by Rowan Rook
Lyrum were not afraid of death.
Through their eyes, death was not an end, but a beginning. A journey they often, in fact, looked forward to. They lived their lives to the fullest, working to become the kind of people who would be accepted into Heaven, where they would no longer be bound by their bodily limitations or their short number of years. Their time on Auratessa was merely training to help them thrive in the paradise awaiting them, and to weed out those who deserved eternal punishment in Hell, instead. It was a time for them to build families who would remain with them forever.
Humans might claim they weren't afraid of death. And indeed, some were braver in the face of it than others. No matter what they said, however, death would always bring anxiety in their culture. For Lyrum, it was different. Their culture honestly, truly, felt no fear toward it.
That didn't mean they didn't grieve when loved ones departed without them. It didn't mean they wanted their time on Auratessa cut short. It didn't mean they were all right with being murdered. It didn't mean they were all right with burning to death in a house fire, with withering away from illness while their siblings remained healthy, with rotting slowly and painfully away inside specimen cells, with being shot in the skull.
It did mean, however, that the species was at peace with its short lifespan. Much more so than Humans were with their longer one.
Anson forced himself to look at his own body. He raised an arm and slowly flexed his fingers and wrist, consciously and keenly controlling the simple movements.
He felt fine. Aside from his circumstantial weariness, he both felt and looked healthy.
It was hard to believe his body was about to break.
In some unknown time between that night and his twenty-fifth birthday, just three months away, he would die. His body would become an object. The fingers he was controlling so freely now would never move again.
What would happen to him, his soul, he honestly didn't know.
He was afraid of death. And he always had been.
Sometimes, he wondered if he processed time differently than other Lyrum did. Even in his earliest years, when he'd yet to dabble in the forbidden Human art of science, whatever had seemed a long time to his siblings and friends had always seemed a short one to him. Their two-hour tutoring sessions went on forever, they'd said. A summer seemed to last a lifetime, they'd said. So why had those things passed him by in the blink of an eye?
...Maybe a part of him had always been more Human than Lyrum, after all.
As a scientist, or, well, a former scientist, he wasn't supposed to believe in anything that existed beyond the bounds of physical proof. The laws of the universe were written in DNA and atoms and molecules, a person was nothing more than the product of a brain, and that was that. There was nothing else out there. No Heaven. No Hell.
He could never quite bring himself to believe that. Something so intangible, so beautiful, as a being's self could never simply vanish.
Aydel was probably right. He'd probably end up in Hell.
Why did that horrible journey have to come so soon? He wasn't ready.
Many Lyrum his age would say they felt old. They would say they'd lived a long, full life.
He didn't feel old. Not at all. He felt young, just like the Human students he'd grown up with at the Academy. Just like Shakaya. It wasn't fair. They'd graduated just two years apart, but while her life was only just beginning, his was nearly over. The person he'd shared so many of his years with would live on for so many more, without him.
Truth be told, if he hadn't known that his time as a part of Auratessa was reaching its end, he never would've begun this mad endeavor.
Had he truly been Human, he would have wanted to spend his ample years on his research, striving toward his ideals in a much more practical way. After all, he may have had time to finish the Not and so much more. He would have wanted to become closer to the people around him, knowing they could grow old together. He would have wanted to continue living contented day after contented day with Shakaya.
Even if all of that had been a lie, it had been a beautiful one. One that he would have been happy to spend one-hundred-years or more living.
If only the world would have allowed him that simple wish... If only he could have truly been amaranthine.
A ugly, unexpected laugh rocked through him, escaping without his permission.
Aydel didn't stir, but Jeriko stopped humming long enough to pass him a wide-eyed glance.
Anson flushed. He'd been so swept away by his thoughts that he'd almost forgotten the others were there.
Tayla straightened. She opened her mouth, as if to speak, before clenching it shut. Her jaw quivered.
Jeriko frowned at her. "What's wrong?"
She bit her lip and hesitated, one last time, before looking up at Anson. "Did you kill my parents?"
His own eyes widened. "What?"
"Did you kill my Mom and Dad?" Tayla asked him, her green eyes damp with stale tears. "They were captured by Humans from the Academy four years ago. You were one of the scientists there, weren't you? Are you the one who killed them?"
"I..." Anson shook his head, his tongue tangling around half-formed words. He forced himself to look at her. She was rigid, one hand digging into her seat while the other clenched Jeriko's sleeve. Her face was red; the rest of her was ghostly pale. How long had she fought for the courage to ask? Jeriko covered Tayla's trembling hand in his. She likely wouldn't have said anything without the presence of the other Butterflies. She was one of them, herself—someone who was supposed to be strong and capable—but suddenly, she seemed small and scared.
Anson hung his head.
Scientists rarely killed their specimens directly, and with his focus on Translation, he had avoided the Academy's most deadly projects more consciously than his colleges. Indirectly, however, through the mistreatment they endured, the Lyrum in the labs were imminently among those who departed from Auratessa early. Most died within a year or two of captivity.
Of course, Tayla didn't need to know the gritty details of such a fate.
"Ms. Aydel knew them, too!" Tayla pressed, the almost unnerving stillness in her voice starting to waver. "When she went to the Academy with the rebels to deliver that letter to you, she asked the people she saved if they knew what happened to my parents. None of them knew them, even the ones who'd been there for a long time. Mom and Dad must've died right after they were taken!"
"They were good people, Anny," Aydel added without opening her eyes.
Anson stared at the carriage floor. "I...don't know," he answered honestly. Specimens weren't classified by anything other than numbers...and he'd worked on so many of them that he remembered next to none individually.
"How can you not know?" Tayla's face contorted into an angry knot. "Mom looked a lot like me, and Dad was tall with blue eyes and brown hair! They were both only twenty-two!"
Only twenty-two? They would've passed long ago, regardless. There was that different concept of time, again.
"Their names were Ellna and Vysal. They were... They were...!" Tayla's voice shook as if a fire inside of her were about to erupt from her throat, but she held it back with a swallow. "Did you kill them?"
"I don't know," Anson insisted, harsher than he'd meant to. "We never learn anything about specimens beyond their statistics."
"You—" Tayla leaned forward, about to stand, when Jeriko wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He whispered something in her ear. She calmed slightly, stilling, but her glowered daggers didn't dull.
Anson forced himself to meet her eyes. "I don't know if I killed them. But...I'm sure that I hurt them. I'm sorry."
Before she could speak, he pulled a small notebook and pencil from his bag. He'd packed it at the Academy in case he wanted to take any research notes, but it clearly wasn't going to be used for that anymore. He had another idea. "You said their names were Ellna and Vysal? If I'm able to, I'll bring them back to you. I promise."
Emerald embers
smoldered in Tayla eyes, but slowly, became more ash than fire. She looked away from him, her tense fingers tightening around Jeriko's sleeve.
Anson opened the notebook. Inside, he wrote the names 'Ellna and Vysal Wylan.'
He'd made many promises. If he succeeded—if he had the chance to rewrite Auratessa's details and history—there was so much he wanted to do. Perhaps he needed to begin writing it down, and a list of those he wanted to write back into the world seemed a good place to start.
Still, he didn't actually know as much about this rather abstract goal—this vague, outlandish promise the Butterfly had made to him—as he perhaps needed to. How was he going to bring back these people? Was it as easy as simply wishing it? Did he need to know their names? Did he need to know what they looked like or who they were? Did he need to know the details of their lives and deaths? He certainly hoped not.
How was he going to do anything, in fact? He'd already stolen two of the Author's Inkwells. They'd embed themselves inside him with cold, twisting pain, but hadn't observed any changes in either his body or his mind. Were they suddenly going to spring to life when he gathered them all? Or was there something else he'd have to do to actually use them? Right now, the Inkwells he had seemed useless. He'd need to discuss the matter with Aydel and Jeriko later, but perhaps now wasn't the time. Instead, his thoughts returned to his notebook.
Try as he might, he truly couldn't recall the names of anyone else who'd passed through the specimen room. He decided that he'd bring them all back if he could, but there was nothing else he could do about the Academy's victims.
'Olgin, Illya, and Ahlyn Anwell.' He wrote the names of his own family at the top of the page. It wasn't that he'd ever forget them, but seeing them there served as motivation.
He paused.
What were the names of Shakaya's parents, again? He chewed his lip, before they suddenly came back to him. 'Manohka and Emmerich Johanne.' Even if he never saw Shakaya again, even if she believed everything he'd said was a lie, his promise to her was one he intended to keep.
Another person came to mind. 'Gabe.' He'd never known the man's surname, but the first was better than nothing.
There were a few more names he needed to write down, too.
'Kaida Torus.' 'Morak Mayver.'
The rest of the night slipped away in silence. Anson searched the corners of his memories for names and faces until slumber finally overcame him.
Chapter Twenty: Heroes
Anson—who had walked through the door in his small, square, bloodied lab as Amaranth—pressed on through the dead world. It wasn't that there were wilted flowers or empty buildings or bitter ashes. It was that there was nothing at all. Only the black. Only echoes. Only the tick and the tock of the doomsday clock.
No, he realized. The world wasn't dead. He wasn't too late, not yet. This was only his own exile—he wasn't a part of the Auratessa he was trying to save. He never could be. It would never accept someone like him. He existed only in its shadows.
"I want to make it better," he reminded himself. He'd said the words aloud to savor the familiarity of his own voice, but it came out all wrong. It was strained, sad, scared.
...How could someone like him make anything better?
Anson looked down at himself and gasped. His hands, once so tenderly coiled around books and pencils and projects, were painted red with fresh blood. He'd never be able to get it out from under his nails. He'd never be clean again. Those hands weren't fit for research.
...They weren't fit for anything.
His eyes burned, and for the first time, he looked back.
The door he'd left behind was gone.
"Keep walking forward," said everything and nothing. "You're doing well. You'll make the world better."
The tears finally came. "I want to go home."
"You have no home," said the one who wasn't there.
He had no home.
Anson fought the urge to collapse to his knees and cry.
"Keep walking forward," no one ordered. "You're running out of time."
He had nothing else to lose but time, and so he did as he was told. Each footstep he took was obscured by a rumbling tick or a quivering tock. The clock had come with him. There was barely an hour left before its hands reached the place where he knew they would stop. Where the world would end.
But...
He froze.
Silence.
...Why did it seem as if the clock's hands only moved when he did?
"Keep walking forward," said everything. "Don't look up at the time. You have enough. As long as you keep moving, you'll make it."
He breathed with a sigh that didn't sound like his but was.
"Don't let this all have been for nothing."
Anson kept walking forward. Each footstep came with a tick or a tock. He marched to the beat of the doomsday clock.
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ
The shudder of snapping walls shook the carriage.
Anson's eyes flew open, his heart leaping out of its steady, sleeping rhythm and into his throat. A gray sky stretched above him. He simply watched it from his place on the seat, his mind still sluggish with strange dreams. Raindrops splashed his face. How odd. Hadn't there been a roof there, before?
Tayla was the first to scream.
Anson and Jeriko spat out startled curses in the same instant.
"Get down!" Aydel was already on the floor.
A gust of wind smashed the carriage seconds later. The horses cried out, the carriage swinging wildly as its wooden bones splintered above its passenger's heads.
...What on Auratessa?
Aydel vaulted over the broken wall and into the open dirt road. "We've got trouble!"
Right. The situation clicked into place in Anson's head with a thump of his heart. They were under attack.
The safety clicked from a gun, not once, but twice. Jeriko had made certain Tayla was armed with Human weapons, as well. Fighting his own pounding pulse, Anson followed suit and readied his firearm with shaking fingers.
"Prioritize defense," Jeriko ordered, his usually lax voice stiff with urgency. "We'll support Del from here."
Kneeling below the remnants of the carriage wall for cover, Anson gathered the courage to peek over the edge. A group of about seven men and women, adorning spears and light armor, surrounded them. Restless wind wafted from one soldier's outstretched palms, already impatient for the next attack. Lyrum. Surprise and realization tied knots in Anson's stomach. Were they here because—
"Anson!"
He spun to look at Jeriko just as an arrow slit the air. It buzzed past the side of his face and bit into the wood inches away. Had he not jerked his head, it would have hit between his eyes. His tentative glance over the wall had nearly killed him.
For a breathless moment, he thought the arrow had missed him completely. But then...why was blood dripping down his cheeks?
Then came the pain. Hot. Sudden. Intense. It screamed through him from the side of his skull, throwing off his balance and submerging his mind in slippery black oil. He threw his hands to his wound, and when he did, he found nothing but a torn stump where his right ear had been.
Oh lord...
The roar of a gun echoed over his cry.
When he forced his eyes open, an avian monster glided from a nearby tree seconds before a bullet splintered the branch. It clutched a bow and arrow in its beak.
Dorzin Rita.
Jeriko took shot after shot at the Councilor, but the beast surrendered only a screech, its enormous body dodging each bullet with the effortless grace of a dancer. Jeriko stole a glance at Anson when he ducked to reload. "It's you they're after—stay down and don't move." His tone left no opportunity for argument, "Remember, your safety is our top priority."
Anson's voice caught in his throat, but he managed a nod.
Looking up from below cover, his gaze followed the barrel of Jeriko's gun. It settled on Rita for another round of the same dance, but the Councilor flew around the
bullets as if the possibility of one connecting was only a joke. If nothing else, the onslaught stopped the shapeshifter from firing arrows. He didn't have the time to transform, and the threat kept him and his talons at a distance.
Anson craned his neck to look through the cracks in the carriage's wooden slats, piecing the battle together through thin vertical glimpses.
Tayla also made good use of her firearm. Healing Translation was useless in combat, and he'd wondered how a Lyrum without any offensive ability would defend herself, but he'd wasted his worry. She worked with Aydel and her arrows of ice, driving back the rest of the assault with swift, smooth shots. Jeriko had trained her well in the art of Human weapons. As if for emphasis, one of her bullets shattered the back of a man's head just as Anson looked away.
His gaze settled on Aydel. A body collapsed at her feet, a stalagmite—similar to the one that had sealed Mayver's fate—slicing through its stomach. A second Lyrum lay sprawled on the ground. A few wintery arrows still jutted from his wounds, melting slowly in the morning sun.
Aydel's own shoulder was slick with blood, but no pain registered on her face. Swinging her good arm like the conductor of a ballad, she summoned a barrier of ice and blocked a lurch of living stones. The ice sang hollowly while rocks pounded against it like fingers on a piano. It barely cracked.
As soon as she was safe, the barrier fractured into an army of arrows and flew at the woman who'd assaulted her. Three of them tore through her neck. She fell, still.
Four down, four to go.
Rita still dove through the sky. A fellow ice commandant spared with Aydel, their arrows smashing each other's into flurries of dust. Tayla fired at a shifter in the shape of a reptilian beast. Where was the last Lyrum? Including Rita, Anson swore he'd seen eight.
The broken carriage surged forward when a gust of wind pummeled it from behind.
Anson's fingers scraped against splinters as he scrambled for purchase, as he fell from his cover. His back hit the ground. He barely had time to open his eyes before the reptilian shifter was above him. Its claws sank into his shoulders with stabs of pain and held him down. Its fangs opened wide above his neck. Saliva left burn marks on his skin.