The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy

by Terra Whiteman

  I’d condemned Sanctum to burn.

  “Let’s see if those beautiful wings can save you now,” Leid cooed.

  She kicked me off the edge, and I fell soundlessly, staring up at her and she down at me with that horrible, wicked grin. My life flashed before my eyes—still-frame moments of better times—until I couldn’t see her anymore and was drowned in torrents of violent wind and cinders.

  Into the black I sank.

  O

  RIVEN

  Yahweh Telei—;

  “YOU’RE ON IN FIVE, COMMANDER RAITH,” announced Tilir, Yema’s coordinator. He stood at the door, glancing uneasily at the guards beside him.

  “Thank you,” said Lucifer, frowning.

  “You’re nervous,” I whispered.

  “No,” he said, “I’m just…”

  “Nervous.”

  The frown melted away, and he grinned. “You’re distracting me. I need to go over my speech one more time.”

  I nodded, retreating from the couch.

  My Aeon chimed. Drat this thing.

  It was Namah, and although I should have found his persistence annoying, this had marked the third ring within the hour. I clipped the headset and chip behind my ear.

  What is it?

  Yahweh, we have an emergency.

  I was startled by his greeting. What do you mean?

  Fifty people have been rushed to Adonai with terminal emphysema. We’ve lost three since admittance. Doctors around Crylle have been asking for you. It’s Heaven-wide.

  I said nothing for a second, staring ahead. I glanced at Lucifer, who was now looking at me.

  I can’t do anything right now. I’m in Sanctum all evening.

  You have to come back! We need as many doctors as we can get! Commander Raith has to issue a medical alert so we can contain the illness before it spreads to everyone!

  … That’s not for me to decide. One moment.

  I removed the chip and held it out to Lucifer. He looked at it, quizzically.

  “It’s Dr. Ipsin,” I said. “He… has news for you.”

  And with that, I had signed my death warrant. Metaphorically, anyway.

  He took the headset and Aeon from me. After a minute or two Lucifer severed the call and grabbed my arm, ushering me out of the rehearsal room. He found Tilir in the hall on our way to the private port and told him that his speech would have to be pushed back until after the next act. As reluctant as Tilir seemed, he obliged and then once again I was tugged down the hall, pouting the entire way.

  He released me at the port, and we shivered under Sanctum’s winter. The sky was black and cloudless, yet flecks of snow drifted around us, salting our clothes and hair. Neither of us had brought a coat.

  “People have been terminally ill for weeks, and you didn’t tell me?” accused my father.

  “None of them were terminal until now.” When Lucifer only glared at me, I held out my hands. “What, would you have had me burden you with another problem? The conflict with Sanctum was crushing you already.”

  The anger on his face waned. “I appreciate your concern, but an epidemic is a burden you can’t shoulder. That’s my job, not yours.”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t an epidemic until now. For all I knew it was a new strain of common cold. I already scheduled a treatment trial for next week; it’s not like I was shoving the issue under the rug.”

  Lucifer seemed conflicted, gazing at the port door. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be at Theosyne addressing the public.”

  “No, this is too important. I’ll go, but you need to give your speech. It’s our only shot at cementing the—”

  A rumble beneath our feet stopped my mouth. As I looked down, the tremors spread from the port to Yema’s wall, cracking it like an egg. Guards ran from the theater’s exterior and to the docks as pieces of cement rained on us. Yema was collapsing.

  Lucifer grabbed my arm and followed the guards, shielding his head with his other hand. Our wings released and we soared toward the exit as ash and white dust savaged the air. The guards’ screams broke the thunder as they were crushed by fallen stones, and the sounds of their deaths brought me to the conclusion that, at any second, we’d be buried with them.

  But then cold, fresh air invaded my lungs and I finally opened my eyes, looking at Yema from across the lot—caved in, on fire, collapsing further into a bed of smoking rubble.

  The protestors’ cries had gone from angry to terrified, and we ducked around a parking pillar as survivors stormed away from the ruins and into the arms of confused, horror-stricken patrol guards. Crafts loomed overhead, while Sanctum PB reporters projected hysteria to the masses.

  I watched everything with a hand covering my mouth. Had we not been at the port, we would have been dead. Lucifer would have been in mid-speech, and—

  Lucifer would have been in mid-speech.

  Qaira.

  I spun and gazed up at my father, who surveyed the carnage with a knowing scowl. He’d come to that conclusion much quicker than I.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said, hushed.

  “Our crafts have b-been destroyed.”

  “We’ll find another one. We can’t be here; they’ll claim us responsible.”

  I looked at the crowd amassing around the gate. There were few survivors, none of them angels. My stomach flipped. I felt nauseous.

  “Yahweh, come.”

  I followed Lucifer as he sought cover in the smoke.

  ***

  Abandoned crafts were strewn across Main Street, their drivers having left them with the keys still in their ignitions to gape at the explosion. At Yema’s collapse, everything in Sanctum seemed to stop.

  We darted from cover of the alleys and hopped inside the closest one. Lucifer revved the craft and took flight, fumbling with the rudimentary—if not primitive—controls. Qaira had told us that he’d upgraded their crafts several years ago, and if this was the upgrade, Heaven help them.

  We traveled along the aeroway with our heads down as clusters of Sanctum guards and military sped by, on the way to the scene. Lucifer attempted to hijack the radio and connect it to his Aeon, making it two-way transmissible, no doubt to warn Theosyne and our militia. I had no idea what he planned to do when we reached aerospace borders, but that was the last thing on my mind.

  Sanctum’s night was advantageous, so dark that we were kept hidden in shadows. I huddled against the passenger seat, hugging my knees, watching lights and crafts whir by the window. “We’re abandoning those people.”

  “What could we have done by staying there?” asked Lucifer, casting me a sidelong glance. “Dug them out with our hands? We’re marked.”

  “Are we completely sure about that?”

  “One hundred percent. I would have been on stage. The timing was too perfect. I knew Qaira was up to something…” He trailed off, sighing. “But I never thought he’d use his own people as props. I underestimated him. Or overestimated him, really.”

  I looked back out the window, my reflection sullen.

  “We need to be out of the city before he finds out we’re alive.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I’ll rally our troops at Theosyne and we’ll march on Sanctum. Qaira will get his war.”

  No, not again.

  “We could destroy this world with another war!” I cried. “Sanctum’s technology is almost as good as ours, and the Nehel won’t use the same reservation as us!”

  “Yahweh, Qaira just murdered twenty thousand people—half of them angels—all to kill me. Do you really think this is going to end here? Do you really think that he hasn’t already planned to march on Heaven the moment I was gone?”

  I didn’t reply, only lowered my head.

  “We will march on Sanctum and overthrow its Parliament. Qaira will have a public execution, the Nehel way. No more compromises. No more negotiations. He is a genocidal tyrant who needs to be put down.”

  Lucifer didn’t look himself while he’d said tha
t. Seldom did he shout, and he hadn’t shouted then, but his fury was detectable by the quiver in his voice and the fire in his eyes. Only twice had I seen him like this, and it was understandable. I completely understood his reason for war, but…

  Violence and death did not cure violence and death. It was like trying to extinguish fire with fire.

  As we neared the Border Patrol station, I huddled further into my seat. It was barricaded—apparently Sanctum Law Enforcement had made the executive decision to seal off the city. We were trapped.

  For the first time ever, Lucifer muttered an obscenity.

  We looped back to the aeroway, considering our (lack of) options.

  “We need to find Leid, or Ara,” I said. “If we tell them what happened, they’ll believe us. I know they will.”

  “Even if they do, Qaira is the Regent. If he orders our execution, his brother has no choice but to exact his charge.”

  “He wouldn’t. Not if Qaira was responsible for this.”

  Lucifer took a second to register what I was trying to say, tinkering again with the radio. “So, you want me to fly to Eroqam and request to see the Commandant? You want me to fly to Qaira’s house?”

  “Ara would still be at Yema.”

  “We’re not going back there. We already ran; it would look too suspicious.”

  “I told you not to run.”

  He glared at me.

  Before Lucifer could say any more, thunder broke the sky. We looked behind us, toward the silhouette of Eroqam that loomed over Upper Sanctum.

  More thunder.

  The western spire suddenly snapped like a twig, crushing the street below. Now there were two fires raging across Sanctum.

  Neither of us said a thing, struggling to make sense of what just happened.

  More spires fell—and then Eroqam collapsed in the same manner as Yema, a cloud of black smoke and debris billowing into the sky.

  Maybe we were wrong. Maybe this wasn’t Qaira’s doing at all.

  Sanctum was under attack. Could it have been… us?

  But then the buildings on Main Street shivered. The air rippled as a dome of light, laden with violet sparks, enclosed the district. Flecks of supercharged matter glittered in the flow of reverse-gravity, fuzzing our craft’s transmission signal.

  At the sight, Lucifer floored the pedal, swerving back toward the border station. Apparently he’d decided that getting shot down by Sanctum Guard wasn’t nearly as lethal as sticking around, because that was not the phenomenon of any angel or Nehelian war-machine—;

  It was Vel’Haru, priming a field for battle.

  XIX

  THEORY OF ANNIHILATION

  MAGHIR WAS PLAYING A CRUEL JOKE ON ME. I had survived an eighty-five story plummet into a bed of jagged coua.

  Alive was an overstatement. I wasn’t dead, yet hardly alive—alive just enough to watch my city disintegrate in bubbles of hot, violet light. The sight was beautiful and terrifying, but awe quickly gave way to devastation.

  Bodies were strewn across the street, hundreds more fell soundlessly, like raindrops against the roar of Sanctum’s end. The sky was decorated with stardust and black feathers, and my eyes closed as they brushed against my face.

  My eyes yearned to stay closed. I was so tired.

  So tired.

  But the sound of shattering glass knocked my lids back, and I saw the strange bubbles erupt, fading in darkness and fire. Explosions rumbled the ground, and the few buildings still standing shook, shedding layers from their structure.

  A body rolled through the ground-level window of a high-rise, skidding into the middle of the street.

  A silhouette pursued it, and the body got to its feet.

  They both became blurs, moving too quickly to see.

  More blurs, more carnage, more confusing shifts in gravity that left a painful pressure in my ears. Thoughts grew less cohesive and cold tingles drifted down my chest. My vision started to tunnel, and then I knew that I was dying.

  I drifted to the sound of sobs, its echoes carried by the wind and flames, and my last ounce of strength had been used for recognition.

  The cries belonged to Leid.

  ***

  “Regent?”

  I stirred at the whisper, emitting a croak of despair at the idea that I was still alive.

  The pain was too much to bear, yet my body refused to give up. My heartbeat was slow, paired as it tried to pump oxygen to damaged, unrepairable organs.

  I opened my eyes, staring at Calenus Karim.

  He sat beside me on the coua bed, pity and sadness behind his gaze. His eyes drifted over my broken, shredded wings and shattered limbs, and then he shook his head.

  “You didn’t listen to me. You didn’t listen to me and now here you are.” Calenus looked out at the ruins of Sanctum, a proud city now nothing more than a field of smoldering wreckage. Ash flakes drifted to the ground like snow, covering the ruins in a soft, white blanket. The dead were only distinguishable by contours along the ground—tiny silo-shaped hills—and soon I would join them.

  “Here you are,” he said again, lowering his head. And then he laughed softly, but there was no happiness in it. “Leid will be the end of us all. She’s like a vial of sweet-tasting poison, and even though we know it’s poison, we still drink her. Fools, all of us.”

  I winced as a rattle in my chest shot fire through my lungs. Calenus put a hand on my shoulder, easing me. “When she finally snapped out of it, she begged for your life, even knowing there can be no witnesses. She begged and begged, and she has that way about her, you know. I told her you will die, and she thinks you will die, but alas…”

  Calenus leaned in, wrapping his arms beneath my shoulders. Excruciating pain spasmed through my body and I tried to scream, but the only thing that came from my mouth was a sigh. He lifted me from the ground, lips grazing my ear.

  “I am not the monster she thinks I am. Now sleep.”

  XX

  REBIRTH

  Purging complete.

  Initiating temporal lobe activity…

  Complete. Standby as resuscitation process begins…

  …Loading…

  …Loading…

  Complete.

  MY SKIN TINGLED AS COLD AIR COURSED THROUGH THE POD. The door slid open with a hiss, and the warm, soothing liquid drained away, leaving me naked and shivering in the shadowy recesses of the Nexus hive.

  Everything hurt.

  Aczeva watched from a stool beside the terminal, his electric eyes so bright that I had to squint against them. “Are you alright?” he asked, cautiously.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Five minutes on the mark. The change is already apparent.”

  Confused, I looked at my reflection in the pane of the pod hatch. My eyes were bright silver, ringed with crimson. Nehelian eyes—something I had lacked until now.

  “H-How?” I whispered. How had the Nexus been able to hide my true appearance?

  “Phenotype suppression,” said Aczeva. “Your memories were gone, your heritage gone with them. Mind over matter, your Honor.”

  Honor.

  I lowered my head, letting everything sink in. The lunacy of it all brought a twisted smile to my lips. But the smile was not a happy one—no, it was an angry one. A furious one; the fury so pure that all I could do was grin.

  I remembered Jerusalem and the look Leid had worn once she’d unmasked me. Oh, how priceless.

  “Did you find what you were searching for?” Aczeva asked as I stepped from the pod, still shivering. He handed me my clothes and I dressed, thumbing the Jury insignia across the arm of my jacket. Arbitrary it had been, only to mean so much now.

  “Yes,” I said, after a long silence. “Thank you.”

  Aczeva recited the sanitization procedure as he led me out of the hive, and I stared at the back of his head with eyes like daggers. He hadn’t just given me back the knowledge of who I was, but also what I’d done while in service to the Nexus—all the worlds I’d s
een, all the people I’d slain... It made my deeds as Regent seem soft by comparison.

  We stepped onto the floating disc and descended to the entrance.

  “What is the purpose of the Nexus?” I asked.

  “The purpose?”

  “The objective. Surely it has one.”

  Aczeva hesitated, uncertain of my meaning, but then said, “The Anakaari is an empire, and we can’t run an empire without alliances and funds.”

  “Like Exo’daius.”

  Aczeva hesitated again. “Sort of. But your lot lacks an empire.”

  I laughed. “That’s very true. And do you know what else we lack?”

  As we neared the dock, he fiddled with the control panel. “What’s that?”

  “Mercy.”

  Aczeva turned to look at me, right before I kicked him off the platform. He fell into the bottomless crevice, flailing like a torch into the darkness.

  The way in which the Anakaari moved—gliding, floating almost—made me question whether they could fly, but my fear was soothed as his screams faded.

  Good riddance.

  Docked, I stepped off the platform and made my way to the sanitization chamber. The group of scientists waiting at the door noticed I was chaperone-less and stepped back, concerned. They seemed even more concerned when I released my scythes.

  The Nexus couldn’t stand another minute, and I had the power to tear it all down. This place had much to say about the nature of the Anakaari Empire, and in return I would offer up some truth to their opinions of God Killers.

  But my list of to-do’s didn’t stop there. After the Nexus burned I would return to Purgatory—;

  And have a nice, long chat with my lovely, deceitful wife.

  ~*~

  An angel and demon sat down for a game of chess.

  One left a victor, the other defeated,

  And the events that followed cost the lives of too many.