High Tower Gods

by C L Corona

  "Oh," she breathed out in a long, extended sigh, the modulations shifting, and the doubled strains of voices, and variations sliding into a sound as human as it was dead.

  This time, when Aleksia spoke, it was so familiar that Elian thought, momentarily, that someone had stabbed her through the heart with a wire. "You should leave," Aleksia said. "Walk out now. There will be a while yet before I can pass the command along through the linkweb. You'll be safe."

  "And Jude will not."

  "You knew that, you knew before you opened your mouth."

  She had, of course. Perhaps it had been a secret wish. An unconscious need for revenge, a way to punish Judakael for his hand in everything that had happened. But it was also a step too far. "Give me Judakael, and we'll leave."

  "I can't," Aleksia said. "But perhaps I can give you something else instead."

  Elian stood firm. "You can kill us both, or you can let me walk out of here with Judakael. Simple, really." She was acutely calm, hyper-real and still, as though magic had taken over and all she had to do was trust the trick. She felt the touch of air against her nostrils, her skin vibrating, her whole body shimmering, she was aware of every tiny atom, its movement within, its place in her system. In the whole system. She smiled. It would be perfectly fine to die, Elian decided.

  Magic and Memory

  There was a story about a witch from long before when magic had still been powerful, before potions and spells had been replaced with pharma and code. The witch had been sentenced to death for her craft, thrown out of the Otherland and told to walk out into the desert. The others had told her to never look back, or be turned to ash.

  As she left Seren Tower Elian thought she had a pretty good idea of how that nameless woman had felt. All anyone remembered of her was that she'd turned to ash, and blown away.

  She was shaking. It was a strange feeling, so distant and weak. The last time she'd been like this, stripped like a copper wire, fizzing with energy, hot and cold and dangerous and frightened all at the same time, was the first time she'd brought a chimera to life. Oh. For fuck's sake, Elian thought, as she swung the plastic shopping hamper Aleksia had given her over the door and onto the passenger seat. Time to stop lying to myself. The first time I got the magic right.

  The package landed with a thump, sounding wet and solid at the same time, and Elian shuddered. The city was about to change forever. Up in her high tower, Aleksia was silent, her body still as a carved idol as her newly-released mind pushed though an intricate spider-thread of magic and logic, turning Judakael's little lock-and-key code into a saviour’s prayer. All around the city, chimeras would be coming to a new life.

  Waking.

  Elian winced as the bakkie hoppers kicked in for an extra burst of fuel to begin the start-up, and the vehicle shuddered. The solar cells were half-charged, but it would have to do. The city had sunk into the dull red of late afternoon, and in a half-hour or less, it would be twilight. No sun to suck up.

  The steering wheel was slippery under Elian's palms as she drove carefully through the back streets. Soon the chimeras would all be awake, and a war would come.

  Or peace.

  Who knew what was going to happen now that the chimeras could decide where they were going to take their own futures. Elian was past caring. She'd done the right thing, she knew, so why did she feel so empty and dead inside, why was she shivering despite the last heat of the day?

  "I'm going to go away," Elian said aloud. "Going to see if I can find Martyn...." Her voice faltered. If she was planning on a much-delayed rescue mission, she'd best get on with it.

  Finding Martyn in the dunes was going to be difficult at the best of times, and it was going to be damn-near impossible when darkness fell. "Blast," she said, succinctly, and veered off the road. The sky had already turned the deep clear blue of a cloudless evening, and the series of three stars called the Rising Sisters were hanging low on the horizon, bright as planets. Elian flicked on the overhead arcs, and white light spilled all around. It would chew through her remaining solpower, but either she would find Martyn. Or she would not.

  It was easy enough to track the city-clicker's limping journey through the dunes. She found it on its side, half-crushed under a collapsed wave of sand. The wind had erased any tracks that might have been around it.

  Elian hopped down to inspect the area. The clicker smelled of burned metal, sand, blood, and a peculiarly sweet tang that Elian didn't recognise. She stuck out her tongue to taste the air, letting the individual components curl across her tongue. After a moment, she blinked. Martyn must have mixed the compounds she'd given him, but she was damned if she knew what the hell he'd made. It was unrecognisable.

  The mystery was solved when she came across the first body. It had crawled off behind a small dune, and died in agony. Bizarre tendrils of flesh jutted from what had been the man's face. Despite that, it was easy to see that this had once been Baldy. He'd died screaming, tearing at his own limbs— both old and very-very new. There was blood under his raw fingernails. What was left of Baldy didn't bode well for his companion. Or Martyn.

  The wind had been blocked a bit by the dunes, and Elian was able to follow another set of gouges in the sand. Foot prints, and spatters of blood and little gobbets of meat.

  "Sweet Sanursula," Elian whispered. This one wasn't dead.

  She knelt down before the whimpering figure. The uniform was the only clue that this had once been Moustache. "Where did he go?" she asked.

  Half his head and body had been erased, and the rest was sprouting new little tentacles which waved hopefully in the air. The erased sections were bloodless, as though he'd simply been washed out of the universe, like a stain.

  The man didn't answer, but his tentacles curled and coiled, their fine filaments extending to point across the sand.

  Elian shrugged, and stood. "Martyn," she called out, half wary of what might actually answer. "You seem to have miscalculated this reaction."

  "I was working under pressure," said a voice. It sounded both right at her elbow and awfully distant.

  "I can't see you," Elian said.

  "No."

  A shuffle, and the skitter of sand showed her where Martyn probably was. Elian turned and hoped she was facing him.

  "I think," Martyn said slowly. "I think I preferred it when the most exciting thing I could mix up at short notice was a party-drug." The air shimmered slightly, a wavery motion like ripples under the surface of water. "They shot me, by the way. So thanks for that."

  "You weren't the only one who miscalculated."

  "At least I'm not bleeding any more," he added. "Though I'm not sure that's a blessing."

  Elian swallowed. "We should get going," she said to the invisible monster who had once been Martyn. "Need to pack, hit the road." She trudged back to the car, hyper-aware of the shushing of feet (how many, she couldn't quite tell) behind her in the sand. "Things have changed a bit, in the city. Best we take an extended holiday."

  She sighed. "I need one, anyway." There were a great many to think about—a new order of humans and monsters, science and magic to negotiate.

  Martyn clambered onto the passenger-side footstep, and the vehicle listed. "What's this?" The packet lifted from the seat, its contents dripping blackly onto the cracked leather.

  "Just toss that in the back," Elian said. "It'll take a while to regrow and we have plenty of time to decide what to do with it."

  The packet landed with a meaty smack on the back seat, and rolled to one side, where it wedged against the side. "Regrow?" asked Martyn. "Regrow what, exactly?"

  Elian sniffed. "It was a parting gift. From a friend. I guess sentiment got the better of her." She glanced back at the packet, now obscured by the falling dark. "You could call it a memory bank."

  "And what would you call it?"

  "The head of Judakael Seren."

  "Ah," said Martyn, after a brief pause. "Naturally."

  The bakkie roared awake, and shuddered across the dese
rt, far away from the city, and into the future, leaving a trail of smoke and magic in its wake.

  ~fin~

  Acknowledgements

  My deepest thanks go to all those who helped with early reads and who have supported my writing over the years.

  You know how much you have done, and how much I appreciate it. Without you guys I would not still be writing.

  About the author

  CL Corona is a South African-born writer living in Scotland, where they survive on blackberries and pakora.

  Their work is inspired by dark magic, rain, and the edges of the world where the sand meets the sea.

  You can follow them on twitter @corona_hellisen

  Previous works as Cat Hellisen include

  When the Sea is Rising Red

  House of Sand and Secrets

  Empty Monsters

  Beastkeeper

  Charm