by D M Wozniak
“Mand?” Marine utters behind his back.
He ignores her.
Marine then pivots to us and approaches her side of the rift.
“What have you done?” she demands, her voice high-pitched and tight.
“What have I done?” Chimeline answers, taking another step forward. “I’ve given that monster the death that he deserves.”
Marine’s mouth is half-open, as if preparing to speak, but no words come out. Instead, she looks down into the darkness of the rift, and then back to Mander.
“It will be slow and painful,” Chimeline adds. “Just like what my sisters had to endure.”
I step to Chimeline’s side, gently grasping her shoulders. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” I whisper into her ear from behind. “He still has the voidstones.”
“I don’t care,” she says, tears falling down her dusty face. “I want him to know that it was me.”
Mander takes the white bowl, full of water, and dumps it over his head.
It completely drenches him, turning his emerald shirt a darker shade of midnight.
“You’re wrong,” he snarls, turning back to her.
This seems to catch her off guard, the way she turns back to me in reticence. The only sound is the dripping of water onto the floor from his body.
“My power is the ultimate antidote. It can undo the damage you have done.”
Mander then grasps his three voidstones.
Instinctively, I reach for mine and find only a soiled, white undershirt.
Suddenly, Chimeline is pulled out of my hands and glides through the air like a marionette on a string. Arms ahead of her and head tilted back, dust trails off her body.
With a cry of surprise and protest, her body flies towards the rift and Mander in the distance.
I sprint after her, towards the edge, but she crosses it and then passes Marine’s side before I even take a few steps.
In a heartbeat, she’s in Mander’s arms.
In Soteria
“I think a little retribution is in order,” Mander says. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
He lets go of all three voidstones, but he still absently touches the gold settings around his neck with one hand. He stares out of the southern, open wall, as if contemplating his options.
In his other hand he squeezes Chimeline’s writhing wrist.
I ignore his taunts and spin toward Blythe. “How is that even possible?” I say under my breath.
He blinks rapidly, but no word come forth.
I grab his shirt with both fists, getting his attention. “Blythe,” I say through clenched teeth. “How did Mander do that? I thought they were protecting us.”
“The enervated are protecting us.”
“Then explain what just happen—”
“You and I were both in the void together,” he interrupts, his voice maddeningly calm. “We performed eleutheria. Chimeline was not there. They do not know her name.”
“Her name?”
“Think of it as the signet ring of her soul.”
I push him away.
“It is only a guess, master voider,” he adds. “They have no reason to protect her in the way that they protect us.”
“But she's with us,” I protest.
“Not according to them.”
Shaking my head, I turn back to Mander. He’s regarding us in silence, probably content to see us quarrel.
“Let her go,” I command.
But he holds on tight as Chimeline continues to struggle.
“Or what, Dem? Are you or the graycloak going to call down the enervated on me? Or maybe the judgment of the Unnamed?”
After I don’t reply, he lets out a short laugh. “Your place in all of this is as a witness. You have no say in the matter.”
The bastard is right.
The rift lies before Blythe and me. It’s at least ten feet wide. Too far to jump across, even with a running start. There’s a fleeting chance that a soldier like Colu could make it, but he’s gone.
Looking down, I study the splintered mid-section of the sub-floor. Massive wooden trunks are split cleanly apart, as though they were kindling. Below this is a maze of stone blocks, the foundation. And then soil, sand, and rock. Layers upon layers of natural rock continue into darkness below.
Sounds of struggle draw my gaze back up. As Mander wipes his sweaty face with a shoulder, Chimeline lashes out in a frenzy, tearing away from his handhold.
She’s only able to take a few steps toward Marine.
I know it’s voidance at work, even if I don’t catch him quickly clutching a black stone near his black heart.
A tunnel of wind snakes through the room, clearing a path of the glass shards that litter the ground, sending them in all directions.
Chimeline is knocked forcefully to the ground, and a moment later, Marine’s dress flutters like a storm.
“I never should have given them up,” I mumble to myself.
Blythe grabs my shoulder, turning me to face him. There’s a cut on the bridge of his nose that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Don’t say that. It was the absolute right thing to do.”
I extend my hand to the rift and whisper urgently. “But I can’t do anything, Blythe. I’m useless.”
“If you had them now, what would you do?” he asks with a raised, hairless brow.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He’s nodding quickly as I speak. “Yes, but where does it end?”
“It ends here.”
“No! There would always be another evil stain which you’d try to wash away with more evil. And that is the real trap.”
I shake my head forcefully. “Not like this. If I had known that she was in danger, I would have never done it. I would have waited.” I exhale in disgust. “Why are they allowing this?”
Mander yanks up a screaming Chimeline off the floor. Blood gushes from her nose. He inquisitively picks up something else next to her. A small, dark object—perhaps a shard of glass. Then a second one.
“It is the Unnamed who allows evil to happen, not the enervated,” Blythe whispers. “And if he is allowing it, then there is another way.”
“Well, I’m going to find it,” I say, walking away from him.
I follow the curvature of the island, almost at a running pace. It forms a large circle almost fifty feet in diameter—shortly less than the width of the room.
I’m searching for anything to help me. A part of the chasm that is narrower than the rest. A wooden beam that hasn’t fractured. Something to walk across. Roots to jump to and climb. Anything.
But there’s nothing. The chasm is ten feet wide, no matter where I go. It’s perfectly symmetrical and consistent in its design. We’re trapped on an island within the center of the Celestium.
I quickly make my way over to the destroyed remains of the writing desk and chandelier. I rifle through collapsed drawers, looking for a spare voidstone. But again, there is nothing. I could throw an iron finial weight at Mander, or perhaps spear him from afar with a wooden fragment of the desk. That’s it. These are the options I am reduced to. Sticks and stones, against a madman with inconceivable power.
Storming back to the front of the rift and next to Blythe, my eyes meet Marine’s.
“Do something!” I urgently tell her.
She looks away.
“You have a voidstone!” I add, but it falls upon deaf ears.
Mander notices her dismissal, and it seems to fill him like wind in a sail. He stands up straight while grasping Chimeline again.
Then, holding up something between his thumb and forefinger, he speaks to me, almost absently, while studying it.
“Your ex-wife is smarter than you, Dem. She knows the difference between a nobody and a conqueror. She knew it the night she left you, and she knows it now.”
Against the sunbathed western wall, I clearly make out what he’s holding.
It’s a large floorboard nail, longer than a finger.
Mander
nods to himself, lets go of Chimeline, and then grabs his voidstone again.
The nail leaves his hand, flies through the air, and then darts downward, into Chimeline’s foot.
A second one follows, just like the first.
Her scream pierces the broken Celestium. It’s a mix of pain and confusion. But all I hear is abandonment.
Chimeline’s head is cast downward, the blood from her nose still drips down her white shirt and dusty tan pants. She slowly squats down to the floor, her hands out to her sides, fingertips splayed wide to balance herself without moving her bound feet.
Marine turns to Mander, a look of shock on her face. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping her in place while I get to work,” he answers, letting go of the stone and then wiping his reddened scalp once again, flicking the blood and sweat away.
Like the lull between two cresting waves, Chimeline’s screams momentarily subside. She takes a few manic deep breaths, as if she has been holding her breath underwater.
But then she tightly shuts her eyes and shifts her knees. Her squatting legs are in an awkward position and seem to be giving out. This forces her to check her balance again with her hands, as her sharp cries return.
There is nothing I can do.
“You’re mad,” I say, my gaze on Mander unflinching.
“Embracing the natural order of the universe is not madness,” he says while calmly regarding Chimeline. “It is common sense.”
I shake my head, knowing that his justification of this cruelty only makes him more dangerous.
“Have the enervated taught you nothing?” I ask.
His chuckles turn into coughs.
“You laugh, but you know the truth,” I add. “They would not protect me without cause.”
When his coughing spasm ceases, he purses his lips and puts his two hands to them, almost as if he’s praying.
“You are right. They are protecting you. Even without your voidstones. You would be dead by now a hundred times over if they were not. But their protection can only go so far.” He drops his hands and points a finger at Chimeline. “This whore, she does not seem to share that protection. Apparently, she’s nothing to them. A nobody in this world and the next.”
“Mand?” pleads Marine. “Let’s just go. You need to heal yourself.”
He drops his finger. “Yes, I do. But this will all be over in less than a quarterbell, when I have opened up a doorway.”
“What doorway?” Marine asks.
“A doorway of retribution. They stole from me, and now, in return, I will steal from them.”
Marine furrows her brow and motions to Chimeline's feet with a look of revulsion. “But this is unnecessary—”
“This is what she deserves!” he snaps. Pointing to me, he repeats, “They stole from me!”
I close my eyes in disbelief, once I understand what he’s referring to. “One cannot steal what is not owned,” I say.
“Well said,” mumbles Blythe at my side.
“You will come to learn how wrong you are.”
Carefully taking off one of his voidstone necklaces, Mander places it on the floor. It’s stone side up, a good ten feet from his side of the rift, and only a few feet away from the weeping Chimeline.
Then he backs away, nodding to himself, and slowly settles down to the floor, legs crossed.
“This is something I planned on teaching you one day,” Mander says to Marine, who stands many feet away. “But now is as good of a time as any.”
She takes a step closer while Mander looks to Blythe and me.
“In soteria,” he says.
Blythe inhales sharply.
I glance curiously at him before looking back to the sitting Mander.
“You promised that you would let my friends go,” I say.
“I did,” he replies. “But that was before you revealed your indiscretion.” He slowly shakes his head. “Eleutheria, Dem. How could you?”
Blythe falls to his knees. “Not this,” he mumbles. “Anything but this.”
I look to Blythe, my gaze lingering this time. “What is he doing?” I ask him.
Blythe doesn’t answer.
Mander grabs one of the two remaining voidstones around his neck, as the one on the ground instantly glows a soft white. It almost resembles the butter-yellow sunshine from beyond the western wall.
“Blythe, what is Mander doing?” I ask under my breath.
“I am sorry, Dem,” he answers. He closes his eyes and bows his head. “I am so sorry.”
I step even closer to the rift. The tips of my shoes hang over the abyss, glass shards and dust falling away into darkness. “Mander!” I shout.
His smile deepens as he puts a finger to his lips with his free hand. He looks toward me but not at me, like some blind beggar from the second ring. “Time to concentrate.”
A deep rumbling begins.
“Mander!” I repeat, my voice a roar.
But the bastard doesn’t answer.
When the echoes of my shout fade, only the deep rumbling remains. It grows stronger, although I find it strange that the ground at my feet is not shaking. There is no feeling to match the sound.
But across the rift, the wooden floor is reverberating. Glass shards dance upon its surface, Chimeline cries out anew as she struggles to stay balanced, and a small section of floor near Marine falls into the abyss.
Squinting, I look back at the white voidstone.
It’s grown in size.
No—it’s changed shape. Flattened.
It’s done both.
The gold setting and chain are half buried underneath its surface, which has turned into a liquid about one foot in diameter. A thick white gold, rippling and pulsing, as if it were poured out of some blacksmith’s crucible.
The voidstone has melted.
Then, another sound from behind me. Above the deep rumbling. It’s high-pitched. Squeaking and dragging.
I turn around.
It’s Colu.
He’s in the northeast corner, pushing the painter’s scaffolding across the floor with all of his might. His body is bent over, head between his arms.
I slowly raise my gaze, following the scaffolding up toward the Celestium’s ceiling.
It must be thirty feet tall.
Thirty feet long.
“Blythe!” I say. I put a hand on his shoulder and give him a shake, but he’s lost in prayer.
Leaving him and the western rim, I run east, past the rug and destroyed desk and chandelier, to the opposite side of the island.
Across from me, Colu has already pushed the scaffolding a good twenty feet away from the corner, in my direction.
He stops with an exhale.
Raising his grip on the bamboo stalks to above his head, he begins to rock the entire contraption back and forth, in slow and smooth motions. Like a wave upon the sea, it follows his movements in a series of cascading creaks and groans. The hanging rope and bucket jangle wildly.
After five or six repetitions, Colu suddenly puts all of his weight into it, as the east-most legs raise up from the floor.
He squats, feet wide apart.
Grabbing the base from underneath, he lifts the edge with a deep scream, the veins on his neck rippling.
He’s doing it. It’s going to fall over.
I back away and to the side, as the entire tower of bamboo and wooden planks leans perilously, and then topples through the air.
It easily crosses the ten-foot rift, and crashes into the island with many feet to spare. The sound reminds me of the chandelier falling—it’s ear-splitting and takes a long time for the echo to fade and dust to settle. The bucket had been filled with emerald paint—it splatters across the parquet floor. Most of the large, wooden planks on the scaffolding fall into the rift, but the bamboo shafts remain.
It’s a bridge. A shaky one, but a bridge, nonetheless.
“Come on!” Colu says to me over the rumbling. He’s on the other side, motioning me forward wi
th a waving hand.
I turn back toward the others.
Blythe is still kneeling on the ground, head in his hands, oblivious.
Past him, beyond the western rim, are Mander, Chimeline, and Marine. Mander sits with his legs crossed, lost in the void. His face, still red and glistening with sweat, is awash in white light. But shockingly, an impervious calmness permeates it, despite the chaos all around him.
The melted voidstone in front of him is brighter and larger, as if it’s thinning even more. It’s become a puddle of pure light. I need to look away. And once I do, a phantom black spot floats in my vision.
“Dem!” Colu shouts at me from behind. “What are you waiting for?”
Blinking the spot away, I squint back toward Chimeline, holding a hand out to shelter me from the light. The air is distorted.
She’s still huddled on the floor, head cast downward. Despite the radiance mere feet away from her, her face is hidden from me, concealed behind a curtain of dark hair. But then she looks up at me with an expression that breaks my heart, mouthing a single word.
Go.
Gritting my teeth, I turn back to Colu.
“I’m not leaving her,” I tell him.
Before he can reply, another deafening crack pierces my ears above the rumble, and Colu’s mouth opens wide. He looks past me, and above.
I spin around and catch something unbelievable.
The southern wall splits in two.
From floor to ceiling. Even the ceiling tears apart where it meets the wall, sunlight from above pouring in. It’s like dusk compared to the intensity of the melted voidstone.
The encircling rift cracks open further and a line juts southward, a black canyon, a rushing river to the sea.
The patio falls away.
Mammoth squares of slate, and bronze busts of men long dead topple to the beach hundreds of feet below. Entire lemon trees lean and disappear. The entire area past the southern wall collapses.
Only blue sky remains. And Xi Bay beyond.
“We don’t have time!” Colu yells above the roar.
I turn back to him. “I’m not leaving her.”
“Then you’re going to die with her!”
“Just go!” I tell him.
“I came back for you, you stubborn son of a bitch!”
