structure, the pillar around which their empire had spread out. A burnished eye blazed upon its crest, golden, flaming, all-seeing. Beneath it stretched out a platform. And there she sat. From there she ruled.

  Goddess. Mother. Nefitis.

  Mother of our race, he thought. My mother.

  The saucer hovered above the platform and extended a ramp. Abyzou climbed out, every step leaving a footprint of blood, every movement tearing his exposed muscles. He came to stand before his goddess. She sat on her throne of rotting flesh, her claws gripping the armrests. Blood dripped from her crown, the iron shards nailed into her brow. One of her pets, a demonic dog the size of a man, nursed at her breast. As Abyzou approached, the hound turned toward him, growling, bloodied milk still on its fangs.

  "Abyzou," Nefitis hissed. "My son . . . Look what the apes did to you." She rose from her throne, approached him, and caressed his savaged cheek. She plucked out a piece of shattered skull. "My poor so
n."

  He nearly passed out from the pain. He knelt before her. "Mother. Goddess."

  She dug her fingers into his open wounds. He yowled. She pulled him to his feet.

  "Stand up like a warrior!" she said. "Do not kneel like a cowering child. Where are the apes? I sent you to catch them."

  Abyzou's pain was a burning, clawing, screeching demon. He wanted to fall back down. To look away. But Nefitis was staring at him, into him, her black eyes seeing all, holding him up like chains.

  "I failed," he whispered.

  Nefitis sneered. She grabbed one of his loose teeth. Instead of yanking it out, she drove it deeper, digging it into his gum, grinding his nerve. He yowled.

  "Where are Marco Emery and Addy Linden, whom I sent you to find? Where is Lailani de la Rosa?"

  His blood dripped. His tears fell. "I failed."

  "And where is Einav Ben-Ari, she who exiled our ancestors, who doomed us to a million years of privation?"

  Abyzou wept. "I faced her in battle. I failed."

  Nefitis nodded. "You failed. Again and again, you failed me."

  "Forgive me, goddess. Forgive me! I am sorry."

  She caressed his cheek. Her eyes softened. "My poor, weak, sniveling worm of a son. If you were not of my womb, I would have slain you here upon my altar. Yet you are my son. You shall live."

  He fell to his knees, weeping. "Thank you, my goddess, my mother."

  She stood above him, gazing down. Her demonic hound growled at her side.

  "Yet you must still be punished," the goddess said.

  Abyzou trembled. He looked up at her. He cried out, voice hoarse. "You let me drift for centuries! For long years, I could not sleep. I screamed, I ached! I have suffered enough!"

  Nefitis shook her head. "No, Abyzou. Your suffering has just begun." She turned her head. "Bring them forth!"

  A portal materialized behind her. Through it emerged soldiers in burnished armor, helmets hiding their faces. They dragged four bound prisoners: a woman and three children.

  A human woman.

  A woman Abyzou had not seen in years.

  His wife.

  Abyzou had taken her years ago. He had found her roaming the plains of Old Earth, a daughter of mammoth hunters. Her genes were still pure. Her bloodline was still strong, born from the wilderness. Her hips were wide and made for childbirth, her breasts ample and rich with milk, and she had birthed him three children, blessed hybrids born with the large craniums of his race, with the hardy bodies of hers.

  "Mila!" he cried. "My love!"

  Abyzou had been floating for many years. But the portal brought him back in time. To Mila, he would have been gone for only days. He had not seen her in centuries.

  His wife stepped toward him, barefoot, trembling. They had stripped her naked. They had painted an ankh on her torso, the loop forming a ring between her breasts and collarbone, the pillar running down to her sex. The guards shoved her forward. Her children followed, eyes darting. The oldest—almost a grown warrior. The middle child—a sweet girl, a few years from marriageable age. The youngest—a mere toddler, tears on her cheeks. When they saw him, saw the ruin he had become—a wretched, walking wound—they screamed.

  "Mother," Abyzou whispered. "What—"

  "Your family," Nefitis said. "The ones you love. An ape woman whom you married against my will. Three hybrid children, twisted and weak." She stepped toward them. She plucked up the youngest and stroked the child's hair. "They stink of ape."

  "Mother, do not harm them." Abyzou stepped forward, fists clenching. "I will not let you."

  Nefitis sat back on her throne, a smile on her lips. She placed her granddaughter on her lap.

  "You do not command me, Abyzou. I am your mother. I am the mother of this world, of this race, of this empire we are building. I am goddess. I am Nefitis. I am wrath and retribution. I am mercy for the servile, vengeance for the disobedient. You have been disobedient, my son. You have failed me again and again. And now you will prove your worth. I give you one more chance to appease me."

  Abyzou took another step toward her. His fists trembled. "What would you have me do?"

  Nefitis raised a claw. She pointed at his wife and two eldest children. They trembled, still caught in the guards' grips.

  "Your wife, the woman you love. Your son, only a year away from joining the military. Your daughter, only a year away from marriage. What do they mean to you?"

  "Everything!" he cried.

  Nefitis nodded, smiling thinly. "That is why you fail. That is why you are weak. You care for yourself, for your own blood, more than the blood of our race. Sacrifice them! Strap your family onto the altar, carve them open, and hand me their organs so that I may feed. Prove that they are nothing, that I am everything. Do this and be forgiven."

  He howled. "I will not!"

  Nefitis rose to her feet, still clutching the youngest child. Her eyes blazed with fury. "Then I will have you bound and tortured, your own organs removed. I will trap your soul in my dungeons, leaving it alive and screaming for eternity. Your name will be forgotten, lost to history, and this youngest child shall replace you as my heir. Sacrifice your family! Only your youngest shall be spared. Kill the others. Your fate otherwise will be far crueler."

  Abyzou wept. He knelt. He begged.

  But Nefitis was a goddess. She was ancient. She was all. She would not be swayed.

  Abyzou wept as he worked. He kissed his wife. He whispered of his love to her. And he bound her to the altar with hissing serpents, and he carved her open, and he removed her organs, one by one. A pulsing heart. A dish of entrails. Sweet pancreas. All the treasures inside her, wet and gleaming, served to his mother. He sacrificed his wife. He sacrificed his oldest son. He sacrificed his eldest daughter. Three hearts ripped out. Three times his own heart shattered. Three sacrifices.

  Nefitis did not even eat the organs. She tossed them to her dog.

  Abyzou stood by the altar, the blood of his family drenching him, mixing with his own blood. The husks of his wife and children lay at his feet. He stared up at his mother.

  "I have done as you asked!" he shouted, voice torn with grief. "Release my youngest."

  "No." Nefitis shook her head. "Not yet." She stroked the toddler's hair. "Such a precious babe. So fragile. Her bones—so easy to snap." Nefitis smiled cruelly.

  "Return her to me!" Abyzou cried.

  Nefitis nodded. "I will. Once you've redeemed your honor. Two tasks I give you. First, you must find Marco Emery and Addy Linden. And you must break them." She sneered. "Then, once Emery and Linden are dead, you will rejoin our glorious fleet. As we speak, it still flies toward Earth. You will lead it. You, my son, will be there to oversee Earth's fall."

  Abyzou hissed. "I will not play with time in this way, Mother. I will not chase Emery and Linden across the galaxy, only to come back to the present. The chances for paradoxes are—"

  Nefitis sneered. "Do you not think that he, the Tick-Tock King, can manipulate time? Do you not think that he sees all paradoxes, that he is wiser than you?"

  Abyzou shuddered. The Tick-Tock King. The Oracle. The Time Seer. The creature had many names, and each one sent shivers through Abyzou. He did not like to think of that creature, that terror that lurked in the darkness.

  "Yes," Nefitis hissed. "He knows. He pulls the strings of time like a spider pulling webs. And time moves fast for our brave fleet, for they travel at many times the speed of light. But time moves slowly for Emery and Linden. The Oracle has seen it. A single day for our fleet lasts a month for Emery and Linden. You will create no paradoxes."

  "Why should I care about Emery and Linden?" Abyzou said. "They are merely apes. They—"

  "They are everything!" Nefitis shouted. "You do not understand. You have not seen their future. I have. He has." Blood flooded her cheeks, and fire filled her eyes. "You must kill Emery and Linden. You must, or we will fail. Bring me their hearts! Then go and battle Ben-Ari upon Earth. It will become our domain."

 
Abyzou did not understand. He could not gaze into the future. Only two had that power. Nefitis was one. The other was the creature that lurked deep inside this pyramid, that deformed beast which Abyzou dared not contemplate.

  What role do these apes still play?

  "If I do these things, you will return my child?" he said.

  Nefitis nodded. "Yes, my son. Do these things and you will be forgiven. I will return your youngest child. I will let you choose another wife among the slaves. You will have my love again."

  Abyzou inhaled sharply. Another wife . . .

  "I choose Ben-Ari!" he said. "Her womb will bear my children, and her screams will fill my bedchamber with music."

  Nefitis's smile widened, dripping rot. "How soon you forget your old ape and already crave another! Very well. I will grant you Ben-Ari . . . after I break her. After I spend a long time breaking her. Go now! Go and conquer."

  He still needed to see a healer. He was still burnt, broken, and still every movement screamed in agony. But Abyzou knew this mercy too would be withheld. First he would prove his worth. He would conquer Earth. He would enslave the apes.

  And then, Ben-Ari, you will be mine. You will be mine to love. To impregnate. To comfort and break again and again. My pain is nothing compared to what awaits you.

  He entered the saucer. He took flight. As he flew out on the hunt, he imagined the triumph, the glory, and Ben-Ari trembling in his claws.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They sat outside upon the mountaintop: Baba Mahanisha, Marco, and Addy. All three wore maroon robes. All three sat cross-legged, hands on their knees. The temple complex rose around them: weedy walls, statues smoothed by centuries of rain and wind, and a copper gong engraved with a mandala. The sun was bright, the sky clear, and Marco was ready to learn.

  Baba Mahanisha spoke, voice deep and soothing.

  "There are several noble truths along the path of Deep Being. We step toward the first truth. Five simple words. Five words that will take you many days to comprehend." He inhaled deeply and raised his head. "I am not my thoughts."