by Amanda Churi
I fetched my prized invention up off the ground and filed in beside my designated travel buddy: Korbu. Giving him armor was pointless, as was painting his bony face; nothing could hide what he was without directly inhibiting his abilities, not even his humanoid disguise.
“Hope it works like we planned,” he commented quietly. I moved behind him, securing the pack over my shoulders as I drew the leather straps across Korbu’s sternum and pelvis, locking the buckles and pulling his back into my chest so that we were strapped in together. I tapped each of the four makeshift grenades attached to the harness and then felt for the lever rigged to the back.
With the help of the lerials, the Returned aided in adding to our limited resource pool. Elaborate wings formed from the branches of trees were strapped to our back: two large ones for gliding and two smaller ones for tight maneuvers, the design directly inspired by the lerials’ and Pinion’s anatomy. As for the power of flight? Well… That credit I couldn’t take. But I tried.
It took a lot out of Seek, prompting for an extensive slumber. A single angelic soul was kept in a small box attached to the back of each flyer. There was no telling how far the soul could take us before it exhausted itself and vanished, but one per jetpack was all that Pinion would allow Seek to sacrifice; apparently, her strength was running low.
I could vouch for that since I now knew how her body worked. Hers was identical to mine before I was freed—her soul was one with those angels, and every time she lost a bit of them, she lost a bit of herself. Judging by the deep bags beneath her eyes and her withering frame, she didn’t have much left to lose.
I was also warned, and intensely so, that her paper-thin skin could not come to bear harm. All that I could do to help with that was to provide Seek with a thin iron breastplate while padding the rest of her with thick fabric—any more heavyset armor, and she wouldn’t have been able to carry her own weight.
“EVERYONE!” Pinion began, loud and bold as she took her place upon a toppled Returned. “After this, do not expect another formal meeting! Once we are over the walls, our sole target is the palace! There is a high probability that we will be separated somewhere along the way; we have no way of knowing what Gannon has prepared, but he is definitely aware of our impending arrival. That being said…”
She smashed her fist over her heart. Her blue eyes went green. “You fight! You fight with everything you have to take down that son of a bitch! This is what we have been training years for—what we have been building up to for decades—this is what all of those sacrifices were for! All of the people you lost, all you had to kill, and everything left behind! It is all for our vengeance! To create a new, free world, without one damn Lord left in it!” She moved to the side, allowing two soldiers to climb up next to her.
It was not Flye who I looked at, but Sybil—that little lerial perched on Flye’s shoulder. It had been a while since I had seen a demon that starved for blood; she almost matched up to me.
She wore a small set of golden armor that adorned to her every movement, a helmet with deadly spires keeping her head and single ear protected. Her wings were vibrating just standing still, fully expanded and pumping with rotten blood. Her salute was the strongest of all three; she did not meet one eye staring at her—she just stood tall, proud, and readied for justice.
“Having demonic ties, Rebel and Avenger will remain here with Vasili and the other lerials! They will serve as the second wave to follow shortly after our initial invasion! If we do not succeed, neither can they! If we do not succeed, no one can!
“Understand this: we have reached an era of inevitability… The Proxez cannot exist with us, and neither can we with them! There truly is room for only one in this universe, and if we fail, so does humanity! Fight until the end! Fulfill your vow, and give your life if that’s the cost! FIGHT NOT TO SURVIVE, BUT TO LIVE!”
She spun around and landed heavily on the timbered tree, giving the wooden wings at her back a snug tug. “THE DAY OF RECKONING IS UPON US! THIS ENDS NOW!”
Her hand chopped down on the lever, opening the hatch that kept the soul’s energy contained. A righteous blast of bleached starlight erupted from the chamber, the kickback so massive that Pinion struggled to keep her footing. Widening her stance and inhaling all the air around her, she screamed the cry of a true warrior, springing from the heightened platform and into the frigid air, ascending toward the clouds at a rapid speed.
The Encryptors around me echoed her cry to fill their hearts with courage, throwing their fists into the air and igniting their own fuel chambers. Forming a wave of hungry, flaming soldiers, they charged together, taking off in staggered lines and remaining close to their leader at all times.
My muscles were pounding with excitement, especially as I released the constrained soul at my back, getting high off the initial burst of power. I pumped my legs in place as the rows before me were cleared for takeoff. Mabel beside me had never been more straight-faced, focusing on the sky as though it was the biggest challenge she had yet to face; but Sage, strapped to her back, thought nothing of it—they were just ready to fly and return to the world they were run from.
When there was a foot of space in front of me, I took it, roaring with vengeance and tearing toward the fallen trunk. I was high off energy… Fueled for a good fight and ready to get it all back—regain everything that was wrongfully taken from me.
What was a small step off the ground seemed like a mountain as I leaped upon the trunk, bounding into the air immediately afterward with Coruscus lashing behind me. There was no more gravity or chains to my name—nothing at all, and when I touched those skies that I had been thrown from thousands of years ago, flying toward my key to redemption, there was no doubt about it.
This was where my story began. No more preparations; no more downtime. This was it: a time to kill and be permanently reborn.
Twenty-one
Death’s Rain
The peak of night—that was our best chance. The clouds only ever broken by snow were thick and compacted, concealing our invasion with the help of the deep darkness that folded over the Earth. Even inside those clouds, it was like swimming through old ink, a blackness so unholy and vast that we looked like tiny white comets shooting through space.
Ten minutes into the flight, and we were all in our appropriate positions. Theoretically, the front was the most dangerous location, yet there we were—Pinion too. She switched up the usual battle tactic of putting the weaklings at the head to serve as meat shields; having the strongest lead the assault meant that troublesome opponents could be dealt with swiftly before they had the chance to grow into dire, unsurpassable hurdles.
Pinion flew directly above us. Korbu and I kept close to the clouds as I used my supreme vision to search for anything encroaching below. Behind the queen, forming a loose, observant arc were the higher-ups: Mabel and Sage were at the edge of the formation closest to us, Seek and Merritt taking the opposite side, with other nameless extras in between. Like Pinion, Virgil had his own personal set of wings; he stayed directly behind his queen at all times, but even though Pinion was front and center, she was not the true leader of the invasion.
Embry was. She did not need wings like the others; she had her own method of flight that Justus had prepared long ago—a solid set of platinum wings that reached out of her back with boosters alongside them, powered by chambers of fresh plasma taken from the blood of fallen Encryptors. Her maneuvers and speed far outmatched ours, but that was not what made her the commander. It was her violin that she played while flying, her hand trembling, creating high-pitched, clawing screeches.
I was appalled by her music, enough so that I couldn’t keep it together another second. “HEY! YOUR ASS CALLED, AND IT WANTS ITS SHIT BACK!”
“It’s supposed to sound bad!” Pinion snapped back. “Were you not paying attention when I tried to catch your dumb ass up? Embry’s tunes are pivotal signals that guide us in battle! It’s a tactic that the Proxez have yet to figure out all the cue
s for!”
“I got that! But this ear-fuckery wasn’t anything you had me learn!”
“Nay,” Embry agreed, her soft voice flowing through the scratchy sound waves. “My music does not solely provide instruction nor pleasure; its true faces lie within electromagnetic waves, and given that the Proxez rely on such for a vast array of communication methods, this is the perfect way to sour their safety cot.”
“…I’m supposed to understand that jargon?” I spat.
“In an idiot’s terms,” Pinion restated, “the frequencies are going to interfere with their communication system as well as other key pieces of technology.” Wiggling in her straps and holding on tight, her blue eyes came aglow and switched to their sinister green, her deep ire so ingrained that not even the paint could fully contain the frustration pulsing off her gem. “And, of course, I will be a pain in their ass too.”
The air surrounding our assault team began to flicker with a tint of heinous green before every pocket of space around us took to its own frequency, glowing and darkening at fluctuating rates. The atmosphere resembled a pane of fractured glass, certain cracks and bruises only able to be seen whenever a spark of light chose to briefly ignite in a set location.
It felt like I had been thrown into Embry’s circuit board, speechless as I watched strings of electricity fly about me and chips flicker, performing something far beyond the current limits of technology.
“She’s distorting time,” Korbu realized. “She’s making it as hard as she can for the Proxez to catch wind of this.”
Pinion kept her head and eyes straight as she continued to manipulate the world around her warriors. “Indeed. To those outside, we would only be seen as glitchy forms, suddenly disappearing before reappearing elsewhere.”
“How far are we from the empire, then?” I asked.
“Not even a minute. Now shut up, dick lick, and focus.”
…She was a real winner, I’ll tell you that much. Stifling an almost irresistible insult, I resumed my intense scan. The zigzags of electricity cutting below me certainly made it more difficult to see… So did the lime-green sheen dusting the clouds.
Quickly moving from the outskirts of my vision to the center was a formidable, concrete arc, thick, wide, and most certainly guarded. Towers rose above the already staggering wall, humongous guns readied and aimed into the wasteland that we came from.
I found my rate of breathing ticking up; I could feel the subtle motion of Korbu’s bones clicking in their loose sockets. We weren’t afraid of the journey; we weren’t afraid of taking their heads off and slathering the air with blood—but however slim the chance, I couldn’t lie: we were afraid of dying. All of them, all of the Encryption, they at least had the Spirit World, no matter how blah being an Eyla would have been. Us?
There is a place that destroyed souls go—a place where one draws the line at existence because there is no way of coming back. The world has no official name, but it is infinite. It is the very thing that expands space, filling with a nothingness that used to belong to a something. The true void.
We were out of lives—out of chances. We had to hang on or else fall into a world that no one had ever touched, not even God.
I seized up with determination, locking down on the wall as we crossed the border between two hells. None of the ants atop turned to look at the sky; not one gun pointed up.
We flawlessly passed over into enemy land; the entire army drew a sigh of relief, Korbu and me included.
Pinion snickered. “Got ‘em.” She turned to Embry. “Alright, increase the range of the waves. It’s bound to get rough from here on out.”
“Of course, ma’am—” Her entire body jolted, whipping her bow across the strings in the most despicable harmony.
Embry was no longer playing. Eyes snapped to the robot as she trembled, looking back at Pinion with flickering purple eyes. My chest tightened with fatigue; Embry didn’t have to speak before I felt it too—the shift in air pressure and then gravity.
“W-what’s happening?!” Mabel squealed. She frantically reached for the wings, trying to feel out a problem.
“I-I DON’T KNOW!” Seek wailed as our unit gradually began to lose altitude while our bodies compressed. “The flyers still have plenty of energy!”
As a flurry of panicked chatter rose within the army, Korbu and I shared a flustered but quiet gaze. Preparing ourselves, I tightened hold of my straps as the soldiers tasked with guarding the walls suddenly sparked into action, each mounted cannon swirling on their platforms, searching for the breach that they somehow became aware of.
The rate of our fall was increasing. Korbu and I smashed into the first layer of clouds, tearing through the vapors as Encryptors fell above us, shredding our natural cover.
“Fuck gravity!” Pinion screamed, focusing all of her energy on the flickering cage that she sheltered her soldiers within. Straining herself, she called on the deepest roots of her powers, strengthening the electrified bubble to the best of her ability, but with our scattered formation, her force field was patchy at best. “Everyone! Fold your wings! It’s going to be one hell of a ride down, but the faster we get there, the better our odds!”
I understood immediately, smacking up the lever and closing the gliders. The speed of our plummet spiked; with the collapse of our wings, we lost all stability in the air, twisting in a mayhem of chaos and spiraling toward the Earth.
The last cloud layer flew past my face, and then all slowed—in the distance, the sluggish, fateful turn of a Haxor’s helmet toward my descending form.
We stared down one another for an extensive, drawn-out moment of silence—followed by a deafening boom as a massive lightning bolt shot right past us, launching Korbu and me in the opposite direction of our squadron.
It was an endless spiral. I couldn’t see straight as we rapidly lost air, clenching my shoulder straps for dear life. Fatal lightning strikes were crisscrossing through the sky, scattering the Encryption like flies in multiple, unpredictable directions. Within seconds of the Proxez’s assault, many of those plummeting were no longer alive; Pinion’s strained barrier could only deflect some strikes, but in other locations, the bolts passed clean through, spelling instant death for those struck.
“We need to slow the fall!” Korbu cried. “We have no control at this speed!”
“We won’t have a life if we do!” I snapped back. “Just endure it! We’ll be down soon enough—!”
Another blast hardly missed us, throwing us back in the direction we had initially fallen from. The electricity was scalding, even compared to Hell’s flame. My body felt as though it was on fire, burning, and not even the nipping wind smacking us around could cool my body. The entirety of my vision was white like a cobweb, screams of people being fried alive filling my ears as I flew past someone alive one second and dead the next.
It was happening again—I was falling, and I couldn’t fly up.
The raging storm of electricity was violently redirected, bolting past us and toward another falling figure. Hair a swathe of pulsing, furious red hues, Mabel extended her arms wide, pulling the surrounding, powerful lightning into her petite body. The bolts surged in through her mouth before blasting back out her fingers, shooting down the assailants lining the wall and knocking them off the platform.
Sage was her wings while she attacked, laughing maniacally and flying her in closer to the fortress. She was a machine gun, ivory, illuminated eyes acting as a scope and arms serving as barrels, able to strike multiple threats at once. Towers were blown clean off their foundations, scorches of fallen life turning the concrete black. Her rounds were too much for the machine-men to withstand, even with their modifications—too much for anything, rather, Mabel included.
She was overwhelming herself while trying to protect everyone; I could hardly stand to look at her any longer for she was so bright. Ragged arms of lightning began escaping by means other than her fingers—through her ears, nose, even back out of the mouth as she reached fu
ll capacity.
Seeing that threw me into a panic of reflexes and instincts. A swarm of crazed laughter exploded in my skull, my manipulative eyes igniting a gaudy gold as the demons inside of me were fueled by the surrounding power, trying to break free of their bondage. Tendons were pulling, and muscles were flexing, my fingers curling around my straps while my gaze settled on Korbu.
The tide was coming over me. It was too clear that my sanity and reasoning skills were waning, preparing to pull me underneath, and even though I could still fight it… I didn’t.
I was a demon. In the end, I was battling for nobody but myself. I knew what I had to do, and in the midst of such hell, there was no better time.
I quickly reopened our wings to violently halt us in midair, and before Korbu could question it, I threw my arms forward and grabbed his ribs, prying open his chest. A ring of purple, damned magic exploded out of him, his energy-hungry chest sucking the overflowing, twisting beams of lightning away from Mabel and into his own body. His head painfully shot back into my chest with a scream, his demonic body cracking with sparks of violet electricity. Muscles tearing and teeth grinding, I desperately tried to keep open his ribcage that instinctually tried to close as he swallowed more and more voltage. He was screaming, thrashing—clicking uncontrollably like a wind-up toy as he overflowed with power, digging his sharp fingers into mine. “LET GO! LET THE FUCK GO, EERO!”
I snickered painfully. “If you insist.”
I released his ribs, the hinges immediately swinging shut and sealing away the churning energy inside him. My hands were already at the buckles, Korbu’s zapping eyes turning to me in disbelief. “Sorry, buddy, but I’m not loyal to anyone but myself, and I can’t have you coming with me and fucking it all up.”
“What?!” He attempted to twist and face me. “EERO!!!”
