by Fuad Baloch
The black cosmos swayed, not a jolt one might feel in an earthquake, but a massive, rolling wave one experienced aboard a large cruiser in the vast ocean.
Cracks of white light split the darkness for half a beat, the brilliant light so dazzling that Ruma cried out in pain, turned away. When she whipped her head back, the cracks were gone, paved over.
Again came the rolling wave. Ruma turned towards the flickering lights she’d seen before, but they too were gone now.
Was this world breaking down?
Relief coursed through her. This was unnatural, this godlike view of the universe and its many dimensions her mind couldn’t absorb, something that shouldn’t grant its owner all this power.
Then dread pooled in her. If this was the First’s domain, and he was getting weaker by the hour, what would happen to her when this universe collapsed? Would she be stuck in this ancient, primitive Doonya till the end of her days?
“First, speak to me!”
An eerie whistling sound filled the darkness. Ruma flinched, the timbre of the sound setting off her urge to flee once more.
“What’s going on?”
The whistling rose an octave. There was a strange musical quality to it, a scale that seemed to have a lot more notes and nuances that she could perceive.
Silence returned.
Ruma cursed, looked around in the darkness. A futile gesture.
If this world was going to collapse and take down the Pithrean with it, was there any edge she could grab before that happened?
Ruma broke into a trot. No sense of feet moving or falling onto a surface registered in her consciousness, but she continued forwards. At a hunch, she craned her neck back to where the lights had been. Could she still see the brief after-images?
Regrets filled her heart, despondency falling like heavy iron sheets over a boiling lake. Then fear tore through her gut, overwhelming all other senses. Remorse reared its head again, the universe itself seeming to amplify all her personal weaknesses, telling her how wrong the decisions that she’d made in her life had been. How undeserving she had been for all the good that had turned up in her life and she had pushed away.
“Like I fracking care what you think!” shouted back Ruma defiantly.
The thoughts didn’t entirely disappear, but they did lose some of their sting. Enough that she could put her mind to the task of finding something to salvage here once more.
She was in the world of the Pithrean. She didn’t know how that worked or why, and frankly, she didn’t care a whit. She was a mechanic, a hacker. All she needed to do was find a way through. A little flaw somewhere she could utilise. Some obscure pathway she could exploit. Anything—
Ruma stopped abruptly. Some distance away and to her right floated hexagonal shapes. Shrouded by darkness, invisible even to her elevated sight, yet somehow perceptible.
The Shards.
Something was wrong with them. She approached the closest one warily, expecting to be scalded by a searing wave of heat if she got too close.
Nothing struck her.
She could feel it now. A Shard as big as a small class-M planet. Its core brimmed with latent energy the likes of which she’d have to actually sit down and understand using a new nomenclature. More like a dying sun. A heavenly body at the brink of imploding into itself, destroying all the potential it had stored over time immemorial.
Ruma peeked through it, an action she did without knowing the hows of it.
Bright constellations spread out. Giant gas planets circled stars surrounded by a billion other stars in an infinity of galaxies split by dimensions she could barely register.
Ruma screamed, her mind protesting the onslaught of all this information.
But before she could jerk her head back, she noticed something else.
A wave of darkness obliterated the distant Shards, a roiling sea that left husks behind it.
The Pithrean were dying. The Shards were going down.
Ruma returned to the black nothingness of her immediate surroundings. In the little time she’d been here, already she could tell the latent energy had decreased.
Power filled her body. Impossibly great, it threatened to burst through her pores.
The Pithrean was within her, she recalled dimly. Somehow trusting her with the last of his own powers.
She didn’t trust the cursed being. Nor did he her. But for the moment, did it matter which party wanted what when both needed the same thing?
“Save the Shard!”
The voice was weak, feeble. Not the booming sound of a god. More the gurgle of a dying beast.
The beast still had more power than she could contend with.
Ruma hesitated.
“Open the portal!”
Could it be that simple? Trust the First to take her back to her world?
Ruma took a step forwards. The Shard hummed, its core calling out to her. She saw a glimpse of the worlds beyond and through it. A smattering of planets in the same constellation she stood in now. Except this one swarmed with frigates.
Her world.
Ruma placed her hands over the smooth metal surface of the Shard. A cold current ran through her, numbing her senses. She carried the power of the Pithrean, but even that wasn’t enough to save the Shard—the dying Pithrean—trapped within.
She needed to help, lend it her own support.
Joy filling her heart, she began the process, lending her power and—
She stepped away.
Even if the Pithrean wasn’t lying, would take her back to her world, why had he brought her here now?
Was that what he wanted from her?
“Jump through to your world before the Shard collapses!”
The temptation was strong. Too strong. Ruma took another step forwards, felt her world calling out to her. All she’d ever known was on the other side, waiting for her.
But would it really be her world if she did jump through now?
Where did that leave her wish to do the right thing and, for once in her life, move past her own selfish desires?
Ruma shook her head, stepped back.
Thirty-Seven
Those who Unite
Ruma awoke to a cacophony of shouting and war horns.
“What—”
A warrior stumbled to her right, his hands clutching his side. He opened his mouth. A geyser of blood spurted, spraying Ruma on the face.
With a cry, she rose to her feet.
Their camp was in a state of pandemonium. Sounds of ringing steel, shouts of anguish and rage, and the gurgles of men dying filled the cool morning air. Ruma reached for her sword beside the bedroll next to the fire that had gone out at some point in the night.
“Mzi, we’re rallying to the south!” came a familiar shout from her right. Gareeb. “Follow me!”
Ruma nodded, turned around, and ran after the young commander. As they rounded a series of pitched tents, they came across a dozen or so men engaged in combat. Four Traditionalists, two of them wearing no armour, against eight darker-skinned enemies.
Vanico soldiers.
“Over here!” beckoned Gareeb.
Ruma shook her head. “We’ve got to help them!”
“No!” shouted Gareeb.
Ruma gritted her teeth. Her heart disagreed with Gareeb, but she knew the man was right. Nodding, she moved the sword in front of her, followed him. The tents to the right were up in flames, their golden light competing against the rising sun.
As they emerged into the space the Traditionalists had cleared for kabbad, Ruma stuttered to a stop. The space meant to host twenty or so players now swarmed with men ten times that number. A writhing, grinding mass of flailing limbs and spurts of blood where she couldn’t tell enemy from foe.
Ruma leaned forwards and grabbed Gareeb by the arm. “If we’ve been ambushed, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“My men are gathering to the south!” said Gareeb. “We need to regroup and—”
“We need to get out! H
ear me?”
Hearing a shout, Gareeb pushed her to the side, then leapt forwards with his own sword. His sword clanged against the curved, bloody sword of a Vanico soldier.
“Die, infidel!” shouted Gareeb as he feinted to the left, then thrust the sword up.
A bull of a man, the other soldier laughed. He had more than a decade and seven inches on Gareeb.
“Alf will damn all of you!” grunted Gareeb as he dodged a jab meant to perforate his chest.
Blood pounding in her temples, all memories of the nightmare—an epitaph that no longer seemed to work for her—evaporated, and Ruma looked around. No one to call. All ranks or signs of camaraderie had melted away with a battle this immediate, each man fighting for his own life—or salvation, depending on the strength of his belief.
“Mzi—” shouted Gareeb, barely dodging a sweeping attack from the soldier who seemed to be toying with him. “Head out! Get away!”
Ruma shook her head. It was one thing to not get involved in battles that were as good as lost but quite another to leave behind one’s kith and kin. Exhaling, she dropped to a crouch, approached the Vanico soldier from behind.
Gareeb’s eyes found hers. He shook his head, even as he screamed with a futile rage. Ruma sucked her teeth. Even as he was going to die, the blasted man wanted her to not attack the man from behind. Honour, she realised. He would never have won kabbad against her—or Abgutar.
Ruma raised her arm, then swung it at the soldier’s neck with all her might.
She had meant to sever the man’s head. Instead, the sword got stuck halfway through the neck, a sharp pain jolting up her arm, making her cry out in pain.
The soldier twisted around, one hand grabbing the blade of her sword. Ruma groaned, tried to free the sword.
The bull snarled, took a step forwards, but then collapsed to the ground, taking her sword down with her.
Wasting no time, Ruma bent and grabbed the massive broadsword the giant had been carrying. “Gareeb, lead on!”
Thankfully, Gareeb didn’t object. They broke into a sprint, keeping away from bands of fighting every dozen steps.
“What the frack happened?” asked Ruma as they headed east.
“We got ambushed,” huffed Gareeb. “They must have overcome our scouts.”
Or paid them off. An alternative the soldier beside her might find hard to swallow.
Ruma raised her sword reflexively when she saw a silver blur come at her. Steel clanged against steel, the sound ringing out over the general din. Had it not been for the massive size of the broadsword, she wouldn’t have survived the attack. Gareeb shouted, skewered the man that had attacked her.
Again, they ran over the dying and those already turned to corpses, both Vanico and Traditionalists.
“Keep running!” she shouted at Gareeb as he approached a writhing figure.
“That’s Baosad,” replied Gareeb, waving a hand at the bleeding man. “He—”
“Run, damn you!” she shouted, then screamed in frustration. Shaking her head, she rushed forwards. Baosad lifted his head, smiled at her through bloody teeth. He might have lost an arm, the stump bleeding like an unleashed stream, but the man still gritted his teeth, bit back the pain.
“Y-you… are…” grunted Baosad. He tried raising the other hand.
Ruma leaned in, placed her hand on the man’s forehead. “Just… close your eyes.”
“Alf waits to walk with you on the lonely path,” intoned Gareeb.
Baosad raised an eyebrow. An amused expression that wouldn’t have been out of character on Abgutar. Again, Ruma’s heart choked.
“Yeah… what Gareeb said.”
“You… jest,” croaked Baosad. “Despite a-all…”
He never closed his eyes. Just fell silent halfway through the sentence. Ruma blinked, fighting tears of rage and frustration welling up in her eyes. She’d barely known the man, but he had been an efficient soldier, one she had relied upon to watch her back.
“Come, Gareeb,” said Ruma, rising. “We need to leave.”
Together, without casting another look back, they sprinted out without further incident.
“Where to?” asked Gareeb. “They would be blocking our retreat positions.”
Ruma nodded, then waved at two riderless horses saddled in Vanico colours. “We ride east.”
“To Salodia?”
“Aye,” she replied.
His eyes lit up. “You intend to save the city no matter the cost.”
“Not quite. I am not capable of—”
Gareeb didn’t seem to hear her. He whistled, then approached the two horses. One of them snorted, tried to resist him, but didn’t buck. Grabbing both horses by the reins, he scampered back, eyes darting about.
Ruma stepped in to grab the reins, then mounted the horse in one smooth motion. The horse whinnied, jerked his head to a side. Ruma pulled hard on the reins and the beast calmed.
Her eyes fell to where Gareeb had been looking. She couldn’t see their tents anymore, their campsite reduced to a graveyard of freshly made corpses. Thousands of men had ridden with the Traditionalists, confident in their ability to take the holy cities from the clutches of the evil infidels.
How many had survived?
Ruma shook her head. Was that Alf’s punishment for all their sins? Could she have warned them more to not underestimate the enemy?
“Gareeb,” she called out.
“Yeah, Mzi?”
“Ride!”
Thirty-Eight
The Misguided
Salodia burned in the distance. The walls still stood, the gates still barred, but smoke swirled over the buildings beyond, the city besieged by the Vanico army.
Was this the end she had been fearing?
From her elevated position, hidden in the date palm trees that had escaped vandalism beside Gareeb, Ruma watched the burning city, her eyes falling to the two buildings closest to the western gates that had turned into blackened husks, dull orange flames still licking their charcoal walls.
A sea of blue Vanico flags fluttered over the besieging army. Even as she watched, balls of fire sailed across the ground, thudded against the walls, the sound delayed by a good few seconds.
The invading army was at least fifteen thousand strong. An insignificant number when a large capital ship could house half that number, but a formidable army in this age.
“Alf have mercy,” whistled Gareeb, his horse bucking underneath him.
Ruma nodded absentmindedly. Though she couldn’t really see the populace, it would be hell within the walls. Rats caught in a burning fire. Couldn’t jump off the ship, couldn’t fight the flames. A frigate fast losing its oxygen supply in the middle of space.
“We can’t just stand here,” said Gareeb, his voice quivering slightly.
Ruma nodded, then turned her attention to the thousand Traditionalists gathering to her right. They were exhausted, had just been beaten back, but they were survivors, their souls screaming for revenge.
They had come across the routed remnants of the main host yesterday afternoon. Ruma had wanted to stay put and ensure this wasn’t some clever ploy by the Vanico. But then she had seen Bubraza strutting, flanked by priests and generals, and had joined forces.
Yasmeen’s niece hadn’t acknowledged her even when they’d crossed paths. Nor had she called for her once.
The thousand Traditionalists had travelled over to Salodia, camping in the vast date orchard that had both escaped destruction and was unguarded.
Bubraza was waiting, Ruma knew, for more men to join up before making her next plans. Little chance that would happen, though—they all knew this much.
“What do we do?” asked Gareeb again.
“We wait.”
“By Alf, I am not just going to stand still and watch the holy city burn down.”
“Let Alf take care of His own cities,” Ruma said, her words no longer carrying the confidence she should have felt. This was a disaster. The holy cities had never been su
ccessfully occupied by a foreigner since the prophet’s passing. Something she did know. Something many had argued was the very reason why the Zrivisi had targeted the cities in order to make a point.
Ruma turned around. There was a place and time to observe diplomatic niceties, for the petulant to finally see their mistake and work up the strength to beg forgiveness. But the end was approaching fast, its outlines still vague despite all the damage it had already caused.
Like always, a protective circle of soldiers—even if depleted—stood between the common warriors and their leader. One of the guards, a young man, his face bruised, one swollen eye almost shut, grunted, but he didn’t even try to block her way.
Ruma dismounted, then strutted ahead on foot, Gareeb keeping pace beside her. He was muttering non-stop, but the words fell deaf on her ears. She craned her neck. The sky was clear—one constant that had never changed since her arrival in this world. Beyond the blue atmosphere, though, millions of clicks away, she knew the Shard awaited her.
She shivered, recalling the nightmare.
She’d seen the fracking thing, had touched it, felt it. One that did have the power to send her back to her life. A journey she now knew grew more perilous with each passing day.
“You survived,” came a harsh voice, and Ruma looked up. Bubraza wore a simple white tunic and a matching scarf not doing a great job of keeping her wayward curls back. The white Scythe over the left breast had been slashed, the symbol broken in two.
“By the grace of Alf,” replied Ruma. She had meant the words to come out sarcastic, but instead they came out cold, shocked.
Bubraza growled, then snapped her fingers at one of the guards standing beside her. “Gather my generals. I can’t keep waiting here forever while they fracking make up their minds!”
Ruma almost smiled at the irreverence of the woman. They had that in common, at least. Another life, another time, they might even have been friends. Perhaps that was the reason she had so easily warmed up to her in the first place.
“Mzi Uniter,” replied the soldier. “They are already waiting for you.”