Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  Kublich leaned lazily back in his chair, tapping at the table with scaly knuckles. “Humans… So frail, yet so entitled. So assured of your supremacy. Tell me, do you truly believe your species deserves freedom from my kind’s simple survival when you lack the strength to make it so? If so, perhaps you should set to the fields. Release the livestock. Save those poor bovas from the blood hungry tyranny of humans.”

  I tried again for the lock on my shackles, again to no avail.

  “Yeah, Alton Parker said something similar. Right before we threw him off a building.”

  “We are a pragmatic people.”

  “You’re monsters.”

  Kublich leaned forward with a feral grin. “Your kind do seem to get the two confused. When you end up at the wrong end of the slaughter, at least.”

  “You killed my parents,” I growled.

  “Pragmatically,” he said, nodding. “Your father was treading the war path against my kin, whether he knew it or not. Moreover, technically speaking, he committed treason against his beloved Legion. You yourself have willingly watched men hanged for less.”

  “Grop you. That’s bullscud. I—”

  “Have been a bit of a nuisance,” he said. “I admit, you and your gray-haired friend did push our timetable forward. But after tonight, it won’t matter.”

  “I guess we finally agree on something, then. I don’t care how many strings you pull. There’s no way you’re convincing the entire planet to forget what they saw tonight.”

  “Haldin…” Even with his reptilian features, I almost thought I saw something like pity in his expression. It chilled my insides.

  “Do you truly believe anyone would’ve believed your message?” he asked. “Do you understand your own people so poorly?”

  He was posturing, I told myself. But something about his tone… No. Not just his tone.

  What did he mean, would’ve?

  Conditional. As if tonight hadn’t happened.

  “Yes,” he said, almost gently. “There, you see it. Your broadcast never made it out of Sanctuary, Haldin. Which means everyone who heard it is either dead or currently on the run from the Legion, dastardly traitors that they are, trying to overthrow Sanctuary from the inside and all.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “We’re past the point of lying, Haldin, I assure you. Mr. Fields and Mr. Hammer won’t have any recollection of my probing, of course, but I’m rather offended you and your precious Carlisle imagined I could be so inept as to not only miss your plan, but to leave intact the one network we do not have squarely in our palms.”

  The room was spinning, closing around me.

  “No one’s…” My head was spinning with the room now, my breaths coming too fast. “You’re lying. And even if you’re not, Enochia won’t believe what happened at Sanctuary was all just some kind of rebel uprising. They’ll figure it out. They’ll—”

  “They will believe what we tell them to!” Kublich roared, crimson eyes flashing.

  The very room shook with his fury, the air shimmering oddly. For a second, I had the strangest impression Kublich might simply vanish into thin air—that all of it would. But then all was calm, and Kublich spoke evenly. “Your kind have always possessed a particular weakness for narrative. There’s no limit to the lies you creatures will swallow if it helps you feel good and safe in your own little worlds.”

  I wanted to tell him to grop himself. I wanted to argue. To do something other than just sit there stupidly. I was just too afraid that he was right—that our best shot had proved worthless.

  That I’d failed just like my dad.

  And now I was going to die knowing that Enochia would wholeheartedly applaud the news.

  “What do you want with me?” I finally asked. I had a pretty good idea, but I asked anyway. “Why am I still alive?”

  “You yet draw breath simply because your death will be of more use to us as a sacrifice”—he waved a hand fancifully—“to Alpha. To your precious Sanctum and the blessed illusion of stability it provides. What better time to assure Enochia that we have matters under control? That we will not suffer treason from within our own ranks. The people will never feel safer. They’ll redouble their efforts, falling over themselves to hand us the rest of this world on a platter.”

  I had to keep myself from nodding along. It all made perfect sense.

  “You’re wrong,” I said anyway, out of stubbornness more than any real belief.

  Kublich said nothing, seeming distracted by some thought.

  What was he playing at? Why tell me any of this? It wasn’t like he was going to learn anything of value by my reactions. Which left two options. Either he simply enjoyed toying with me…

  Or he was greasing me up to break into my mind.

  As I thought it, the air vibrated with another shimmering pulse. Kublich smiled in a way that made my stomach sink. I braced myself. But why even try to break me? What would he gain?

  If my friends were still out there—and I had to believe they were—they wouldn’t be foolish enough to return anywhere I could find. Not with me in raknoth custody. I didn’t know where they’d go, what they’d do next. Kublich couldn’t get anything from me. Except…

  Except that he could march me in front of a WAN camera like a puppet and make me confess to every crime, admit that my co-conspirators were all cracked in the head, touched by demons—that we’d weaved wild stories, fabricated evidence. He could ensure that, even if the others managed to get the truth out there in the future, it would be preemptively discredited.

  I’d be damned if I let that happen.

  Kublich laughed as if I’d said something particularly amusing. “I assure you, your cooperation is not necessary.”

  I went cold.

  He’d heard my thoughts. There was no denying this time. Which meant… The world seemed to tilt beneath me, and I was sliding, sliding into cold, clammy darkness. I tried to clear my head. Tried to tighten my mental barriers. But I couldn’t feel them.

  “All your gifts and training, and you’re still just as helpless as the rest of them. Helpless as your sweet mother.”

  I lunged for his throat only to be jerked to a halt by my chains. He waved a hand dismissively, and I slammed back to the chair, frozen, unable even to draw breath.

  “Have you not yet pieced together where we are, Haldin?”

  Around us, the shadowy walls began to swirl and crawl. And that’s when I knew. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. And it didn’t matter.

  Because none of this was real.

  “Oh, I assure you, it’s real enough,” Kublich said. “But I am nearly finished. My master overestimates the difficulty of sweeping an unconscious human mind. You are no doubt right about your friends, though.”

  As he spoke, light and color touched the shadowy walls around us, twisting into a vivid image of the temple ruins on a sunny afternoon. I swear I could even smell the dirt and the sun-kissed stone. Because it wasn’t just an image.

  It was my memory.

  “Yes,” Kublich said. “But we both know they’re too smart to return anywhere you’d know how to find.” The walls contorted again, darkening, cooling somehow. Kublich’s lips tugged into a satisfied grin. “Just like we both now know the sweetness of a certain raven-haired beauty on a dark, lonely, woodland night.”

  The swirling images twisted into a silhouette, too dark to identify. But I didn’t need to see her face to recognize the feel of Elise’s flesh against mine. The sounds of us together in the skimmer.

  I felt sick.

  “I’m given to understand this is the epitome of the human experience,” Kublich said, frowning at our writhing pleasure. “Pathetic as that may—”

  “Shut up.”

  The fire in my voice gave him pause. The air shuddered with it, a ripple passing over Kublich’s visage as if he might simply disintegrate. He bared his fangs in challenge. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “I’m going to get out of here.”

&n
bsp; The walls were alive now, jittering with flashes of a thousand different moments from the past cycles. A thousand moments I’d spent preparing myself for this. For him. Then the flickering reel stabilized, and we were staring at my mom, frail and bloodied in Kublich’s arms. Him tossing her broken body aside like refuse. His red-eyed sneer challenging me to stop him.

  Something shifted. I don’t know how to explain it. But when I looked down, I was no longer chained. I was standing. The table, the chairs, gone. Only me and my parents’ killer, snarling at me, the first hints of surprise widening his burning eyes.

  I screamed his name and charged.

  39

  Master

  It was like waking up in the middle of a raging ocean. That’s the best way I could put it.

  For a second, I couldn’t remember how I’d ended up in the middle of the thrashing waves. Then I realized I was the waves. And so was Kublich. And we were crashing together, churning and mixing and vying for dominance amid the howling winds of our telepathic storms. I didn’t have time to ask how or why—to wonder about the cutting pain in my body, somewhere far away.

  I threw myself against Kublich’s defenses with a single-minded focus born of the fact that I was certain my life depended on it.

  He was strong. Stronger than me. Stronger, maybe, than Carlisle. But I was desperate. And, for some reason I didn’t have time to wonder at, he was frantic. Out of control. Almost like he was afraid.

  I pressed without question. No time to stop, to think. I couldn’t. Couldn’t give him the chance to regain his footing. I pressed until I felt something give, like breaking through the rough skin of a derja fruit to the soft contents inside.

  I pressed on until, with a wild outpouring of eerily alien sensations, I punched into Kublich’s mind.

  Had I not spent the past few cycles learning to cope with the information overload of my extended senses, Kublich’s mind might’ve broken me. As it was, it nearly did anyway.

  Vast. That was the best word for it. His mind was as sprawling as it was alien.

  An explosion of memories ripped through me, too rapid to control.

  Stars. Planets. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

  Landscapes and life forms I couldn’t begin to fathom, flashing by too fast to process. Enormous spires of dark glass, and short, jagged bipeds that inexplicably flashed from one point to another in a blink. Forests of neon bright trees, and wriggling, tentacular masses crawling through them.

  These and a thousand more flashed through my mind’s eye, threatening to completely overwhelm any sense I had left. And through it all, the black emptiness between. The Void, cold and endless, waiting to swallow all that life back whence it came.

  I struggled to calm the storm of memories, trying to focus.

  Kublich fought me all the way.

  No. Not Kublich, I realized through the tumult of impossible sights and of feelings and sounds I didn’t even have words for. Al’Kundesha.

  That was the true name of this raknoth, who’d lived a hundred lives in a hundred different vessels on a hundred different worlds before coming to this shell that had once been Adrian Kublich.

  I couldn’t believe it. Any of it. Couldn’t grasp the enormity, the vastness of the experiences this ancient creature had lived through. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  So I clung to that name. The name of my parents’ true murderer.

  Al’Kundesha.

  I used the name like a tether to ground myself, to slow the overwhelming tide of experience crashing down on me.

  “No…” he hissed. “Impossible. Get out, you filthy insect. Out!”

  My mind was reeling too hard to even be intimidated by the rage in his thoughts.

  “All those worlds. All those… those things. Creatures. Aliens. What are you? What are you doing here?”

  After everything I’d just seen, I barely knew where to start. But I focused on those two questions, just like I’d done with Smirks. Willed them at Al’Kundesha’s mind as if trying to trigger my own memories. I was already in. I had the leverage, no matter how powerful this Al’Kundesha might be. I could force the answers.

  Or so I thought.

  Al’Kundesha was not Smirks. He wasn’t human. His mind didn’t whip to obey my commands just because I’d made it inside the perimeter. He bucked and kicked against me like a raging bull.

  “I am not some petty human to be mindlessly controlled, foolish child!” he roared. “I will not bow to your softsteel will.”

  He surged against me again.

  The fighting was quick and ferocious, but, strong as he was, I had the leverage. The effort left me sluggish with fatigue, but I managed to pin him back down.

  I brought the questions back to the forefront of my mind… and nearly lost myself in the depths as his resistance gave way without warning.

  The memories engulfed me. More planets. More lives. Always coming. Always moving on. All of it moving by in a flash. A few memories, though, lingered as if they bore too much gravity to simply flicker away like the rest.

  A line of ten or more bodies, each with sickly lines woven across their exposed skin like black spider webs, each laid out neatly across a garishly patterned rug in the strangest-looking living quarters I’d ever seen.

  They were raknoth. Or had been.

  “It’s getting worse,” Al’Kundesha said in the memory, pulling back his sleeve to reveal similar inky lines running down his forearm, only slightly fainter than those on the dead.

  “Trust in Zar’Faenor,” another replied. “He will make them undo this sorcery.”

  “Would that the Masters have trusted Zar’Faenor,” Al’Kundesha muttered, turning to look out the window at a strange city I’d never seen. “We never should have come to this wretched Urth.”

  The scene flickered away, falling back to the steady cascade of memories.

  Arguments with other raknoth, their eyes all ablaze, their faces and necks all crawling with inky black lines. A frenzied chase through a forest of Urth, so similar to our own wilds. The blonde sorceress who’d conjured their plague straight from the Cursed Void. The moment of helpless fury they’d all shared when she’d ended her own life to escape them.

  More arguments.

  Another flash, and we were on a strange vessel, leaving the enormous blue planet behind. It was beautiful. A serene orb of ranging oceans, broken by landforms of luscious greens here and barren tans there, all of it overlaid by the wispy swirl of white clouds across the planet.

  The scene flashed hurriedly on to a memory I felt instead of saw, like I was experiencing the world through my extended senses. It was how Al’Kundesha saw the world when he was without a host body, I realized.

  They were still on the ship, the seven who’d survived the long journey. Al’Kundesha was hiding, his true form—indeed reminiscent of a human brain, if human brains were fleshy green blobs with slithering appendages—lurking silently in the shadows as Adrian Kublich walked by, inspecting the strange craft alongside the response team. Al’Kundesha could taste his blood through the skin. Longed for it.

  Zar’Faenor gave the order, and Al’Kundesha reached out to ensnare Kublich’s mind for the first time…

  But Urth. What had happened on Urth? Why leave it behind? Why come to Enochia?

  I tried to focus, to slow it down. But focusing was troublesome.

  Something was wrong.

  I was slipping. Losing control.

  Somewhere in the distance, burning.

  Panic touched my thoughts, though I wasn’t fully sure why as I pushed the memories away, pulling myself back to the here and now, back to Kublich’s senses to find out what was happening.

  It was bizarre, seeing the world through eyes that weren’t my own—eyes that were so much sharper than any human’s. More bizarre, still, to see myself being strangled through those eyes.

  He’d been trying to distract me with memories.

  Through the raknoth’s eyes, I saw myself tinged with red ra
diance, our foreheads pressed together, my legs hooked around Al’Kundesha’s vessel as if to keep him close—which was a curious decision, considering his hand was on my throat.

  Not daring to abandon my fading control to return to my own body, I willed his hand to relax its grip—commanded it with all the authority I could muster. Al’Kundesha fought. My awareness dimmed, and, for a second, I thought he’d won. But, slowly, the hand loosened, returning oxygen to my brain and control to my mind.

  It was only then I realized I was hanging by shackled wrists, chained to the ceiling, dark blood running down my forearms from where they’d dug too deep.

  I could all but taste the metallic tinge of it, mingling with the salty sweat on my brow and the cool, dusty permacrete of the room they were keeping me in. Alpha, did it smell good. Through his ears, I could hear my heart pumping the delectable stuff.

  It was disturbing, the way his thoughts seemed to bleed into mine through his senses. Even as I registered the distant but deep pain from my wrists and the strangling pressure still draining from my face, I could also feel the thrill of Al’Kundesha’s blood lust.

  I turned my attention to the chains holding me, figuring his raknoth hands were equal to the task of liberating me. He didn’t make it easy.

  “You cannot escape, child. We own Sanctuary. Soon enough, we’ll have Haven. Oasis. There’s nowhere left for you to run.”

  “Maybe you should be the one worried about running,” I sent, straining to close his hands on the chain. “I told you I was getting out of here. Do you remember what else I promised to do?”

  “You think to intimidate me, human?” Something shifted in him. I tried to probe at it, but he spoke again, his tone superficially reasonable, subtly urgent. “Release me now, Haldin, and I will see to it your last hours are at least not spent in torment.”