She paused, breathing heavily, reaching to the locator stone. Gripping it in her hand. She was still alone in here.
“Ah, that one hurts. And it should. You’ve been used by everyone around you - their weapon, their figurehead, their personal saviour. Ada Liu was no different - why should she be? She used you like the rest. Why shouldn’t she? She knew you were a threat. Why else would she flee after your very first meeting you?”
Isavel frowned. Wait a minute. That wasn’t what happened.
She had told Ada to flee, to avoid being seen with that hauler.
Ada had taken her advice; thanked her for it, even.
Azure - or his Arbiter - was guessing. Grasping in the dark. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She tore back into the walls, parallel to the sealed corridor, ripping through sparking and glowing metal. “Ada didn’t fear me - I told her to go!”
There was the briefest of pauses. “That doesn’t matter. She left Earth with your help, left you floundering alone, to the point where your only option was to go begging to your gods for answers -”
Ada had embraced her in the ballroom in Hive, willingly, had interrupted her march to kill the mayor of the city and side with the ghosts just because Isavel had smiled at her. Ada had fought alongside her in a moment they both knew full well they were fighting for opposing sides. When Isavel had barged into that ruin, confused and mislead, Ada had tried her hardest not to fight her. She had stayed her hand over Glass Peaks out of fear for Isavel’s life. Ada had brought the two of them back together, in the night, on the plains beyond Campus. Again and again, for all that she was erratic and unpredictable, Ada had gone out of her way to side with Isavel, to be closer to her, to protect her.
Ada had cried as she had kissed her goodbye.
“You understand nothing.”
“I am a god, and you are a wretched failure of a human. I understand -”
She slammed through a set of code that cut off the nearest speaker with an electric screech.
“You think you’re saying anything new, Azure? They said it out loud, again and again, my entire fucking life.” Metal wrent. “My father saw only my mother in me; my mother, only my father. And everyone else looked at me and saw neither, nothing they could name. So I saw the same thing. But you know what? I’m not neither. I’m not both. I just am .”
“You were -”
She dug into more metal, ripping past another sealed door.
“And you’re right! Nobody mourned my death! Not even me! When I died - when everything I knew was smashed and burned and cut open and killed - do you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t break down and cry for days. I didn’t go into shock; I carried my dead. I didn’t collapse begging in the temple - I stepped right out again and fought . My nightmares stalked me in the light of day and I went to sleep and fucking dreamt them anyway .”
Metal screamed and snapped under her blades and talons.
“It should have torn me up by the roots, Azure, except I had no roots. Anybody else would have been cut in fucking half, but not me. I was already halves. So I walked, I ran, I fought, and now here I am.”
She met a heavier bulkhead here, burst back into the hallway between two doors, ripped into the other sides with blades of light, her skin still glowing white, lighting the way.
“You’re right - I have too many gifts to have purpose. What the fuck am I? A warrior, a hunter, a pathfinder? Am I sneaky, or brutal, or a needleshot from a dozen klicks away? Am I a fucking dragon? Am I a healer, now? I’m none of those things. I’m nothing. I have no purpose.”
Another bulkhead peeled away by strength and hard light, another access space exposed.
“But I can beat anyone. Nobody knows what to do with me. Nobody else blasted the ghosts trying to capture us in the forest. Nobody else fought dragons head-on and won. Nobody else walked into the realm of the dead and lit the way for everyone else. Nobody else stuck their hand in the heart of a watcher and lived. Nobody else could have drank the blood of a medic to save lives!”
Azure crowed as she continued ripping through his shell. “Every life you think you save is a step on a path of destruction and chaos. You are a monster, and you will end your days in isolation, cast off like a useless husk. You have no identity, no foundation, no -”
“I died.” She broke through another bulkhead. “I lived again.” The corridor was getting shorter. “And I didn’t have to steal another body to do it! I am the only person to look death in the eyes and come out on the other side on my own! Who else can say that?”
“Your delusions -”
She slammed through the last of the bulkheads, stepping into a wide, ring-shaped corridor with signs opposite the hallway she had been tearing alongside. The words on the walls felt vaguely familiar, and in moments she recognized Central Command again. She went left.
“I am standing here on Mars, an earthling, and I’ve felt the swelling of its seas over a thousand years, Azure! I’ve tasted sandstorms that cover the planet! I’ve seen barren rust deserts turned to life by molds and grasses and shrubs and forests! I’ve seen the history of Mars play out before my eyes, and yet I know nothing of Earth, and Mars knows nothing of me. What am I, Azure?”
She found a door, slammed her blade into it. It didn’t budge. Neither did the wall around it. “You are a freak. You have no place in anyone’s life. You will die revered and unloved, surrounded and alone.”
The locator stone still knocked against her chest, beating against her heart.
Something clanked into her peripheral vision, and she swung up her shield to deflect incoming shots from golems that were approaching her, emerging from the dark into the light she was casting from her skin. She counted six. Infinitely too few.
“Ada was wild and untamed and dangerous as anyone on Earth, and who did she come to? Who did she seek out, trust, hold? Not someone clear of purpose, not someone easy. She came to me, Azure. Her heart beat for me! You think I’m alone?”
She roared dragonfire into the hall and dove in, shields slamming forwards, palms alight. Two were already on the ground, a third reached for her and got a shield edge through the torso for its trouble. She swung her right hand, talons of light on each finger, into another golem’s chest, ripping it apart. The last two were backing off, firing, but she let her shields flow into armor around her body, raising her palms and cutting them both down with hunter fire.
“Ada Liu is long gone. She may as well be dead.”
She grabbed the one golem that was still moving and began ramming it against the door marked Central Command . “She’s alive.” Slam. “ We brought down your shield.” Smash. “You overwrought piece of slag .”
“You did no such thing. I suffered a series of coincidental malfunctions. You are nothing.”
“I am nothing! You think that’s an insult? You don’t understand what that means! ”
Power. There was power in this golem - of course there was. She ripped its torso open, looking for the power core. It was there, small and bright, all that power having nowhere to go. She gave it somewhere to go, reaching in and laying her left hand on it, feeling the electric energy coursing through her skin and blood and bones. She fed it all into the blade on her right hand and plunged it white-hot into the door. It melted the metal into molten sludge bleeding red in the dark, and she started cutting, punctuating every phrase with a yank on the hot blade.
“No place lets me go anywhere . No purpose lets me choose. I have no roots and that lets me fly. I’m not confused, I’m not undefined, I am new! ”
She finished cutting, the metal sloughing out of the doorframe, sizzling and hissing in dim reds and oranges. She kicked the thick, hot metal slab out of her way and stepped through into the darkness of Central Command, muttering under her breath, for herself as much as the god.
“I am walls brought down. I am expectations destroyed. I am divisions united. I am strengths combined. I am wounds sewn shut.”
She glowed, a nova in the nigh
t, everything illuminated. But there was one thing in the far corner of the room, one shape that was not metal. Isavel growled, flexing her shoulders, talons extended. There was a thick, hot line of power beneath the room, feeding something mighty that held this human in the iron grip of something almost a stasis field. And within, true metal itself wove the man’s body into machine tubes, wires and piping buried into his flesh. He was grizzled and pale, his beard and hair long and unkempt. He was thin and frail. Above his head were inscribed three words.
Arbiter of Mars.
“You’re not asking me what I am to mock me or intimidate me. You’re asking because you don’t know what I am .”
She raised her hands, and Azure squawked. “Do not -”
“And I stand here not afraid to be nothing. And that poisons everything you think you know. It makes your distinctions irrelevant. It makes your stories powerless. It terrifies you. ”
She let her talons fade, and reached for the command console. It was active, alone, disconnected from Azure’s systems. Of course it was - you couldn’t give control over the Arbiter to a god. That would be madness.
“You, Azure. And you, Arbiter .”
His eyes were shut and he saw her.
“You cannot -”
There were many other words on that command console Isavel didn’t know, but one drew her eye, and without Amber to guide her she had only herself to trust.
“I don’t tell jokes, Azure. I’m not a funny girl. But when you try to break me and fail, when I have you on your fucking knees regretting every time your insults missed and your shots broke on my shields and your shackles on me snapped and your bones cracked under my arms, I’m still going to laugh. Because I like gods-damned serious speeches. Because I’m serious as a fucking volcano. And you are going to burn .”
The machines hissed, the stasis field fizzled out. Isavel felt the energy coursing through the god’s veins under the floor, behind the walls, everywhere, just waiting for her to drink it in. She flashed her wings, painted her skin, watched him fall. The Arbiter collapsed to the ground, tubes popping out of nodes built into his flesh, fluids spilling everywhere. The Arbiter of Mars, weak and impotent, crumpled to the floor. He breathed raggedly. He couldn’t move, even in the weak well of his home planet. His muscles barely existed anymore.
She crouched down before him.
He painfully craned his head, and she reached down and grabbed him by the neck, hauling him up to look this living ancient in the eyes. He was wrinkled and flecked and grey, his skin bathed in the red and golden glows of martian gods and earthly dragons. His eyes spun wildly in his head for a few moments, then fixed on hers.
He let his mouth sag open, all his teeth long ground away to the gums. His eyes widened even further, bloodshot blue.
He shrieked.
Isavel gripped his skull between two hands, and in a brief moment she saw it all written on his face, the other half of the story Crimson had told her, the other half of the long death of the gods of Mars. The fear, the confusion, the isolation. The man trapped here, ruined by the technophage, a body bound to a service with a mind that no longer knew either.
She saw the existential crisis, the desperation, the shock. What world was this? What demon, what monster had come for him? She saw the stories Azure had told, the world those words had built, and watched them scatter across the Arbiter’s face like so much charcoal and ember and ash.
Why was this happening? The Arbiter had willed it. The gods didn’t understand why it must be, but the Arbiter willed it. It must be right.
Why was this happening? The god had willed it. The Arbiter didn’t understand why it must be, but the god willed it. It must be right.
The Arbiter kept screaming the fear, the pain, the impending doom. She saw the bare truth, the lonely terror of gods who clung to the barest film of a past in this wretched man, heard their wails in the wasteland as they lied their way into meaning. She watched the spiral spin, the whirl of reason and madness, the cycle without end at the end of the world. She felt the locator stone knocking against her sternum as she stared into these ancient eyes, and she laughed and she cried and she brought the end.
Her wings lanced through the bulkheads, the floors, the consoles. They ran bloody white with the flowing through the god’s heart, all the energy it contained, all that immense force put to no good whatsoever. It flowed into her, and her talons grew, and the Arbiter was crushed between her claws as electric fire filled her veins and her eyes and her heart -
Everything was bright beyond white. She barely heard the sounds of cracking, the death groans of a god, the world on fire and splitting in half. Wind and blood rushed past her ears as the world was ripped apart. Fire. Gravity. Light.
Something electric exploded, something in the world was dark, there were sounds, so many sounds -
She opened her eyes.
She was in the sky.
She was alone.
Around her Azure was sundered, cracked off centre, broken thirds slowly falling away from each other. As the god was peeled apart by its own weight its flesh exploded, sparks flew, screams rose from the bones. Pools of light and power were torn apart, gushing into white fire with thumps that blasted dust and smoke into the air. And suddenly everything was falling faster. The plains were on fire, the surface of Mars was on fire. Black smoke with orange curls filled the sky below, entombing Azure in chaos.
Her vision started to blinker. Stars flashed, and it was getting dark. It wasn’t, except it was. Her wings let her slip downward alongside Azure, falling to Mars, down through the open wounds of the god as it crumbled, torn apart, bleeding light and lightning.
Fire everywhere.
Lightning everywhere.
Azure’s shattered body hit Mars with thunder and sand. Explosions gorged on the metal, fire and smoke kicking the dust away in turn. The city was utterly flattened beneath the impact, people already fleeing as fast as they could. The three irregular shards of the god scattered, smaller parts strewn about, burning, bleeding. There were no drones or airships in the sky, no rokh or orange clouds. No gods, not anymore.
Fire. Crackling electricity.
Silence.
The roaring winds and flames of the god’s death masked complete and utter silence, and Isavel’s pathfinder hearing slipped past the storm and into the eye, the quiet, the absence of screaming and gunshots, the absence of words. There was nothing here, in this moment, but a god dead and an angel alive.
Her feet touched the surface of Mars, gently. She fell to her knees. Her wings thrummed behind her back, and she let them be, let Mars’ gravity take over. She was alive. Azure was not.
She had won.
Isavel Valdéz.
Saint Dragoneater Isavel Valdéz. Godless Herald. White Lady Witch. Angel of Glass. Arbiter of Mars.
Godslayer.
She knelt alone on the rust red sands of Mars, her spine curved forward, divinity in burning ruin around her. There was so much fire, so much smoke.
She looked to the skies.
Empty as any martian sky. No ring to guide her, no gods to judge her, no Elysium to welcome her. She was adrift. She was free. She was nothing, was everything she ever needed to be. She was empty; she had so much room .
She knelt there, looking for invisible stars as the ground burned.
What would come now? The gods were lost, trusting in humanity. Humanity was lost, trusting in the gods. They were all lost. What signal fire still glowed to pull them all forward?
Isavel knew. She felt the heat of the fire herself. It was the thing that pushed their ancestors into each other’s arms, pushed them across worlds, into the heights of knowledge and the jaws of war, out across the stars to worlds they had never seen. It was older than the strange martian light that Crimson saw in her. It was in all of them, a fire burning bright, and it could cast light into a world determined to stay dark.
And yet she was here, alone, the only one.
She cradled the locator st
one in her hands as she looked up.
Movement teased her peripheral vision. Martian shapes, mirran shapes, earthling shapes perhaps. Animals, one and all, picking carefully and fearfully through a corpse they could never have envisioned.
There were only two gods left on Mars, and thousands fewer people than had been on the world weeks before. Everything was crumbling, ground up and swallowed by the tides of time.
They started to filter towards her, towards the great field of ochre dusts and rust-red razor grasses and ash Isavel knelt in. She saw faces she knew, at the front, those most desperate to find her. She saw martian faces, even shreds of blue armor here and there. She saw mirran faces, aliens long stranded but finally standing witness to a moment of the world.
She saw them all, vaguely, but had eyes only for the one star that dared defy distant Sol and show itself in the day’s sky.
A star that start hadn’t been there moments ago.
A star that was getting brighter.
It fell to Mars, descending through the rich olive noon, skimming through columns of black. It looked suspiciously familiar. Smooth metal plates, blue-white glows, sleek aquatic forms. Like a watcher, but ringed by four thick triangular fins. It slowed down, retracting its fins and facing her with a bright eye encased in darkness, settling two meters above the ground, just in front of her.
Martians, earthlings, and mirrans behind the artifact all stopped, staring, quiet.
It spoke in the polyphonic voice of the twenty-seven gods of Earth, echoing across this martian battlefield.
“Isavel Valdéz. We have found you.”
She was tired of this. “You didn’t find me . You felt your cousin getting murdered.”
They barely flinched. “Yes.”
She laughed.
“But we bring an urgent message from Arbiter Ada Liu.”
Chapter 23
Ada? Her heart skipped, her face fell.
“What message?”
This thing from Earth looked oddly out of place here. Too shiny, too silver. The figures who had been staring at Isavel quietly gathered closer, staring at the machine with equal parts fascination and apprehension.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 37