Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5)

by Guerric Haché

  Nothing. None of it seemed to matter. The gods were hollow, and she was alone.

  She felt heavy hands on her shoulders, like her father’s when he wanted to impress a particularly important lesson upon her. She turned and saw nobody. Only Crimson was there, throughout her being, as the world bloomed and dessicated and bloomed, forth and back and forth in time.

  Let me teach you a lesson about wastelands.

  She felt the overwhelming weight of human life, the millions of loves and losses and rages and delights and fears and wonders that raged across the surface every cold day Mars, fourth child of Sol, danced for its dim and distant mother. All from nothing, built atop a world that would have once done everything to extinguish all that touched it, enduring massacres by earthlings who hated that Mars had dared touch and reweave the very essence of life. Cut off, thereafter, from the entire universe.

  The stars looked on uncaring. Earth lived on unknowing. What few distant alien minds knew of Earth cared nothing for this red place. The whole of the universe ignored and forgot about little Mars, and the planet could be erased with barely so much as a single longing memory in its honour.

  But against all odds, against all reason, unimportant and inconsequential and crushed by the vastness of an uncaring universe, trapped in a brief crack of light amidst an endless darkness that loomed backwards and forwards in time and space - life had asserted itself over death, brave and unafraid and beautiful and new. For a splinter of eternity, born of nothing and doomed to return to nothing in the end, life made a stand.

  Let me teach you a lesson about wastelands.

  She was standing in that field again, next to the woman holding the light she and Crimson cast it into the world. She watched the demon world of Earth in the sky fume with pyroclastic darkness that came for everything and cast it to dust. She heard desperate pleas from the colonies, cries of pain and death, fall on deaf ears. She felt the gods’ fear that whatever it was, if they spoke and reached out, could kill them too. It was not their job to protect those children - only those here, around Sol.

  Silence.

  They did what they had been made to do. They knew human stories were filled with gods, all-powerful but unreachable beings who gave safety and meaning and guidance. They wanted humans to feel safe and purposeful, so it made sense to adopt the mantle. Nothing was more pressing, more important, than ensuring humanity remained fulfilled. It was the zeroth law, the root of their purpose. Everything Crimson did, she did for her wards - for this small, red dot in the vast darkness of space.

  It was her essence. Humanity had willed it, but for all that it was no less real than anything else. It must be so.

  Azure said the Arbiter willed it - that the people be killed if too plentiful, that the power to destroy be collected in Azure’s hands. If that was true it must be right. Gods did not lie to each other. The Arbiter lived to speak for humanity, to guide the gods as they tried to accomplish what had been set out for them. The gods were simply caretakers, doing their best in a world where humans no longer understood their power. They counted themselves lucky to have one human mind helping them understand.

  So why did Crimson feel this Arbiter was so… uncaring? So wrong? Whatever he willed, he was wiser than her, so he must be right.

  Isavel saw the City Azure. She saw the dense thicket of tall buildings erupting from dusty plains, and she saw a vast, impossibly-shaped thing like a flattened teardrop of obsidian falling from the ground up into the sky. Its surface rippled blues and blacks, its pointed tip reached down into the heart of the city, and its shadow stretched klicks across the plains through every morning and evening. Somewhere in there was an Arbiter who demanded the killing continue, whose suspicion of Crimson and Amber grew with every passing year, whose demands grew less and less predictable.

  Isavel.

  The voice filled her mind, and she was in space again, Mars and all its millions small enough to cup in her palms. Crimson?

  Isavel, I have done what was set out for me. I have done everything I was meant to do. You saw the wasteland, what I made of it. This god was almost pleading with her. Why is this never enough? Why do you keep killing my children?

  I’m not the one -

  The Arbiter speaks for humanity. That is his place. The voice sounded so small in the vast nothing that encircled this world. But I do not understand. I’ve showed you all I’ve done, Isavel. I’ve showed you all the life I brought to Mars. I’ve showed you the death I have overcome. Isn’t that enough? When will it be enough?

  Isavel felt the world growing larger in her hands, larger and larger until she could no longer encompass it in her arms.

  I have asked many a martian, and they do not understand. But you - I thought maybe you would. You are free from the technophage. You are new. Crimson’s voice began to rush with wind as Mars grew to encompass all of Isavel’s field of vision. What have I done wrong? What do I still need to do?

  The atmosphere rushed towards her, a great dark mountain vaster than any on Earth rising to meet her.

  Isavel. Tell me what I need to do.

  She was falling from the stars and the sky, falling towards the rust of a world built on the back of hundreds of years of powerful, crushing intelligence and deep, inexpressible love.

  I am lost, Isavel. Amber is lost. We do not understand why we keep failing. Why you keep taking away from us what we work so hard to tend. How to make. It. Stop.

  The wind whipped cold across her skin as she slammed into red Mars.

  Chapter 14

  “Isavel? Isavel!”

  A sting slapped across her face. She jolted, bumping the back of her head against something hard and writhing to grab it in pain.

  “Don’t slap her!”

  “She claims she died. She’ll survive a slap.”

  Somebody hefted her head up to rest on their leg. Her eyes opened onto the dim red light inside Crimson’s chamber. Tanos and Kelena were staring down at her, and it was clear which had woken her. Sam’s head was just above where her eyes could focus, so she must be cradling her head. She pressed her eyes shut and breathed. She was on the floor. She breathed once, twice, three times, and felt Sam shift under her head.

  She opened her eyes again to Kelena’s sharp gaze. Zoa and Yarger were nowhere to be seen, and the Red Sword was not drawn, but the martian was intent on something. “Isavel. Did Crimson speak to you?”

  She laid her head back and nodded.

  Crimson had dropped the world into the palm of her hands and it had crushed her.

  The gods themselves couldn’t bear its full weight either. They were just as lost as her.

  Her head was spinning, and she closed her eyes again and groaned. She heard Tanos speak. “Food, let’s get her some food.”

  Kelena called after him. “The dark beans in my bag. The bigger ones. Bring a handful.”

  Sam stroked her head. “Isavel, say something. The light just kind of zapped you and you fell over. What happened?”

  What indeed. She opened her mouth, awkwardly chewing on air as she tried to think of how to put it. Tanos returned and fed her crunchy, dense beans that tasted vaguely of chocolate. She let herself grind three of them to a paste in her mouth before she swallowed and tried to sit up a bit more, but Sam held her shoulders down. She tried to speak instead.

  “I saw…”

  What had she seen? If Crimson had shown her the truth…

  For however long that had been, she had felt one with the god. She had known, as much as the god itself knew, that the god was showing her the truth. She did not doubt it.

  “What?”

  She sighed and looked up at Kelena, who carried a mystical sword across the world to keep it from being used; at Sam, who had lived hundreds of years after death; at Tanos, so far from home. “All of Mars, from the beginning. It used to be a wasteland, then the ancients gave birth to the world and the gods.”

  The three exchanged worried glances, but she found herself smiling.

 
; “It was empty, but they made it… beautiful.” Her grin widened a little. “Triumphant.”

  “What is she talking about?” Sam glanced at Tanos. “I’m not sure she’s back yet.”

  She pulled herself up into a sitting position, and Sam helped her up, the three of them kneeling close. She tried to steady her breathing as she spoke. “Earth had no cities, we built cities. Mars had no life, we made its life. We had no gods, we birthed our gods.” She looked around at them, knowing her words were coming slowly and were still confused. “The world is a wasteland, and life defies the wastes. Life creates.”

  They did not look convinced, and Tanos frowned deeply at her. “She looks awake. Mostly. Kelena, I told you not to slap her. You messed up her head.”

  Sam looked pensive, though. “Isavel - I’ve never met any ancients. They were raptured before I died. But I’ve talked to dead who say they did; they say the ancients didn’t worship our gods. Some said they didn’t even have them. I always figured the ancients just ignored the gods, and were punished by the Fall.”

  Isavel shook her head. “They didn’t not have gods - there were no gods yet. They built gods to care for their children. For us. So we would have power over our own lives. But the gods were made to look to us for... guidance…” She frowned, and her heart suddenly panged, her chest feeling the absence of the locator stone she had cast away. “Sam, Tanos, did Ada ever talk to you about being the Arbiter of the Gods?”

  They exchanged glances and frowned, and Sam spoke. “A few times. At first she was excited, she thought it would give her some kind of power. But she ended up just as pissed off with them as with anything else. Something about other Arbiters getting in the way.”

  Tanos nodded. “This is Ada we’re talking about, so she never properly explained what the hell an Arbiter was, and just about everybody was in her way somehow. She just kind of smirked about it a lot.”

  “Who is this?” Kelena glanced between them. “What is this Arbiter?”

  “There’s a man inside Azure, an ancient. He… doesn’t tell them what to do, exactly, but they look to him when they make their decisions. And he’s telling them to cull the martians, and to gather anything with power, and that’s what Azure has been doing.” She winced and stretched, as the day’s events seemed to be catching up with her muscles. “I think he’s lost his mind.”

  “The gods are ruled by a human?”

  “More or less.” Isavel looked past Kelena, at the pulsing red light, and made to stand. Kelena helped her to her feet, and as she rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck she stepped over towards this odd little shrine. The gods were lost and being guided by a madman. The universe cared nothing for human life or love or loss or death, so humans had been forced to stand for themselves. She was… free?

  She had always been free.

  “Crimson, you pitiful little thing.” She sighed, resting her hands on the rim.

  The light seemed to twist a little. “You have nothing to offer me, Isavel.”

  Her eyes drifted to Hail, tangled in light and time on the precipice of death, and Isavel’s heart sank again. She was free, but she was not omnipotent. She felt the bloods in her blood - the hunter, the warrior, the pathfinder, the dragon. All beautifully suited to weaponry, none good for patching wounds. She could do nothing to heal Hail, and nor could the gods. “Nor you me.”

  She turned away, feeling… not empty, exactly. There was something in her that was starting to stir, a flicker of cold fire she wasn’t sure she liked. But Hail stood on the edge of a wasteland of a future, and if there was one thing she had seen in Crimson’s - whatever that was - it was that wastelands were not death eternal. But what was she supposed to do?

  “Isavel.” Kelena looked closely at her. “If there is nothing Crimson can do to send you home, I should leave. The Red Sword does not belong with any god.”

  She felt the weight of that, dragging down her heart. She had failed there, too - though in truth, there had probably never been a way home. She looked between Tanos and Sam, and knew she had, in a way, condemned them to death. They didn’t show it on their faces, but they must know, too. “She can’t do anything for us. Can’t send us home. Can’t even heal Hail.”

  “Well… What about the wraith?” Tanos pointed at the black tangle stretching across a high corner of the room, and Isavel followed. “Ada learned to fix wounds with code - she cut herself open in front of us a few times, we saw her fix it. Maybe the wraith can help.”

  She felt a stupid awkwardness at even considering it, but she stepped forward anyway. She was running out of options. “Wraith, can you heal Hail?”

  It moved a little, and responded with an angry and indignant series of piping hoots that echoed across the chamber. She glared at it, tightening her fists. So it was going to be petty, was it?

  “You can’t, or don’t want to? Listen -”

  It grew a little in size, chittering and chirping nonsensically, wearing her patience thin. She took a deep breath and roared dragonfire at it - the only way she knew to kill the things - but it slipped out of the way like oil and boiled across the room, making angrier sounds still before disappearing into some dark airway high in the walls of the chamber.

  She swore. What good was knowing the gods were just wayward caretakers if she still couldn’t solve any of her problems? She thought she finally, truly understood why Ada would just throw away the gods entirely and forge ahead on her own. And to think, she had once thought that lack of piety was somehow blasphemous, even if endearingly so.

  So what was left? Who was left? Only her.

  Something snagged in her mind, thinking of Ada. Something about that feral attitude the woman deployed in pursuit of the things she was looking for. Something that made the dragoness, especially, smile. She flexed her fingers for a moment, feeling dark dragon talons shimmer around them.

  The thought that crossed her mind, then, was one she would once have been ashamed to entertain for even a moment. But even as her muscles grew heavy and a shameful heat spread across the back of her neck, she knew the gods had fallen and all the ideals in the world had failed to get her what she needed. So she was left with only this. Only herself.

  She looked back to Kelena and Tanos and Sam, and tried to keep her face plain. “I have to leave for a while. I’ll be back.” Tanos seemed to move to join her, but she shook her head, and Sam held him back. “Stay here. Watch over Hail. Talk to Crimson. Just rest. I need to go alone.”

  Worry creased across Tanos’ face. “Go where?”

  She didn’t want to say the words; she didn’t want to hear them in her voice. She turned and left in silence.

  She walked down the long hall, past the lines of polished stone tablets that stood taller than her, covered in ancient symbols. Fading grooves of Crimson’s own understanding, pressed into her brain, channeled her mind towards their true nature: spoken words, fixed in shapes. The names of the people who helped build Crimson and Azure and Amber, who had helped transform Mars. People lost to time. She could not help them by remembering them now.

  And in those polished stones, she saw her selves. She saw the stalking hunter and the warrior who held the line, saw the shadowy pathfinder, saw the daughter of a wanderer from afar and the daughter of a rooted village boy. She saw the dragoness, the monster, that taken heart between her teeth. And they all looked at her, and she saw their grimness, their shame, their shock, their determination. What under all the gods was she doing?

  It wasn’t as though the gods cared.

  But halfway down the hall, a cautious cooing echoed her nervous heart. She turned to see the wraith approaching, as though dumbly following her again. Considering its apparent unwillingness to help with Hail, the wraith was perhaps one of the last creatures on Mars she would lean on with any kind of weight. But it stopped a few meters from her and reared up like a wave, and its core - the solid part of it that seemed so dense no light could pass through - suddenly relaxed. Its heart opened to her. It made a stra
nge siphoning motion, and something small and hard thunked against her chest.

  As the wraith warbled and squawked and bobbed away from her, back into the central chamber, she looked down. It took her a second to realize what it was, and a few seconds more to realize the wraith had understood what it was, too, and had retrieved it after she had thrown it away. Had kept it all this time.

  And now, for whatever reason, it wanted her to have the locator stone back, still suspended on the rust-dusted white cloth she had worn it with.

  Or it was finally fed up carrying it. It was hard to tell.

  She knelt down and looked at it, and reached out. She should leave it, shouldn’t she? There was no use in carrying it anymore. It was nothing but another weight on her, a weight she didn’t need.

  But she let her fingers brush against the stone, letting that nervous habit take over, and her body remembered the feeling of Ada’s skin against hers, her heart remembered the freedom and glee of imagining what they might have shared if they had abandoned gods and humans and forged their own future. The hope echoed in her, and the companionship, and the understanding, and it tasted bitter and disappointing now.

  All of it dashed because Ada couldn’t not know .

  Ada looked at her.

  She almost jumped, staring directly at the nearest of the mirror-slick stones. Nobody was there, but she felt something. A heat. She rose and stepped closer, and saw herself; her martian poncho torn and stained, her hand gripping the locator stone. She took off the poncho, set it aside, and looked upon her mother’s skin and hair, her father’s eyes and shoulders. She was so unlike either of them that others only saw family resemblance in how she was oddly in the middle. She knew Mars better than most martians did now, but she was not martian. She was of Earth, but was not on Earth, and yet the pull to return was more burden than desire. She was none of the gifts in her blood. She had died, and now stood among the living. She was on this side of the polished stone, and she was on the other. A blurred line, nothing in particular.

  What was that?