Paragon

by Rowan Rook

  Show me, Shakaya begged silently. Show me.

  The Editor reached for the chakram on the ground and threw it back at her in one slick motion, imitating the same movements it must have seen her make so many times.

  Surprise made her move an instant too late, and cold metal sliced through her skin. Her leg—it had still only aimed for her leg. In a Lyrum's hands, the chakram was as weak as its muscles, but even a scratch was enough to spread the toxin. She snarled, the hot chill racing up to her thigh and sending her down to one knee.

  The Editor rushed closer, determination plastered over its face. It pointed the gun at her head.

  Shakaya looked up at the Lyrum with a flicker of fear. Was holding back a mistake? No... Its eyes still looked the same. Such false, impossible eyes. It wasn't going to shoot, not yet. This was still an act. A bluff within a bluff.

  Show me, Shakaya screamed inside.

  She tried not to smile.

  Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

  "Leave," Anson ordered in the most intimidating voice he could manage, but it trembled just as much as the gun in his grip. "Please...just leave me be."

  Shakaya blinked, slow and shocked, before her stoic countenance returned. "This is my job. I'll always be your shadow. If you want to get rid of me, you'll have to kill me."

  She said it so simply.

  Anson gritted his teeth with a defiant groan.

  "Do it, then." Dusk darkened her blue-sky eyes. "If you won't return to the Butterfly, then the only way this will end is with one of us dead. Kill me."

  Anson shook his head, the person who'd once been his most precious friend obscured through tears.

  "Kill me!" Shakaya's voice finally wavered. Her cheeks reddened, her eyes stretched wide. "Kill me, Lyrum. Kill me and end it!" The tears escaping her own eyes only seemed to fuel her fury. "Do it!"

  Anson's fingers faltered on his gun. He needed to aim it back down at her knees, at least, but his quivering hands wouldn't cooperate. He shook his head and stepped back.

  ...As if killing her had ever been a possibility.

  Heat flashed through Shakaya's eyes the moment he faltered. She lurched up, her boot crashing into his ribs and sending him to the ground. She hovered over him, her dagger poised above his shoulder.

  If she chose to, she could kill him.

  Anson's shock shuddered through him. Suddenly, he understood. She'd never intended to let him shoot her. She'd tested him. The moment she had believed he was going to pull the trigger would have been the moment her knife sunk into his throat. She'd waited for him to reveal himself as the monster she believed he was. She'd wanted permission to kill a Lyrum like any other—not her childhood friend—herself.

  He hadn't given it to her.

  Shakaya's dagger sliced his right arm when he tried to get up.

  He held in a scream as his own blood splashed his face.

  "Go back!" she snarled, her dagger shaking in her grip. "I won't allow everything to have been for nothing!"

  A new blade cut through the air and glistened in the moonlight. Even through the pain, Anson recognized it. "Shakaya!"

  She headed his warning on instinct, just in time to see the arrow of ice hurtling toward her. She ducked, nearly pressing into him, before it passed above her head.

  Aydel strode up to the two of them. "The Editor isn't your responsibility any longer, Johanne."

  Shakaya glowered at the intruder and got to her feet, her fist clenched around Anson's shirt. He held in a panicked curse as she pulled him part way off the ground like a ragdoll. "Rickard has told me otherwise."

  Aydel laughed. "You still believe a word that snake tells you? It's as if Humans must prove their stupidity every chance they get."

  "The decisions of our division are no business of yours, Anwell," Shakaya's voice oozed poison.

  "I beg to differ. I share a place on the hierarchy with Rickard, and I'm ordering you to leave my brother to us." Aydel released a second arrow with a flick of her wrist.

  It cut through the fabric of Anson's shirt, releasing him from Shakaya's grip. He hit the ground with a gasp.

  Aydel seized on Shakaya's surprise and surged forward with a volley of arrows.

  Shakaya twirled to the side with sudden ease and fetched her chakram in the same motion. Ice cracked around her like a hailstorm but assaulted only soil and leaves.

  Aydel stole her place, standing over Anson.

  The Butterflies glowered at each other in silence.

  Shakaya raised her chakram. "Perhaps it's time I take my vengeance on at least one of you."

  Aydel spat out something between a laugh and a curse. "You're free to give it a go. I may as well finish what my mother started all those years ago."

  A snarl tore from Shakaya's throat as her chakram cut through the air.

  It reflected uselessly off a wall of ice that hadn't been there before.

  Anson pushed himself to his feet with a groan. He knew he needed to run. He needed to flee while Aydel and Shakaya kept each other busy. But this wasn't simply a struggle for power. This was a fight to the death.

  Shakaya danced past another onslaught of arrows like a ricocheting bullet. She lunged around the wall, her fingers strangling her dagger, embracing her physical advantage.

  Aydel summoned an airborne avalanche.

  Shakaya threw herself to the side, her injured knee nearly buckling.

  Anson watched with a pounding heart.

  An image of the royal audience room—the soldiers' bodies heaped on the marble floor, painting it scarlet—flashed through his memory and left gooseflesh in its wake.

  Shakaya was a competent soldier...but Aydel was something else entirely.

  A second avalanche pummeled Shakaya's back. She roared soundlessly, the air pushed from her lungs as she hit the ground. The ice held her down as she struggled to rise.

  Aydel raised her wrist in a way Anson had witnessed before—the motion that summoned stalagmites.

  "No!" Anson grabbed her arm and held it back. "Don't kill her!"

  Aydel shot him a glare. "And why the Hell shouldn't I?"

  Anson narrowed his eyes. "Because if you do, I'll never forgive you."

  A fire like his glistened in Aydel's gaze before she turned away. "If you're planning on running, I'd do it now."

  Anson's grip didn't waver. "But—"

  "Go!" she ordered. "I won't kill your pet."

  Shakaya was back on her feet.

  Anson shot his sister a last, uncertain glare before whirling to flee.

  Voices argued behind him.

  "You're letting it escape! You know as well as I do that—"

  "He'll be back. Giving up on him now would be a waste, but no one can force a man to kill. He needs to realize for himself that he has no other choice worth making."

  The echoes dissolved into metal clangs and icy cracks.

  A strange laugh whimpered through Anson's throat even as he ran.

  She was wrong.

  He was never going back.

  Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

  Rickard's pencil shook against her sketchbook, the lines coming out shaky and slanted, as if the world were already falling apart.

  She stopped, taking a moment to breathe.

  No. Everything was still under control. Shakaya had arrived at Rickard's Velvire hotel that morning, furious and battered, and the news she'd brought with her was alarming, yes, but it wasn't fatal. It was an expected variable, even. It simply wasn't one she had wanted to deal with.

  The Editor knew. Amaranth—Anson—knew. Just as she had predicted he would if he knew, he'd fled the Butterfly.

  She tried again to touch her pencil to the paper. This time, the lines came out steady.

  If she had been right about how he'd reacted, then she would be right about what would come next. Her Editor would come home. She and her daughter would arrive before him, using her Rune to buy the quickest route back to the Academy. She would see to it that he changed his mind—that he saw sense.

&nbs
p; She drew the thin line of his frown on his portrait, the way his face must have looked when the truth—the horror—set in. She shivered, in spite of herself, studying the whole of his image. A part of her wished she had been there to see it; a part of her was glad she hadn't been.

  Don't think like that, she told herself. There was still so much to do before she could avert her eyes. Before she could try to forget. She had a duty to the world and she couldn't run from it, not like him. She was stronger. That was why she would win.

  She added tears beneath his eyes with delicate pricks of her pencil.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Home

  "You're the only one who can save the world, and so you must."

  Anson waded through black waters. There was nothing to see. Nothing to smell or taste or touch. Nothing to hear but the liquid slosh of his own footsteps, still pounding out the tick and the tock of the doomsday clock.

  "I can't save anything," Anson closed his eyes, trying to forget the great wide dark around him. "I don't even know who I am. I should never have stepped through the door."

  "So that's it, then?" said nothing and everything. "You're giving up?"

  "I should have given up a long time ago."

  All this time...all this time, he'd been manipulated by the Butterfly from the outside, the Author from the inside. What remained of himself? Why had he ever tried? He was simply a tool. Nothing more.

  "You dare defy your god?"

  "You're no god." Anson kept walking, sending ripples through the void. "Not anymore. You're as empty and hopeless as I am."

  "I chose you for a reason," said the Author. "You should rejoice in the gift you've been given. I offered you the chance to save the world—the chance to chase your dreams."

  "Were they ever mine?" Sure...he'd always been different. He'd broken traditional boundaries. He wasn't afraid to dream. He'd wished for a better world, as had so many others. But... "Were they ever...like this?"

  So much death. So much fear. So much loss.

  "Were they?" asked the one who wasn't there but always was.

  Anson stopped, unable to answer the echo of his own question.

  An image flittered by, piercing the dark like a bubble of light. Inside, he saw his sister, Lyn, sitting in her garden, watching the flowers through watering eyes. He felt her fear, her grief, her love. The emotion swept over him, the weight of it nearly bringing him to his knees.

  Another moment floated past him. This time, he saw a man he'd never met. A Human soldier, standing by the bodies of his friends. He was his troop's sole survivor. Anson felt his fear, his grief, his love.

  The images kept coming, bubbling up from the abyss. Anson saw a Human child behind bars, dressed in rags, staring up at a Lyrum's cold face. Adults shared his cell, stained with dirt and blood. They were the slaves of long ago, sealed away in the bowels of Riksharre. Anson saw a Lyrum child, standing at the edge of her Havventhale colony and waiting for her father to return home from a skirmish near Velvire, her fear swelling with each long beat of her heart. He was never coming back. Anson saw Humans gathered at the center of Noirore village, watching bodies burn as the funeral pyre reached for the stars. The recent Lyrum raid had taken so many of their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers. They couldn't stay there, not anymore. Anson saw a Lyrum sitting in one of the Academy's cells. Another slumped atop him, not breathing. Her body had finally broken. Even through the haze of drugs, he held her, his eyes closed to stop the tears. Anson saw a house go up in flames, a Human girl with sandy hair and scared blue eyes screaming out for her parents as smoke snaked into her room. The fire creeped closer, slowly eating everything she'd known, slowly destroying her life.

  He fell, his palms splashing down in the velvet black.

  Ugly... The world truly was ugly.

  He shut his eyes as tightly as he could. These...were the Author's memories. The memories of nothing and everything. Memories from before it bound itself to him. They were all there, inside his own head. All stored inside of his own body. All a part of him. Suddenly, he never wanted to open his eyes again.

  "You don't have the right to look away," said nothing. "Not when only you can save the world."

  Even with his eyes closed, the images twinkled like stars. A brother and sister looked up at the sky, telling scary stories beneath an autumn moon. Weary lovers held a newborn child, cradling her close, sitting side-by-side by the fireplace. A young man raced through the woods, listening to the chatter of birds and the whistling of the wind, feeling utterly free as his body burned with life. Two women kissed and giggled in the privacy of their bedroom, content, never wanting to leave each other's arms. An artist searched the inside of his heart, painting new realities in his mind and on his canvas. A child reached out for the sun, closing his eyes as the summer kissed his cheeks, dreaming of what he would be when he grew up.

  "Don't you see?" said everything. "The world is beautiful, too. Do you want to let it wilt? Do you want to let it die?"

  Tears dripped down Anson's cheeks. "I can't save anything."

  "Don't you wish to?"

  He breathed. Did he? Did he, truly?

  Emptiness panged inside of him, closing in. No matter how many memories he saw, both beautiful and terrible, he was alone, even without himself. He had no one, nothing. The world—his world—was hollow.

  He forced himself to open his eyes. A gasp escaped. A single person stood in the distance, back turned, facing the black.

  Anson staggered to his feet and raced toward the stranger. When he reached out, the figure turned. He stopped.

  A Lyrum boy looked up at him, his long black hair draped over his shoulders, his bright brown eyes confused. Anson Anwell—the boy he'd once been.

  He stepped back.

  The boy only blinked at him. "All I wanted was for her to live," the younger Anson said. "All I wanted was for the fighting to stop."

  The older Anson hung his head, not able to meet the gaze of his former self.

  "It was only a dream," the child said, leaning closer, not letting the man escape from the pain in his eyes. "I wanted to stop death. I didn't want to cause it."

  Anson shook his head, "I never wanted..." he tried. He wanted to promise the boy that everything would be okay, but he couldn't.

  The younger Anwell blinked up at him. "Who are you?"

  The older Anwell blinked, in turn. Ice prickled up from the soles of feet. He reached out, touching the boy's cheek.

  It faded away beneath his fingers. The boy stared up at him as he melted into the black like a ghost at dawn. Anson Anwell was gone, swallowed up by nothing and everything.

  The man who still called himself Anson only stood, a cold lump strangling his throat.

  "I'm doing the right thing."

  Anson blinked at the sound of the voice. It was his own.

  He turned. Amaranth stood behind him, dressed in his Academy lab coat. Fresh crimson stains mottled the familiar white fabric. The scientist looked at him through his own brown eyes.

  "The end still justifies the means. This world should thank me, really. You saw what happened to the Anwell house. You know how I was treated at the Academy. You know how broken I am—how guilty, how haunted, how ashamed, how angry, how afraid. I'll erase my mistakes. I can't live with them; I don't want to die with them. I can't." He shook his head, tears spilling down his cheeks. "I don't want to die young, not like this." His expression was all too familiar. "It isn't fair. It isn't fair. It isn't fair! If the world won't accept me, then I won't accept it!"

  Anson stepped back, his face creasing with disgust. What a selfish person. This time, the question came from him: "Who are you?"

  Amaranth didn't answer, only staring back at him with those sad, scared, angry brown eyes.

  Was this...really him?

  Anson looked down at himself. Fear washed through him before despair. He saw nothing. He was nothing. He had no body of his own. He was no one.

  Yes...

 
He was no one, at all.

  The ghost forced himself to look up, and when he did, a light chased away the dark.

  The Amaranth in front of him stood not in black water, but blood. Walls of flesh and bone surrounded him, pulsing, breathing, living. Horror and wonder surged through what remained of Anson. Suddenly, he knew where he was. He was inside a body—the body of the world, itself. It was a breathing thing, all on its own. Full of its own dreams, its own fears, its own fury. It had consumed him. Swallowed him whole. Made him small.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock. He heard the beating of the doomsday clock. He spun without form. There, behind him, beneath the sky of black and white, of crystal and bone, of minutes and hours, beat a heart. It inhaled and exhaled in rhythm with time, fully alive.

  The ghost saw Amaranth step toward it, pulling a scalpel from his pocket.

  Dread seized him.

  No.

  "This is the right thing," said nothing, said everything, said the Author. "Don't you want the world to be more than it is?"

  He...did. He did. He did, but...

  Amaranth marched toward the heart of the world, his eyes solemn, his gate steady. He waded through blood, never looking down, never looking away. The blade glistened in his pale fingers.

  No.

  "This is what you want," the Author promised. "The route to rebirth is always through death."

  Amaranth stopped, standing in front of the world's beating heart, raising his knife.

  No! The ghost tried to scream, but couldn't. He had no tongue, no voice, no body.

  No!

  Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

  Anson slid the ID card, still proudly displaying Amaranth's name and title, through the slot by Elavadin Academy's main gate.

  It was well after midnight. There would be a few security guards about, but if he were lucky, he'd be able to slip in and out of the Academy without much notice. He hesitated by the door, as he had so many years ago, wiping sweat from his brow as the lock clicked open.

  Come on, think about this carefully before you go inside. If word has gotten around about the suspect for the queen's assassination, you're finished. If word has gotten around that a certain scientist wasn't so Human after all, you're also finished. For all you know, Shakaya may have beaten you here and spread rumors, and Rickard is surely aware of your movements. This is far too risky. You know well that Shakaya carries a dose of the antidote with her. If you return to her or the Butterflies, I'm sure they will get it to you.