“Not if we can prevent it from becoming one,” Kilpeni retorted, and the manifestation of the stone smirked. The expression split his face like a scar.
“Never been about blood. The little spit from the center knows.” He pointed at her more like gesturing to an object than a person. “No story here. No heroes – no villain. Every soul knows that what’s coming doesn’t have a cost unless you’re the one manning the rules.” Jess opened her mouth to speak, but Itzal’s ferocious stare silenced her before he growled. “No commandments here.”
“Itzal.”
The smoke rose as his body hissed with the heat. His eyes burned like the forges which Jess had only ever read about from Hephaestus to the bellows of the Industrial Age of men. Popping came as he rounded on Kilpeni. Flashes of almost light sparked across his skin threatening that the fire which burned within him would be set upon the world. Light bloomed in his throat, and all the dragons in all the stories could not compare to the sight of a creature so close to a man burning from within. His flesh darkened before during white and peeling as he bore his teeth and growled like a wild beast.
“Ain’t me. That ain’t ever been me. I don’t give a rat’s hind mouth how many times you put those sounds and me in the same idea – that ain’t me. Don’t dare think you got me figured, brother.” He took a gasping breath, and his skin returned to its dusted tan. “The only thing keepin’ this whole mad hole in check is him. Where’s he?”
Silence would have been pleasant, but the world filled the void as it always did. Thunder rolled, and stones clattered to the ground much like hail. Wind tore across the desert, and, if nothing else, Jess heard her heart drumming faster and faster in her chest. Kilpeni did not answer. Itzal waited with that sort of desperation that comes from escaping a disaster and seeking even a single word that someone exceptionally important made it too. Jess tried not to show the truth on her face because her mind followed where Kilpeni’s bread trail would eventually bring Itzal. Him – the one who traveled with Itzal and Kilpeni was Set. Set was one of the stones. Perhaps he was one in her bag, or he was one they hadn’t found yet; however, the reality remained the same. Set was dead.
Throwing his hat to the ground where it burst into flames, Itzal shook his head. “No. No – no – you – he ain’t – not him – that ain’t his name – he ain’t got one. No – no.”
He stumbled backwards turning in circles as if he was suddenly perceiving the world anew. His eyes darkened to black, and the burning of his flesh cooled until no smoke rose. Itzal gritted his teeth; his brows furrowed before his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched. Almost as though they moved against his will, tears cut through the dust on his skin burrowing rivers of bronze. Itzal ran a hand down his long face. Setting his hand to the side, small droplets slid down his fingers to fall and vanish within the air before the ground.
“He gave everything to maintain the balance,” Kilpeni informed him.
Itzal stood with his back to them staring at the oncoming storm. His shoulders shook as he whispered, “Everything – he gave up everything? He died because you were too weak to do what needed to be done. Who? Who was the enemy then? Who was so difficult to defeat that he needed to sacrifice himself to stitch up a blasted hole?” He rounded on Kilpeni. His eyes consumed in fire that blistered out from within. “If he died, you killed him. The stones were your fault. You were the one who had all those ideas. Echo,” he pointed accusingly at Kilpeni. “Listened to you! You were the one who told her how to get through. You killed us!” Itzal’s skin peeled back as he burned.
“I did everything I could -,” Kilpeni said, but Itzal paid him no mind.
Turning on Jess, Itzal growled more like a wild animal than a man. “Is he in there? Around your neck? Is he there? Like some courting bobble?”
Kilpeni raised his hands and moved closer to Itzal, “If you have any respect for the dead, you’ll let him sleep.”
There were no shadows on Itzal’s face as what was humanoid and familiar became a body of swirling flames. Throwing Kilpeni aside, Itzal stalked forwards. There was no differentiation between his eyes and the rest of what should have been his face. His limbs swung melding with his body before separating and melding once more. He swaggered closer – a barely contained explosion that surged like a newly born star. Jess stumbled backwards quickly until the ground rumbled and cracked forcing her to quickly move diagonally or fall into a newly revealed river of the liquid metal.
“Stop,” her tone shook. “Stand down!”
“There are no commands here,” Itzal’s voice crackled in time with a tongue of white hot fire.
Jess frowned pulling the stones from beneath her shirt, “I’m not a part of this! I have no idea if Set -”
“Shut up! That ain’t his name!”
Kilpeni rushed at Itzal. Large flesh wings formed and beat against the flames pushing Itzal back though he continued to struggle regardless. Jess stared at the two in horror. She had seen Kilpeni contort his body and knew that his humanoid form was more for her than out of any sort of convenience. However, there was a question that had buzzed around her mind throughout the second into the third and followed her all the way to this moment. She had no way of truly knowing whether she had chosen the right side. Everything had been a matter of necessity and fear. Itzal was terrifying. A body of fire that spread and swirled not even close to human though she could still hear his screams. He seemed like a villain or even, if things were a bit more complex, incapable of determining right from wrong. The question lingered – what if he was a victim. Stories often simplified the dynamics of the world, and even modern literature pulled away from the true grays though more and more were wondering into that realm.
She had felt strong in the third dimension. Feeling capable of anything that the world threw at her, she’d been nigh invincible in her own mind. The fourth had brought her to her knees. Consumed and spat back like a virus under constant attack, Jess had only hoped for a quick escape. In the fifth, she’d been backed between a river of metal and an animate wall of fire. The only protection she had was Kilpeni who was on the edge of burning up in a blaze of incarnated fury. There was no answer written on the walls of this world, and nothing that could be transformed into a weapon against fire. Kilpeni stretched wrapping his body around Itzal in an attempt to stifle the flames, but they burned all the brighter within him. He was dying and there was nothing that she could do.
“Stop!” All the same uselessness she’d felt back home returned ten thousand fold. “Please! You’re killing him! Let him go! Let him go, and …” It shouldn’t have even taken a second of thought. There should not have been a doubt in her mind exactly what she needed to say to get Itzal’s attention, but the hiccup came anyways. All the breath left her until she could barely get out the words. “I’ll give you the stones – I’ll give him back to you.”
The fire was there one moment and gone the next as Itzal slammed Kilpeni into the ground and left him there. Smoke rose from his flesh, and he looked much the same as he had when he descended from the storm, yet his eyes held an intense madness that burned between orange, red, and black. He trudged towards her, and Jess opened the pouch. The stones sat there untouched by what went on around them. There were six, she reasoned. There had to be six though she could not count them no matter how many times she stared at their simple, unremarkable edges. There was no way of parsing one from the other. There was nothing that would tell her which was Set or if any of them were.
“Give it here,” Itzal growled reaching out with a hand tongued by flames around his nails. He was barely contained within the boundaries of his skin.
“Don’t,” Kilpeni cried, reaching up from the ground where he laid broken into pieces that seemed irreparable to Jess. “Jess, gods please, don’t.”
Itzal whirled around roaring, “Stay down, or I will tear you apart.”
“I said he gave up everything. I never said he was a stone,” Kilpeni replied. His body slowly reformed as he pushed hi
mself to his feet.
The stones thrummed in Jess’s hand though the rough fabric of the pouch separated them from her skin. Itzal’s eyes flickered between Kilpeni and Jess before he snorted and said, “You lie.”
The smooth metal found its way to her hand, and she swore she wasn’t a killer only to herself in the back of her mind even as the weight of it ran up her arm. She flicked the blade open. Itzal took a step back towards Kilpeni. The air fled from Jess’s lungs. The knife in her hand had never seen this much death before. It was used to sticks and the edges of desks when no one was looking and time seemed too vast to hold. The words repeated like a mantra in her mind as Jess drove the knife into Itzal’s back. She wasn’t a killer. Jess swore again, staring at the small stone that flickered in between the flames the only solid piece beyond the thin skin that held the fire in place.
His eyes flickered in all directions as his eyebrows twitched. The skin around her hand was thinner than paper, and he was as light as the smoke that rose from him as she lifted him and threw him to the ground. Desperation fluttered across the pages of his face then dulled, and she wretched her hand free. Another stone – as indescribable as the rest – yet covered in blood. Jess stared at the red that dripped from her hand though Aislings did not bleed. Like a clam-shell cut open for its pearl, Itzal’s body sank down to the ground. The flesh of his face peeled away as fodder for the fire that spread across his skin.
Jess dropped the stone with a shriek. Shaking, the stone blazed brighter than his eyes. It seemed to call out the same accusations Itzal had. Kneeling down beside the stone, she rocked slightly back and forth watching the steam curl up in angry, soundless screams. Whatever secrets Kilpeni had between him and Itzal, they were his. She had no need for them. Lies, however, were beasts she despised.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, though exhaustion swallowed the tears that might have risen to the corners of her eyes.
Above her head, Kilpeni held an umbrella to block out the strange storm. She did her best to not consider how stretched his body was and which parts exactly had become the umbrella. Her entire body ached as she stared down at the small little stone waiting for it to cool. Steam rose from the stone in curls as it had from Itzal’s skin. The grief carved into his face was burned behind her eyelids.
“Do you…” She tried to sound calm, but her voice quivered. “Think that maybe the people we’re fighting aren’t so evil?”
“That wasn’t evil. That wasn’t anything,” Kilpeni replied.
Jess shook her head. “Did he love him? Do you think he loved him?”
Kilpeni sighed, crouching to be nearer to her while he maintained the cover above both their heads. “I know you better than anyone – than any human ever could. I know you – death is a peace for Itzal.”
Jess reached out and picked up the still warm stone. Slipping it into the pouch, she refused to look Kilpeni in the eye as she asked, “What about Echo?”
“I told you what I know about Echo.”
“The Compass did it, right? The Compass pulled her back and turned her into a stone,” Jess insisted standing slowly, so Kilpeni could follow.
“No.” She looked at him in uncertainty as Kilpeni confessed, “I did.”
“How are the stones made? How did you make them?”
“They were made by sending an Aisling through and pulling them back. Doing so acted as a stitching of sorts to block when holes were torn into the shield between the second and the core. The Compass cannot affect the core or the shield. That’s why Aisling exist - to keep what's inside in and what’s outside out.” He balanced the umbrella and carved into his skin with his free hand as Jess cringed. “Worse case, we puppeted golems. They formed a shell around us making a peace of the second on the core, but those didn’t last long, and they were doomed to be abused, so we made sure nobody could make them again. There were too many people trying to get out - powerful people who were not pleased when the shields went up, so I determined how to get through to confront those people; however, Echo went through before I was finished with the design. Before the Compass and I figured out the golems. Echo’s passage prevented – temporarily – my own, so I sought and fixed the problem.”
“So you knew the Aisling of Narcissus. You had to in order to drag her back through to the second,” Jess pointed out, replacing the pouch around her neck.
“Yes.”
“You said that you pitied that Aisling for being forced to watch. You said that you imagined it was a relief. Was it?” Jess glanced down at the words requesting entrance into the sixth dimension. “Who were they?”
“You always concern yourself with unimportant details. The better question is whether the rest understood the consequences of what they did prior to becoming stones. In that, yes – they knew. Each and every other Aisling who became a stone understood that they were being used as a scab that would form around the tears taking all the possibilities that leaked out into themselves to prevent contamination. They understood. The first six were to end the damage from the inside. There are no longer groups of people pushing outwards. Now, we only have to care about those trying to get in. No one has gotten in yet, but the stones could be used to reactivate the tears. You saw the damage. On this side of the Core, they do the opposite of the golems. Make everything core-like. If all those stones were activated at once, the shield couldn’t hold. There isn’t another way, better or not, to heal what had been done,” Kilpeni explained. His fingers fluttered then he repeated, “They understood.”
Jess sighed as a portal opened and sucked them into the sixth. “They knew. It’s different.”
Chapter Twelve
Silver metal from the river had looped around them forming a doorway. Emptiness stood beyond, but a force like a cyclone pulled them through into the sixth dimension. The sixth was warmer than Jess had expected. There were random pieces of what looked to be debris, and light scattered in and out as if the stars were playing hide-and-seek. Overall, the sixth was lit by a dull glow and filled with strange floating formations and clouds that circled as if collapsing around a drain. Jess did her best to not consider the possibility that a single black hole formed the center for the circular pull.
“How am I breathing?” Jess asked, staring out before she realized that Kilpeni was struggling to catch up as she was a few feet further along than he was.
His arms stretched and wrapped around her. Pulling her close, he frowned. “How did you breathe underwater?”
“Because I’m from the core world and adapt? That seems a little too simple,” Jess retorted sourly.
His arms loosened around her until he held her gently to his side before he noted, “Yet you have no skepticism that a being created solely to protect another species is capable of love.”
“You’re a different species – not psychopaths.”
Smiling softly, he pulled her a bit closer. “How can you be a romantic?”
“I may have had enough terrible relationships to disillusion myself that I might find love easily, but I’ve seen it. There are a number of couples in my life plenty capable of reminding me what I’m missing,” she said then pushed away the thoughtfulness that threatened to fill her soul. “This isn’t the time to think about that.”
“Isn’t it?”
Though she gazed out onto the expanse, Jess glared as if it were his face. “I’m not dying here, Kilpeni. I’m going to survive this, and when I fall in love, it’s going to be sudden and all at once. I don’t need to talk about it to know that it’s going to happen. I don’t need to discuss something good to overcome how much this sucks.”
“It is my greatest wish that you find someone who deserves you.” His breath whispered over the side of her neck, stirring the wisps and curls of hair.
Jess glanced back at him, but Kilpeni stared out into the glow. His lips set to a line and eyes unreadable. The phrase fell heavy between them leaving little room to back away from the unthinkable edge that they were approaching. His arms remained a
bout her waist, but her mind found no safety there.
“Yeah, I wish you all the luck in the world too.” She joked, trying out an accent that left Kilpeni confounded. She shrugged. “Forget it.”
The silence fell over them uncomfortable and awkward like a too small blanket. Around them, bits and pieces of what looked to be exploded planets swirled though there were no easily recognizable shapes, and Jess could not find even the smallest thing moving in the strange gravitational swirl. Majesty and endless possibility floated before them. Hues of a thousand colors and shades between scattered in the trails of stardust. Orbiting in one’s own right around an invisible force was less impressive without the stars and planets to color the strange dull light that refracted across the black from sources her eyes could not perceive. If Jess squinted, there were some forms in the distance that orbited in various ellipsoids; otherwise, the emptiness was just that. Even the scattered pieces of something were far from vibrant.
A small creature danced across the sameness. Jess watched the being’s hopping movements and insect-like wings. Another of the same leapt across the surface of a nearby boulder with two pairs of wings like a dragonfly. While the world around them was monotone, they were bursts of iridescent color. They left trails of light in their wake like small lasers as they spun here and there throughout the emptiness. One with shimmering blue wings noticed them and glided from one orbit into the next until it fell into the pull in front of them. The only difference that Jess could see besides size between the creature and a dragonfly was the small bubbles that covered the majority of its skin and shone brighter when the glow grew softer.
“She’s a space skimmer,” Kilpeni whispered. “Photosynthetic cells and luminescent cells to augment production.”
“She’s beautiful.” Jess moved to reach out when the skimmer took flight bouncing out of the range of her hand and off into another place.
Aisling Page 12
