by Wight,Will
In the background, amidst the trees and undergrowth, the bigger rotten beasts left. They ran from the warded tree like they were fleeing a burning building, and in three breaths Lindon and Yerin were alone.
Lindon watched the physical world again, trading glances with Yerin. “You don't happen to know what that was, do you?” Lindon asked hesitantly.
“You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?” She stood with her white sword held forgotten in one hand, staring into the distance.
Now that the danger was over, Lindon's whole body went slack, and he leaned against the tree, panting. “Were they scared away? Is there something worse coming?”
Yerin gave him a look of surprise. “What? No, it's plain to see what happened to the beasts. They follow vital aura, so they followed it away. Stone simple. But I'm coming up empty on what makes aura do that. Like it gathered together and then rushed off in a blink. Look; I don't know that I've ever seen vital aura so thin on the ground.”
Lindon looked and found that she was right, though that came as no surprise. The world in his Copper vision was dim, as though the scene had been painted in washed-out colors. “How is that possible?” As he'd been taught, vital aura was like the madra of the natural world. It took on different aspects as it moved through the heavens and the earth, though it was all connected. Even when you harvested aura and cycled it into your madra, that was like taking a cup of water from the ocean. Sooner or later, it would return to the source.
Lindon had never seen the ocean, but he'd read stories. This struck him as though the tide had left completely, leaving the shore bare and dry.
Yerin sheathed her sword and walked casually across his warding circle, not bothering to push the day's worth of dirt away from her tattered outer robe. “Scripts can gather up a bunch of vital aura, not considering aspects. Or push it away, sometimes. But if a script is doing this...I'd contend it's ten miles across, engraved in bedrock, and powered by ten thousand Remnants.”
Lindon didn't question it further. Whatever the event had been, it had saved them from having to fight their way out of an army of monsters. He seized his pack and hurried over to the Thousand-Mile Cloud. There hadn't been time for him to recover much madra, and he wasn't confident of his ability to fly it for any length of time or at any great speed.
“How has your spirit recovered?” Lindon asked, hoping she'd be able to feed power to the cloud.
She hopped up and straddled the front of the cloud as though mounting a horse. “I'm not bursting at the seams, but I'm well enough to ride this pony.” She patted the cloud behind her. “Come on up.”
Lindon knelt first, running his hand along the side of the cloud. As he'd expected, the cloud was slightly smaller than it had been the previous day, its sides wispier. One day of missed maintenance wouldn't affect its performance much, but one weed wouldn't overrun a garden either. It was better to take care of the problem while it was small than let it grow larger.
He let his pure madra flow into the construct, feeling it seized by the script at the cloud's center. Madra pulled from his weaker core, and there was a slight delay as the construct processed the pure madra and used it to nourish its Forged cloud madra.
Like a plant growing a thousand times faster, the cloud grew thicker and perhaps half an inch larger. He even thought it may have bobbed higher, though that could have been his imagination.
The effort drained that core dry, as it had been mostly exhausted already, but he switched to the other and climbed up behind Yerin.
“You're a fussy one,” she noted.
“I've always found that a little work up front makes things easier later on,” he said, climbing onto the cloud and securing his pack between them.
He hadn't quite finished when she kicked the cloud up to speed, sending him lurching back and grabbing onto her shoulders for support.
“I think you may have seen hard work sometime in the past,” Yerin called back, “but you never came close enough to shake its hand.”
She blasted through the forest, faster than they had usually gone on their way down from Mount Samara, black-leaved tree branches whipping by Lindon's ear. He leaned down behind Yerin so her Iron body could protect him, though her small back offered little shelter.
Only once he'd adapted to the speed did he recognize their direction. “Apologies, but...are we chasing the monsters?”
Branches whipped her as they passed by, but she ignored him as though they were nothing more than a gentle breeze. “Aura's heading this way for a reason. May as well find out where that is.”
“We know one thing about where it's headed: there's an army of monsters there. That we know.”
He felt her laugh. “Where did we leave the guy who spilled blood to leave the only home he'd ever known? You're weak, but I didn't suppose you were a coward.”
That prickled his pride, and he straightened. A foolish move, as he immediately took a branch to the face.
Spitting out leaves that tasted of copper and rotten vegetables, he responded. “I'm not saying I won't go, I'm saying I'd like to be somewhat cautious.”
“Oh, I'll be cautious.” She steered the cloud to leap over a bush, rolling down a small hill as he clung to her arms for support. “Somewhat.”
Chapter 4
Iteration 217: Harrow
In the first strike, she exterminated humanity.
Suriel’s weapon activated as she whipped it down. It expanded in a microsecond, expanding from a meter-long bar of blue steel into a skeleton of blue metal containing a web of light. It looked like a bare tree, each of its branches arcing with power.
While it was sealed, Suriel called her weapon a sword. Now that it was released, the weapon regained its identity as Suriel’s Razor.
It had been handed down to her from her predecessor, along with the identity of Suriel, the Sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. More than a tool for destruction, the Razor was meant as an instrument of healing. An infinitely complex, incalculably powerful scalpel.
Her mind ran along its familiar pathways even as she struck. First, she isolated the bloodline she intended to target. That feature was intended to remove pests in a home or a strain of virus in a body, but she could just as easily expand her focus.
To mankind. They were corrupted now, fused to and altered by the same chaos that destroyed their world.
Once her target was selected, she simply provided the energy, and the Razor did the rest. The Mantle of Suriel, a river of raging white flame that hung from her back like a cape, rolled with power as it drew on the Way. She funneled that power to her weapon, which flashed so brightly they would see it on the surface of the burning planet, kilometers beneath her.
Millions of lights blinked into existence all through the atmosphere, a blanket of tiny stars. Each light flashed, spearing down to the surface, and then was gone.
Her connection to the Way slackened immediately, like a sudden flicker of weightlessness in the center of her stomach. Humans anchored a world, their lives and their minds tying it to the Way, and when they were gone…chaos reigned. She had cut this world adrift.
[Targets eliminated,] her Presence informed her, the voice feminine and impersonal inside her mind. [Ninety-nine-point-eight percent population reduction. Proceed with manual elimination?]
In her vision, points of green ignited all over Harrow, indicating those that had survived her purge. These were the scraps that remained pure, even with their world corrupted. The last remnant of Harrow’s population.
Abidan regulations stipulated that she complete the elimination, as the chaos could infect survivors at any time, but she was Suriel. She had fought her way to one of the highest positions in existence in order to save the lives that couldn’t be saved.
She denied her Presence’s request.
All told, there were two million, one hundred six thousand, three hundred and forty-four survivors scattered all over the dying planet. A huge number of lives, but only a speck of dust next to the num
ber she’d just killed. Days ago, there had been five billion people on this planet. After the violent merge of Limit and Harrow, only twenty percent of the population had survived. Now? A scarce fraction, a handful of sand, easily swept away.
A weight settled onto her spirit, another slab of lead in a tower that was growing too high to manage. She knew the elimination was necessary, but she had still taken so many lives. How many had she killed now?
Her Presence could tell her, but she didn’t ask.
The previous Suriel, her predecessor, had not died in the line of duty. He’d passed the Mantle and Razor on to her when they grew too heavy for him, and then he’d walked away. He lived the life of a mortal now, his power forcibly veiled. She hadn’t heard from him in millennia.
The things he’d done in the name of his office had burdened him, broken him, and he was the Phoenix. His job was to save lives, not to take them. How much heavier was the weight borne by Razael, the Wolf?
Or Ozriel, the Reaper?
The world’s problems had not ended with the destruction of mankind. If they had, the Reaper’s job would not be necessary. Anyone with the power of an Abidan Judge were capable of eliminating a planet’s worth of people, and most Iterations only had a single inhabited planet.
Beneath where she floated, high in the outer atmosphere, the planet rolled in visible turmoil. Seas appeared and disappeared, caught between Limit and Harrow, continents flickered and boiled as though trying to decide on a shape, cities crumbled to dust and were rebuilt in seconds. Clouds spun in rapid circles, taken by chaotic winds, and fire raged across such a vast territory that it was visible from space.
Now, the difficult and painstaking part of her task began.
Gadrael, a compact and muscular man with dusky blue skin and tight-packed horns instead of hair, hovered nearby. His arms were folded so that the black circle on his forearm, the Shield of Gadrael, was pointed out. He wore the same liquid-smooth white armor as she did, and a Judge’s Mantle burned behind him as well.
He watched the world beneath him die without the slightest crack in expression. “Quarantine protocols will remain in effect for approximately six months Harrow time, after which my barriers will vent all fragments into the void and dissolve.”
The role of the Reaper was to eliminate a world without leaving such fragments behind, which could give birth to the most dangerous elements in existence. The best she could do was a messy approximation.
“Acknowledged.” She still didn’t leave.
She had six months to save as many untainted lives as she could.
Of course, that was Harrow time, which was notoriously unstable. This world had drifted from the Way, which governed the proper flow of time. She felt as though she’d been here for minutes, but another world may have seen days pass.
Ozriel could have done this in moments, but he was gone. For the first time, she felt a hint of personal resentment for that.
“After this reprieve, Makiel expects you to throw your full effort into the search for Ozriel. He wants results within a standard decade.”
Suriel turned to him, temper hot. Calling the power of the Way both demanded and produced inhuman self-control, but Gadrael was testing hers. Her Razor thrummed in her hand, sparking and hot.
“Do I have autonomy in this matter?” she asked coldly.
He had to see what she was doing, but he nodded once. “You do.”
Everything about her blazed as she flexed her power—hair emerald, eyes purple, Mantle and armor white, Razor a flickering blue. She burned with the colors of a celestial glacier, until even Gadrael had to conjure barriers over his eyes.
“Then this falls under the purview of the Sixth Division, not the Second. If you interfere before I have finished my operation, I will consider you to have violated the Pact and take action accordingly. Let it be witnessed under the Way.”
She couldn’t kill him, as he may have been the hardest man in all existence to actually destroy, but there were any number of ways one Judge could make life difficult for another. Schisms among the Court of Seven were not common, but they were known to happen. Suriel would not risk the stability of the Abidan on a personal vendetta, but Gadrael—and by extension, Makiel—were threatening her authority.
If she allowed that to happen, she would not be worthy to remain Suriel.
A curtain of rich, layered blue tore open on the starry canvas behind Gadrael, and he stepped back into it, arms still crossed. “Six months,” he said, “then you find the Reaper. We have set aside Iteration two-thirteen as a quarantine zone for your infected, so bypass Sector Control. A channel will be open for you.”
Makiel. He had known she would never leave the survivors, and had planned accordingly. Even before she’d come here, he had known.
The Way zipped closed, and Gadrael vanished.
[Four hundred sixty-two Grade Six anomalies and counting,] her Presence said. [Pursuit recommended before expansion threshold is reached.]
Suriel set thoughts of Gadrael aside. He was a loyal dog, collared and leashed, and she would gain nothing from a conflict with him. Makiel was the one writing the script, and his plans could span eons. She had to meet him face-to-face.
But first, she had a job to do.
A world divorced from the Way gave birth to chaotic distortions. These were nightmarish monsters, entities that strained the rules of existence. If Harrow was allowed to fester over the next half a year, it could give birth to thousands of these abominations. Once they entered the void, they would drift, until even Makiel couldn’t predict where they would emerge.
She had to destroy them now. At the same time, she had to reach as many of the two million survivors as she could, transporting them to Iteration 213. The world was known as Scour, the most inhospitable place she’d ever seen with a native population, but it should keep them alive.
On the north pole, a black spire shattered the ice, shooting thousands of kilometers into space until it stood out like a rigid hair against the surface of the planet. A featureless black tower, an obelisk standing so tall it shouldn’t be able to physically support itself. An anomaly.
Suriel gripped her Razor and blasted forward.
Like a dying animal, a world was most vicious at its end.
***
As Lindon hurtled through the blackened forest on the Thousand-Mile Cloud, chasing after a legion of monsters, he contemplated their greatest danger: thirst.
They flew for the rest of the first day and past dawn of the second, and Yerin skirted every Remnant or rotten beast they encountered. But they had no more water, and the few times they stopped at a likely pond or creek, they found the surface stinking and corrupt.
Whatever blight produced the black, rotten trees and the twisted dogs, it extended to the water. They didn't need to taste it to know it was poison.
Before long, Lindon's head pounded and his throat burned so that he could hardly talk. It frightened him how quickly he'd weakened without water.
So when the trees parted to show a pyramid in the distance, Lindon's first feeling was not a call to adventure or a sense of danger, but a heavy relief. A structure meant people, and people would have water.
When Yerin slowed the cloud at the sight, Lindon wanted to strangle her.
She choked out a word, swallowed, and tried again. Her words were simple and quiet, as though she meant to save water by speaking as little as possible. “That's it. Headed there.”
Between the thirst, the lack of sleep, and the tension of the past few days, Lindon was having trouble thinking past the possibility of food, water, and shelter. He grunted something that sounded like “What?”
Yerin stabbed her finger at the pyramid. “Aura.”
With an effort that felt like crossing his eyes, Lindon focused on the aura around the pyramid. The edifice stood as high as Elder Whisper's tower back in Sacred Valley and a thousand times wider at the base, but it was assembled from layers of house-sized stone blocks. It was brown as mud,
its first few layers obscured by black trees, but the visible portion was enough to dominate the landscape like a mountain jutting out of a field.
A rainbow of vital aura rose over it, spiraling down into the structure like a narrow cyclone. The aura from miles around had been drawn here, which meant...
He finally caught up with Yerin's observation. If the aura was drawn here, then those trees at the foot of the pyramid would be swarming with Remnants and twisted beasts.
He nodded to show that he understood, even as she took the cloud a little higher. The cloud was meant to skim over the ground rather than fly, and it started to struggle at about ten feet above the earth. At fifteen, it stopped entirely, and Yerin's face tightened in focus as she held them there.
From their new vantage point, they surveyed the land ahead of them. Two things stood out immediately.
First, while they couldn't see any sacred beasts through the canopy, there was something swarming around the pyramid: people. Lindon glimpsed a distant crowd, the peak of a few tents, and even a wagon rumbling across a clearing. These people must hold the structure against the Remnants and sacred beasts. Maybe the pyramid was their home, and they were drawing in aura for some purpose.
But Lindon couldn't consider that for long, because the second feature of the landscape had snared his attention: a wide lake, bright as sapphires, just south of the pyramid. He could only see the corner of it through the trees, but it was obviously not as tainted as the rest of the water around. His throat convulsed involuntarily at the sight.
“We have to get there,” Lindon croaked.
Yerin didn't say anything to agree, she just pushed the cloud to its highest speed and slammed back into the ground, dashing through the trees at reckless speed. For once, Lindon didn't mind that he was almost sent hurtling off the back of the construct. He added his own trickle of madra to the cloud, hoping that it might coax a little extra speed out of their mount.
