Woman. Evgan.
I relaxed, already knowing who she was. To verify my presumption, the caution in Zira’s expression softened around the edges. He took a step forward.
“You’re alive.”
The woman gave him a smile, but it was sad. “I’m so glad to see you again, but so sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
“Laith, what’s happened here? Why did a rift to your domain open in our multiverse?”
“The chains we’ve lain are being broken by the Pillars of Suzerain,” she said, confusing both of us. Her eyes rose to the swirling eye above, and she scowled with disdain. “You two shouldn’t be here. This part of Eschatis is antecedent to your Multiverse. How did you find this quadrant?”
“There was a trail,” said Zira. “We followed it to the ruined town and cloister.”
“Wait, hold up,” I interjected. “Hi, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Neither does Zira, but for some reason he’s not asking any questions.”
Laith looked at me with a sullen frown, blinking twice.
Her expression didn’t deter me any. “For starters, could you maybe explain what Eschatis means?”
“Eschatis is what the quantum assemblage calls this ‘domain’, as you phrase it,” she said.
“You said this area was antecedent to our Multiverse,” I pressed. “Does that mean—?”
“Your colleague speaks too much, Zira.”
Zira crossed his arms. “With all due respect, he’s doing his job, and we deserve to know.”
“Of course you do, but not here.” She looked up again. “Not under his eye.”
Both of us looked at the eye, then to each other. During our nonverbal conversation, Laith had turned silently, inviting us to follow her through the mist.
“There’s a waystation nearby,” she began. “The guardian is dead, but the embers are still hot. I’ll make you some tea.”
Tea? Who the fuck had time for tea?
“You’re going to want the tea,” assured Zira, having noticed my grimace.
“I don’t even like tea.”
He rolled his eyes and hurried to catch up with Laith.
*
THE FIGHT IN SEFEDRE’S EYES DIMMED AS SHE WATCHED Betere Three’s pneuma flicker, then ultimately fade. His pillar had shined at only half-luminosity for days; she knew he had lost his totem—half of himself—as soon as he’d reached the First Coil. But he’d made it that far, and she’d been so sure he would solve the codex and kill the primex sentry. Betere had always been so bright, so capable, so eager.
And, now this.
All was lost.
But her downward spiral was stopped by the snap in her lithe, tired shoulders. The ritual had gone on for an eternity, it seemed. She hadn’t rested for… who knew how long? Yet that one snap took the strain from her neck, the pressure off the base of her spine. She could take a deep breath again, and then Sefedre realized the First Coil was unwound.
Had he done it? Had Betere unwound the Coil?
With help, answered Suzerain, whom she looked up to in reverence. The ritual lay your intentions bare, bent the wills of the wary to carry out your desire.
Sefedre’s eyes widened with clarity.
Those two men, clad in black.
The thread.
But then she looked at all the dimmed-out totems around the circle, her clarity dissenting into loss. She would call the other pillars back. The Assemblage had succeeded in the first phase; it was time to go home.
“I’m sorry for my frustration before,” she whispered up at Suzerain, who’d grown less transparent than a moment ago. His eye, now the color of boiling blood, had begun to rotate, as well. In Sefedre’s peripherals, the land around her circle had grown darker, and there were not as many stars in the sky. “I will never lose my faith in you again.”
You won’t ever have to, child. Go.
Sefedre promptly cut her hand and threw the beaded crimson flares into the air. She smeared the remaining blood on Suzerain’s totem, a final tribute, before hurrying from the circle.
~*~
Once upon a time, a sad little girl named Sefedre Six saw the world and all the ugliness it contained. She took the beatings and the insults, felt the loneliness and dejection, and when she closed her eyes she watched it all burn down with a smile.
PART THREE:
THE COMMITTEE OF ESOTERICISM
Synchronicity: A meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.
XII
YAHWEH
I WATCHED THE FLUCTUATIONS IN THE EM WAVEMETER, dialing the nodes forward, backward, then forward again, straining to listen to the harmony of Pariah’s athanasian song that resonated with my hours-old, severed finger.
My head hurt. My eyes stung. I thought the last time I’d slept was two days prior, but wasn’t sure. I did my best to keep even, and thought I was doing a good job. Then my hand shook—too many stimulants, not enough rest—and the node was pushed out of the headset notch far enough that we might as well have started all over again.
I resisted the compulsion to toss the headset on the floor, instead setting it down gently and rubbing my forehead. Pariah shifted uncomfortably in his seat and rubbed his jaw.
“Let’s take a break,” he suggested, the concern behind his eyes more than evident.
“We don’t have time for a break,” I mumbled.
“Yahweh, you won’t be able to do this on empty,” he said. “That, and my jaw won’t survive it. Qaira and Zira are extremely capable, and they’re still alive.”
“We don’t know that!” I quipped, feeling guilty for it right after. “We can’t analyze anything they’re sending us, and Qaira fell into stasis for three hours.”
“He’s not in stasis anymore.” Pariah stood and stretched, implying we were done regardless of refute. “Which, by the way, provides evidence that at least their vital statuses are casting in real time.”
I looked away, too tired to fight. “You’re right. Go, rest. I’m sorry for making you do this again.”
“No apology necessary. Can I bring you some food?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Pariah left the room, and I stared at the headset on the desk.
Damn you, Qaira. So tussled to get going that you didn’t even provide us a failsafe.
No one could have predicted the results of crossing the rift, but couldn’t he have left some notes of his research? The attuned headsets allowed them to retain a connection with attica across the rift—which probably meant at least some of their abilities were kept, as well—but there’d been no foresight given into how data might come back through. We saw the thread, we saw them updating it, but every entry was permeated with feedback so intense that even Adrial found it too excruciating to interpret.
So now I was trying to reproduce the work without an actual method, only with what Pariah thought Qaira might have done.
My hand hovered over the headset when I realized just how hard it was trembling. Pariah was right, I had to rest. My hand left the desk and instead felt for the package of malay cigarettes in my coat. I reclined in my seat with a laborious sigh, staring up at the ceiling of RQ4 as I smoked and waited for lunch. Each inhalation brought on a series of memories—most ironic, some not—of who I’d once been. If only Lucifer could see me now.
I closed my eyes.
“Yahweh?”
I reopened them and swiveled in my seat to face the door, a foot crossed over one knee, half-smoked cigarette between my fingers.
Adrial looked at me with a hint of sympathy. “Please tell me you’ve left this room since we spoke yesterday.”
“Don’t make a liar of me.”
His eyes searched the room. “Where’s Pariah?”
“Bringing me food, bless him.”
Adrial didn’t smile. “No, you need to come to the dining hall, or eat in your room. I’m not in the business of working my scholars to death, Yahweh
.”
I tilted my head, debating on challenging that statement. I did not. “I’ll take it in my room. Save me the lecture, I’ve already decided to rest.”
He backed off, nodding once, and receded from the room. As collected as Adrial tried to appear, any one of us could tell he was wracked by nerves. Stress had cut grooves into his face and darkened the skin beneath his eyes. I remembered that kind of stress, the kind generated from the black plague of responsibility. I didn’t miss it, having traded it for the stress of my colleagues’ well-being; without the ancillary concern for our organization’s entire livelihood.
I finished my cigarette and absorbed the waste, leaving the chair with a sense of defeat. It was time for my daily mantra.
Everything is fine.
Everything is under control.
I will eat, sleep, and then get all this sorted out.
XIII
LEID
“YOU SHOULD HAVE DRANK MORE TEA,” scolded Nibli, as I tried to keep myself straight. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Yes, but then we’d grown preoccupied with the pillar. I’d have rather died before returning to the hearth, forced to watch Nara munch on that poor girl’s remains.
I didn’t respond, focusing on placing one foot in front of the other. Occasionally I wiped my nose, feeling a wet warmth across my upper lip. I had yet to surmise if this was a manifestation of my worst nightmare—expiring all over again—or if it pointed to something even more sinister.
My foot caught on a patch of uneven ground, and I stumbled. Nibli stopped ahead, looking down at me in a combination of indignation and concern. I was certain the concern was reserved strictly for the threat of their only food source imminently dying from starvation, though I couldn’t blame them. That’d been the arrangement all along, hadn’t it?
“We have to find another waystation,” Nibli finalized.
“You act as though we even knew where we were going.”
They waved their hand in dismissal. I watched the luminescent, toxic smog trace tails in the air with Nibli’s movement. Some wafted too close and I cowered away, fighting the urge to cry.
Their eyes softened at my distraught, exhausted state, which I found confusing. I wasn’t even certain my translation of social cues was correct; I hadn’t relied on such a lesser skill for a century or two. And before I could confirm it, Nibli had whirled away, walking on.
“Ride Nara,” ordered the wraith. “Save your energy.”
I would have saved even more had Nibli not taken from me every few hours. The stolen totem stopped grazing at the mentioning of its name. I gave it an uneasy look. “Will it let me?”
“It let me.”
“Yes, but it’s yours.”
“It’s not mine,” said Nibli.
“You know what I mean.”
“Just get on Nara’s back. Look, it’s coming to you. It knows what we’re talking about.”
Nibli’s totem had inched closer while we spoke, until it was right behind me and nudged my arm, making me jump. I stared at the beast in awe; not because it could understand us, but because it’d just snuck up on me. Congratulations, I thought. You’re the first one in nearly a thousand years.
I was unable to get on by myself, therefore Nibli had to help me. I tried not to breathe in the wraith’s toxins but it’d somehow seeped through anyway, and as Nara trotted along with me in tow, I thought about the probability of dying in this place.
And then I thought about Qaira, and how he might die looking for me.
I thought of what might happen if the rift continued to expand.
I thought of every mistake I’d ever made. And there were plenty.
My heart began to accelerate to the point of feeling like it would explode. I envisioned it rupturing in my chest cavity, leaking into my diaphragm, drowning my other organs in blood. A sharp pain pierced the center of my chest just then, and I thought it’d really happened. I tried to breathe but no matter how deeply I drew air into my lungs, there was nothing but void.
“Leid?” Nibli called, drawing toward me.
“No,” I gasped, holding my neck, feeling as if an iron fist had clenched around it. “Don’t come near me.”
My reaction had broken something in the wraith. Nibli kept recoiling, extending, recoiling, trying to fight the urges to consume the pain and fear scintillating through them. Spikes broke from their skin; they clenched their jaw, but whatever they tried to choke down was too strong. Nibli opened their mouth in a silent scream. And then a real scream.
“Leid, stop! I don’t want to do this!”
If only I could.
This was not a new feeling, but one I was always able to push aside with the assurance of what I was. What I had been. I was not that, here. I was not safe.
My vision tunneled as I looked up into the colossal, swirling eye that never blinked. I could have sworn it looked more corporeal, more radiant, than before.
I closed my eyes right before Nibli lost the war inside of them, knocking me from Nara, pinning me to the ground with a feral snarl. The wraith took from me, again and again, until everything began to wither.
I’d been so stupid.
So arrogant.
Lamenting the absence of my mortality, wishing everything to end just so it wouldn’t always be the same. And now here I was; the little, shaking, dying mouse I’d yearned to be. Fuck.
Qaira, help me.
Help me, please. I don’t want to die.
I’m sorry, help me—
*
“Talk to me,” I begged, arms crossed vulnerably over my stomach.
Qaira kept his back turned, statuesque. The morning light of Sanctum was a premature wash of gray and scarlet. The tips of his tousled, windblown hair were highlighted gold amid the usual russet. I worried if he was cold. He had no jacket, only the dress shirt he’d worn to work; disheveled, the sleeves rolled past his forearms. Beyond us, Sanctum’s cityscape rose over the horizon like a sea of tombstones.
Qaira hadn’t come to bed.
He hadn’t even come home until I’d fallen asleep.
I’d counted five days since he looked me in the eye.
Was this where he went each night? To the top of Eroqam with a bottle of Cardinal, mourning his dead sister until daybreak. What a sad, miserable tribute.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled, but the resignation in his voice told me even he didn’t believe that. His grip loosened on the half-drunk bottle of Cardinal in his hand. And then he dropped it, the bottle clinking against the coua port.
“Talk to me,” I demanded again, resolute. “Let me help you. I know how you’re feeling. I’ve been there before, too many times.”
“You know nothing,” he muttered, his head lowering to the port as he stared at the ground. “No one does.”
“Qaira, you have to snap out of it. You have to—”
“Can’t I fall apart when no one’s looking?” he exclaimed, spinning to face me. “I’ve been doing everything else right. I’ve been holding it all together when it matters, so you need to let me have this.” His eyes were glazed with fresh tears, threatening to fall. How humiliated he must have felt; someone like him would rather die than be seen like this.
“Yes, I…” I winced, feeling the panic begin to rise—yet another tiny measure of control I had over the monstrosity inside of me chipped away. “It hurts that I can’t help you, I’m sorry.”
I’m going crazy knowing you don’t need me.
You don’t need me, do you?
He just looked on, saying nothing, too used up to even respond.
The tether binding us had already begun to fray.
*
I awoke, desolate and insubstantial, the image of Qaira and Sanctum’s cityscape fading like ghosts. The crackle and pops of a hearth flame centered me to the now, and with a measure of awe I realized that I wasn’t dead.
I was lying on my side several feet from a bonfire, its warmth brought the blood back to my skin, leaving tingles acros
s my face. All my exhaustion was gone, and I suddenly got a flash of Nibli holding a ladle over me, accompanied by the pressure against my jaw as they pried open my mouth.
This recapturing forced my gaze past the flames, where Nibli sat hunched and bereaved. Nara trotted around behind the wraith, looking for food on the ground. It yowled softly, not having found anything yet. I pushed myself to a sit.
Nibli looked toward me as I stirred, and I looked at them in return. Our gazes held for a good minute as the supposition between us was placed into question. The wraith had somehow resisted killing me. Not only that, but they’d found a waystation.
And then I noticed how dark it was.
This domain was never Crylle to begin with, but had always held a modicum of luminescence from the celestial sky. When I looked up, the beautiful cosmosphere was gone; in its place was a starless, night sky. The only light source remaining was the emblazoned red, churning eye, the body it’d been housed in now lost to the black.
A sun of death, I thought, yet uncertain as to why.
The chimes were gone, too. All the silence was claustrophobic, and I hugged my stomach.
“The cup is over there,” said Nibli, nodding to the left of the bonfire. A crystalline mug lay on an vacant slab of stone. “Drink as many cups as you can. Forgive me for not getting it myself; I’m sure you understand why.”
I smoothed my hair and retrieved the mug. The ladle I’d recollected was resting in a cast iron kettle over the flames. I stirred the murky contents thrice before ladling some into the mug. “Thank you.”
“What are you thanking me for?” asked Nibli, scathed. “Don’t thank me.”
I sipped the tea, shuddering as the warm liquid coated my innards. “You saved my life, again.”
Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9) Page 14