Beyond Oblivion

by Daryl Banner

  And now Desura Sparrow, mother to Queen Erana, sits in a tall wooden chair, a camera focused upon her, and a great light shining from the corner of the room, illuminating her.

  “I speak into this?” asks Mercy uncertainly, pointing at the big circular lens that faces her.

  “Yes, your eyes are on that, and your voice is picked up by this,” the short and pointy-eared Lord Pion explains, giving a tap at a little black fuzzy knob that protrudes from the camera. “The view they see will switch between you and between Desura, whenever you give us a snap of your finger. Whatever the broadcast shows …” He gestures at the large broadcast hanging over the fireplace mantel. “… is what the Queen is seeing.”

  “Alright.” Mercy, despite all her inner confidence, feels her heart beating a touch harder than usual. Am I actually nervous? Am I a fool who gets stage fright? “Keep silent, both of you.” She peers over her shoulder at Desura. “And you, too, until I say to speak.”

  “Oh, ho, ho! A strict director!” Desura giggles and runs a hand along her forehead, tucking some strands of hair behind her ear. The unruly strands fall right back into place. “This will be a mighty fine production, it will! Ho, ho, oh, ooh!”

  Mercy rolls her eyes, then looks over at Scot, who is standing with Pion and Leeth. “Are we ready?” she asks of them.

  Leeth is tinkering with a small gadget hooked to the side of the camera that must have at least six different cords and cables running in and out of it. “Mmm … yes. I’ve a stable connection. The system is offline in many sectors of the Lifted City, but I believe … if I’m right and the coordinate code hasn’t changed … that I am logged into the Crystal Court satellite.”

  Mercy squints. “Satellite?” She’s never heard the strange Lifted term, and that annoys her.

  “A small computer in the Crystal Court. There are countless throughout the Lifted City. Now, as soon as you give us the signal,” he explains, “we shall unblock the input and output, and you will be visible. Then we simply … need to get the Queen’s attention.”

  Mercy nods. “Very well. I’m ready.”

  “Very well.” Leeth starts tapping on his gadget while Pion looks as if he might burst with excitement. He even mutters, “Oh, I cannot wait! The Queen will be so happy to speak to her mother! This is a most lovely and glorious occasion! Oh, so exciting!”

  The lights around the screen in front of Mercy start blinking rapidly, as if stirred up by an electric storm. For one fleeting moment, it makes Mercy think of the To-Be-Queen Ruena. You cannot be dead, she insists to herself. You cannot be dead, for if you are truly dead, then I have no more vengeance to wreak, and nothing left to do for my love. I need to be the one to see the life leave your eyes. I need to be the one to put an end to you as you have put an end to him—to Dran.

  Why is she thinking of all this now? This is not the time. Focus, Mercy. Focus.

  The lights keep blinking and blinking.

  And then:

  “Online!” hisses Pion.

  Mercy stares at the big screen, and her huge face stares back. She looks as startled as she feels. Her own fear and anxiety is being shown to her on an obnoxious screen that makes her face look three times its size. Even the bit of mess in her hair is exaggerated, her medium-length black bangs that sweep over one eye looking more disheveled than usual, and her random spikes all along the sides and the back seem confused and flattened as if she’d been lying on a street curb for hours.

  She snaps out of her daze, straightens her back, and purses her green lips at the camera lens. Then, confused, she glances over at the screen, and she sees what appears to be the back of a glassy-looking auditorium, somewhat dark, yet the walls appear to glow in shades of purple and blue and white.

  “We’re in the Crystal Court,” Pion whispers. “There isn’t anyone nearby. You may need to call out for someone’s attention.”

  Mercy wrinkles her face. “Seriously?” She faces the camera once again. “HELLO? … HELLO??”

  No one answers. Nothing moves.

  She scoffs and eyes her two Lifted Lords. “Is this fucking thing even working?”

  “Yes,” Pion assures her. “But there is no one—”

  “Then get me someone!” she shouts, annoyed. “Connect me to a different satter-lite, for fuck’s sake. Have me a person in front of me I can fucking speak to instead of my own stupid face.”

  Lord Leeth bristles at her rudeness, but gently starts tapping and typing on his gadget, squinting at its tiny screen that Mercy cannot see. At once, the Crystal Court image flickers, and suddenly it shows a dark room. Little can be seen except for a billowing silk curtain in the distance and a table off to the side, all its chairs in perfect order.

  “What’s this?” barks Mercy, impatient.

  “A public dining hall where many Lifted Lords and Ladies gather,” whispers Pion. He bites his lip, then says, “Well, perhaps times have changed since we were in the Lifted City. No one’s here.”

  “Ooooh, ho, ho, ho, ooh!” Desura claps her hands as she watches the screen with mounting excitement. “I am very ready for dinner! Will we be invited there, do you think? Who will be attending?”

  Mercy slaps a hand to her face. I’ll take all of their apples. I’ll take each and every last damn one of them if I don’t speak to the Queen in ten seconds, I so swear it.

  The screen flickers again, and then it shows a dull and eventless street corner. It flickers again, and it shows a narrow market square where three people are carrying a case of something from one end to the other. It flickers again, and it shows the inside of a plain white room with chairs lining one wall and a desk at the far end.

  In one of those chairs, there sits a young, shirtless man with slender muscles and bright blond hair with his arms crossed. The moment the screen shows him and the room, he looks up, as if startled, and then his eyes find them through the broadcast.

  Mercy rights herself. “Hello,” she states. “Identify yourself.”

  The young man drops his jaw, then rises off his seat and comes as close to the broadcast as he can. From the angle, it seems that the screen is hanging high in the corner of the room, unreachable. He starts speaking at the screen, but Mercy hears nothing.

  Mercy blinks, then looks over at Pion. “Why can’t I hear him?” she whispers, annoyed.

  “He can hear us, but we can’t hear him. This particular satellite isn’t equipped with two-way communication.”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to work with that?” she hisses back.

  “He can hear this exchange between us!” Pion draws a line over his throat, as if to signal her to stop talking to him. Looks more like where I’m going to drag my knife when I’m finished with this.

  Mercy decides to be clever. She faces the screen again. “I can’t hear what you’re saying, as your inferior broadcast there is not equipped with a … communication … thing.” She flips her hair. “But I can still make my demands plain. I wish to know where I may speak with the Queen, as I am here with her mother, and I have very, very important business to discuss with her.”

  The young man’s face darkens, and then he shakes his head and walks away, out of sight.

  “Excuse me!” Mercy calls out, annoyed. “EXCUSE ME! Get back here! I am demanding to see the Queen, as I—”

  The young man returns with a sheet of paper. He lifts it to the screen, a message scribbled across it in clear, crisp handwriting: “IN CLOUD KEEP. NEVER COMING OUT. THIS IS EASTLY CLINIC.”

  Mercy blinks. “She’s in Cloud Keep and never coming out?” The young man drops his sheet and nods. “Why is she not coming out?”

  His jaw tightens with annoyance. He presses the paper to the wall to write something else upon it, then pulls away and lifts the sheet right up to the screen, almost too close: “ASK HER.”

  Mercy rolls her eyes. “Fine. Thanks for the information. Fuck off.” She slaps a hand to the fuzzy knob in front of her, as if to keep from broadcasting her voice, and she turns to Pion and
Leeth. “Can we get into Cloud Keep?”

  “The closest I can get us is the Crystal Court,” answers Leeth. “Cloud Keep has no other available feeds to log into, not even the throne room. Also, they can still hear you perfectly, even with your hand on the micro—”

  “So get me the Crystal Court again.” She looks up at the big broadcast over the mantel and enjoys a split second of the young man spitting curses at her before he flickers away. All she sees now is the back of the Crystal Court from before. “HELLO?” she calls out. “ANYONE THERE? HELLO?? SOMEONE ANSWER ME!”

  This is going to take a while.

  0323 Wick

  I should have gone with him.

  Wick remembers the sun the first time he stepped foot in the Lifted City at high-noon, right after he was arrested in Pylon #105. He remembers the painful brightness. One of his thoughts that day was, How can Lifted folk stand the daily scorch of the sun without a big city in the sky to block half the rays?

  Those thoughts weigh heavier on his mind out here in the sands as the five of them cross the hot and horrible wastes.

  As well as the one pesky thought that keeps pervading through all of the inner anguish: I should have gone with him.

  “Do you think he’s made it back by now?” asks Puras the next night after they’ve raised the tent and made a fire.

  Wick lies back on his nearly-empty satchel—once full to the top with food for a week for all of them, now depleted to tiny rations and two bottles of water left—and he murmurs, “Which one?”

  “Your friend. I never much cared for Inky Tear Boy. I’m certain he’s returned to Gaea by now, spilling his apologies to Korah and begging her to forgive him. Which she will. She can’t afford to lose any more people. She’s had enough losses.”

  “Is that what we are now?” Wick’s insides shake at the thought. I should have gone with him. Then at least I wouldn’t be dying out here alone. “Losses? We’re just another foolish band of idiots who thought we could make it? Another story people back at Gaea will talk about around the campfire?”

  Puras puts a hand on Wick’s shoulder and gives him a rub. “You are too cute to worry your head over it.”

  Wick rolls his eyes and turns away with a sigh, shutting his eyes and ignoring a groan of hunger inside him.

  No sleep finds him for hours more.

  But when it does, he sees Athan smiling at him from the other side of a shower curtain. It’s his shower curtain back in the ninth, his house. He hears the light sprinkling of water as Athan lifts an arm and rubs soap under it. His backside ripples with his smooth muscles. Water and soapsuds trace down the crevice in the middle of Athan’s back, which pools and gathers about the top of his firm, smooth ass cheeks, dimpled on either side. Athan shoots him another look over his shoulder, then flashes that dashing, Lifted boy smirk of his. ‘You gonna get in or not, slum boy?’ And then something loud and heavy slams against his house outside, everything shaking.

  Wick’s real eyes flap open.

  Was that part of the dream, or—?

  He hears the boom again, and the ground beneath him shakes and trembles.

  He lifts his face off the ground and opens his eyes wide. No one is in the tent with him. The opening of the tent is flapping, revealing the campfire as it dances and twists and is pulled nearly horizontal by the fierce winds.

  Sandstorm … but where is everyone? Wick scrambles to his feet at once, pats his dagger in his back pocket to be sure it’s still there, and crawls out of the tent. All there is outside is noise and the stinging granules of sand as they cut through the air like needles. Wick lifts a hand to his eyes and coughs, then realizes he can’t be out here for much longer. Where the fuck is everyone?? He tries to put his back to the worst of the wind, but it seems to be coming from all directions.

  Then, through the blinding, colorless sand, he sees a frightening flash of deep red light cutting through the sky and booming onto the distant ground, far off. The whole world turns red, and then goes dark again, the sandstorm thrashing by in the dead of night.

  “Chaos??” Wick cries out, then coughs as the sand invades his throat. He tries to get a look, but the raging storm blinds him.

  He’s back in the tent, half out of desperation. The storm is too strong. All over his tongue, he can taste sand and dirt. He coughs and gags and wipes his stinging eyes. Where did everyone go??

  Then a last finger of campfire twists about, and his only source of light is gone. He huddles in the dark of his tent, the noise of the sandstorm screaming outside all around him.

  His eyes are gifted another flash of terrifying, bone-chilling red.

  Boom.

  And then it’s dark again.

  “Sisters h—” Wick chokes and coughs, sand still caught in his throat. Sisters help me, he finishes in his mind, squinting, dry-eyed, at the flapping opening to his tent.

  There’s another flash of red so bright, Wick feels the warmth of it upon his skin. Is it getting closer? And then it’s dark again.

  Wick hugs himself tighter, afraid. The hunger and the delirium of sleep deprivation is making you weak, he tells himself. You are not afraid. You are brave. Brave Anwick Lesser of the ninth. Brave. You stand up to Kings Who Scream. You stand up to Kings Who Laugh. You are brave, Anwick Lesser. You are brave.

  Another flash of red. Wick cowers away from it.

  Heat bathes his face.

  Then darkness.

  You are brave, Anwick Lesser. Your heart is made of gold. You will survive and you will see your Lifted boy again. You are brave.

  Fearless, like Korah. Fearless.

  Then a small light comes from his body, filling the tent with an eerie blue.

  Wick furrows his brow, confused, until he releases his hands from himself and finds his fingertips glowing.

  Ferra?

  At that exact moment, the woman comes through the opening in the tent, kicking up sand as she does. “H-Hurry, Wick, hurry,” she chokes, her throat dry. She coughs twice, hard, unpleasant, then says, “White wyrms. Get your things, come, COME!”

  Wick grabs his satchel. “What do you mean??” he cries. “Where is everyone else? Where is—??”

  Everything turns red—the tent, the woman, himself—and when he hears the great boom of Chaos’s power, his whole body feels as if it might burn alive, as if he stands in that shower with Athan and the water of the showerhead turns scalding for three agonizing seconds.

  “HURRY!” screams Ferra.

  The tent rips apart as the two of them break free from it, then flee through a swirling red world of biting sand, thrashing wind, and painfully hot air. The red light does not in any way help them see; it is as blinding as the dark itself, only now instead of infinite black all around them, there is infinite red. Still, Wick and Ferra run, tripping over their own feet as they kick through the hard dirt and the dust, choking and coughing and gasping for air.

  BOOM!

  Furious hot redness swells all around them. Is Chaos growing closer to us, or are we growing closer to Chaos? Then it is dark again, and the storm never relents. Wick has no idea which way they’re running—toward the danger or away from it.

  The arm of the satchel tears, and it drops away into the nothing. Wick stops, blindly reaching through the storm for the satchel, but his hands find nothing. After a moment, Ferra appears and pulls on him. “Leave it!” she cries. “We have to go! Run!!”

  A flash of red. A piercing fire. BOOM! Then darkness.

  “Where are the others??” he screams through the madness, then coughs. “We can’t leave behind—”

  Another flash of red, quicker, then gone. The only light they see between the red flashes is the faint glowing of their fingers.

  They run and they run. Minutes pass. The storm never lets up.

  They must be running for miles, for all Wick knows.

  His legs burn. His thighs especially, as they race uphill, then downhill, then uphill again, then across long stretches of flat, hard dirt. His ankles ar
e sore, too.

  Every passing second, he feels like the red light is going to take them. What a cruel turn of fate, he thinks, to escape Impis’s Mad Light within Atlas, only to become its victim out here beyond the Wall.

  Another great flash of red.

  BOOM!

  The earth trembles so furiously beneath Ferra and Wick’s feet that the two go tumbling to the ground at once. The earth shakes and trembles all around them, sand and red and fiery heat rushing over their heads like a spilled cooking fire blasting atop them.

  Then the wind eases. The noise pulls back, softening, softening. And then the sandstorm, in the space of seconds, is ended.

  Wick opens his eyes, but keeps them at a squint, still stinging and dry as they are. Everything is dark again, but dust still hangs in the air. He coughs, then tentatively lifts himself off the ground and turns about, peering in all directions. The dust in the air slowly settles as the two of them begin to backtrack, carefully, warily, searching the darkness. The deep, rich blue of the sky slowly breaks through the gritty fog of the vanished storm, swelling in the night. Soon after, perhaps five minutes or so later, Wick can make out the stars, and then the distant moon far, far ahead of him.

  He tries to speak, then gives in to another fit of coughing. Ferra keeps silent, her fingers glowing and hovering at her mouth as they go, in shock. Wick can see tears in her eyes, though there’s no telling if she’s crying or if it’s some automatic response to the assault of sand and heat. Perhaps I’ve tears in my eyes, too.

  The air is stale now and tastes of earth and death. Any dream of sleep is lost on Wick, his insides aching from all the coughing he’s endured. His mind fires in a hundred directions, heartbroken. The tent, he would say if he had any voice left. We need to go back for the tent, for our cooking pot on the fire, for the satchel I dropped …

  Then, against the sandy backdrop of bluish darkness and swirls of calming dust, the three figures of Rychis, Chaos, and Puras appear.