by Sara King
“I can’t drive.”
“I’ll drive,” the Lieutenant said, standing up. “Those asswipes can take their court-martial and shove it up their—”
Behind him, the radio said, “I’m coming down low and slow. Tell her to get in the air, about 700ft. I’ll be coming as cranked down as I can make this baby go. Tell her to start out in a south-southwest direction, as fast as she can boogie. We’ll try to hook up without tearing something off.”
The soldiers’ eyes widened. “Shit, I think that was a—”
But Kaashifah was lunging into the air, surging upwards with as much push as she could give her wings. She reached the proper elevation and did her best to start picking up speed, exhausting her resources to shove energy down the link to the ground with as much force as possible, pushing her limits, locking her wings and using them as much as she could to glide.
The jet slid underneath her with practiced ease, and a man whose face was encased by alien-looking gear waved at her through the bubble-like cockpit window. He gestured to a wing. Kaashifah lowered herself to the craft and, one hand fisted on her sword, wrapped her other around the leading-edge of his wing. She prayed to her Lord that her grip held as the jet immediately surged forward, throwing her stomach against her spine. She actually had to pull her wings back into her body to keep the drag they created from ripping her off of the machine.
The flight across the inlet consisted of Kaashifah staring at the gray sheet-metal underneath her face, willing her fingers to hold on. While she struggled to keep her grip as the icy gray waters of the Cook Inlet passed below, Kaashifah couldn’t help but feel another pang of worry for her djinni.
And it was her djinni, she realized. Given to her on a blanket under a palm, with an offering of dates. She had just been too blind to see it. Too…embittered. That he had stayed in her realm, instead of twisting off to the Fourth Realm as he had been craving for three millennia, still left her humbled. Humbled…and something more.
It was a strange sensation to her, like a nagging pull that warmed her chest, whenever she thought of the djinni. In that one moment on the mountain, when he’d bolted out the door, Kaashifah had crumbled inside. She’d thought she’d lost him, forever, and had spent many long minutes staring at the floor of the cave, unable to find the strength to get to her feet. When she had, in shock, found him still solidly within her realm a few thousand feet downslope, playing in the snow, it had been as if the gods themselves had touched her heart, setting it afire from within.
And then, when he had asked her if she wanted him to leave, Kaashifah had thought the agony would kill her. Looking up into those sincere violet eyes, she had suddenly felt bared, exposed, and utterly vulnerable. It had taken every ounce of her courage to say, “I want you to stay,” and it had been the truest words that had ever passed her lips. Then, in bearing her soul, she had waited for him to shred it, expecting him to sneer and come off with some quip three thousand years in the making, but he had just grinned at her.
Your wish, he had said, is my command.
Even thinking of it, now, brought tears to Kaashifah’s eyes. Djinni, she thought, please stay safe until I can see you again.
It took only a couple minutes of flight before the jet rolled, and suddenly Kaashifah was staring down at the edge of an inlet, followed by forest and the flat white roofs of government buildings. Within moments, a smoking, crater-pocked runway came into view, with fire devastating most of the nearby edifices. Kaashifah could see the light of a Fury’s wings amidst the rubble of one, her radiant sword flashing as the building was torn apart at the seams.
Kaashifah released her hold on the jet and spread her wings just enough to guide her momentum, aiming for her sister. Above her, the jet arced up and away.
She hit her sister head-on, with enough force to drive them both through the wall of the building she’d been wrecking, out across the runway, and bury them under a foot of tarmac.
“You!” Zenaida screamed, lunging out from under the rubble, sword swinging. She tore a chunk of the runway up and hurled it at Kaashifah, who ducked. “How dare you?!” The asphalt sailed past, into another cluster of buildings, shattering the roof, making the people gathered outside shriek and scatter. Then, like a small child distracted by ants, Zenaida smiled and hurled another fistful, this time at the people standing in the parking lot.
Seeing the people run and scream, a few falling lifelessly to the ground, Kaashifah felt a horrible pang in her chest as she realized for the second time that her sister could not be saved. Almost from a distance, she glanced at Zenaida, who was raging, yanking more concrete, hurling it at the humans, oblivious to anything but her Fury. She wasn’t a Justicar. She was rotten to the core.
It was time. She had to do it. She no longer had the freedom to run and hide. She no longer had the leisure to beg and plead. She had to take a stand now, before her sister took to wing again and decided to wreak her chaos upon Anchorage. Zenaida was giving her no choice. It was time to stop the ruse.
“I challenge you to a duel of souls,” Kaashifah shouted, stepping between her sister and the scattering figures as Zenaida bent for another piece of stone. “By witness of our Lord, by the laws of the Pact, I challenge you!” She hadn’t wanted to do it, but, surrounded by the devastation Zenaida had wreaked in only a few short minutes, she knew she had to end it.
Her sister hesitated in flinging the stone, a cunning look in her steel-gray eyes as they flickered from the running figures back to Kaashifah. “You would seal your soul to me, if you fail?” She turned to face Kaashifah fully, dropping the stone as an afterthought, completely rapt with attention. “A soul-challenge?” Kaashifah knew what Zenaida was thinking. To own another soul, to have it at complete command, especially one so powerful as a Fury, was the ultimate prize for a seiðmaðr. Kaashifah watched her sister’s greed with a saddened heart, but stood firm and nodded.
“I accept.” It came out as a cackle. Kaashifah felt a moment of disorientation as she felt the link form, the pact made. Yngvöldr. Her sister’s name came to her on a tide of soul-magic, binding her soul to her for the duration of the duel—and beyond. Then Zenaida was up-forming, growing to a hulking, feathered beast of nearly eleven feet, her entire body taking on a blazing luminescence.
Kaashifah pulled her wings into her body, once more dropping to her diminutive human shape and height, leaving only her sword radiating her Fury.
Zenaida laughed at her. “Once I take your soul, I’m going to hunt down your djinni and make you watch as I castrate him while he sobs like a child. He didn’t even try to fight me last time. You know that? He just stood there whimpering.”
If I lose… Kaashifah felt a stab of panic, thinking of ‘Aqrab. The singer. The poet. Doomed to torment by her sister’s blade, if she failed.
I can’t fail, Kaashifah told herself, her heart hammering as she remembered ‘Aqrab’s gentle hands upon her, his shy smile when she showed him her paintings. I can’t.
“Oh yes,” Zenaida laughed. “Think about that, sister. Think of just how much I’ll make him beg me to kill him, while you watch from the spirit realm. I’ve had eons to practice.” She started walking in a circle, twisting the blade in smooth, blazing arcs.
She’s an Inquisitor, Kaashifah realized, horrified. She thought of ‘Aqrab on the rack and her heart became sick. My fault. It would be my fault… Then she caught herself. No! Her spine tightening with resolve, her words soft, she said, “That is not going to happen, Yngvöldr. I am the Blade of Morning. Today, you will see why.”
The sound of her name made Zenaida flinch, but only for a moment. “I’m wondering,” she sneered, “if I should make him fuck me first.” She spun her sword around elegantly, watching Kaashifah. “What do you think he would do, sister, to save himself? Would he fuck me, if I gave him the choice?”
The petty, crude disdain in Zenaida’s sneer made Kaashifah’s fingers tighten on the hilt of her sword, a welling of Fury rising on a hot tide within her. “Yo
u’re a fool if you think you’re going to get that chance.” Then she stood there, holding her claymore out behind her, brazenly poised for a huge swing, waiting.
Seeing the great arc she planned, Zenaida laughed. “You’ve spent too much time with the poet, sister.” Then, blinded by her own Fury, Zenaida charged.
Kaashifah dropped her sword, ducked under Zenaida’s swing, and, surging power into her fingertips, slammed her fingers into the break in the feathers between Zenaida’s abdomen and thigh. She punched through tender flesh and tendons, tightened her fingers, and ripped them out. As Zenaida was screaming and beginning to down-form from the shock, Kaashifah caught the Damascus steel blade now loosely-held in her fingertips and wrenched it from her sister’s hands. Twisting, she lunged back, spun, and, as her sister’s eyes were widening, lopped off Zenaida’s head. Then she cut what remained in half. Then quarters. Her last blow severed the pieces with such force that the sword shattered in her hand, leaving her fingers white-knuckled around the pommel of a ruined blade.
Through tears, Kaashifah kicked each piece apart from each other, then fell to her knees as she waited for the soul to release and come to serve its penance.
It took several minutes, but eventually, she felt the tether between their souls tightening, and felt Zenaida’s bitter spirit struggling against the pact it had made, its form taking slow, wispy shape upon the bloody tarmac beside her. When Zenaida’s soul materialized beside her, its wrists were bound by the shackles of the Pact, and her sister’s face was twisted with hatred. “You were playing me. The whole time. You were pretending to be weak so that you could reap my soul.” Her words were filled with venom, accusing, brimming with loathing.
Kaashifah looked away. She had seen such a look before, when she had won her last duel. It had begun three thousand years of misery. “I told you I wasn’t trying to kill you, Zenaida,” she said. “You weren’t listening.” All around her, the winds were beginning to pick up, lifting the dust and debris off of the runway in swirls.
“You were lying,” Zenaida’s fade sneered at her. “Setting me up! To trap me in servitude.”
“No,” Kaashifah said softly. “That was your goal, sister.”
The wind began howling around them, a growing, rising shriek that Kaashifah could almost see.
“And I would have done it, too,” Zenaida said, her face twisted in detest. “In an instant.”
“I know,” Kaashifah said softly. “It’s how I knew you would accept.” Quivering in the face of her sister’s hatred, Kaashifah took a deep breath. Unable to face Zenaida’s revulsion for the rest of her life, knowing she was a coward, knowing that it was no mercy, Kaashifah said, “I release you of the Pact, sister.”
Immediately, the bonds around Zenaida’s ethereal wrists began to disintegrate.
Her sister stared at her, obviously shocked. “You would free me?” Zenaida cried. “When you could have used me?” It came out with a cry of amazement, of open-faced gratitude. Kaashifah could see shimmering tears on her sister’s ghostly face, could see the childlike awe and genuine thankfulness, and once again thought of the woman who had been betrayed by her sisters, long centuries before. “Thank you.” It was tentative, like a child that had long been locked away, and she sniffled, wiping her eyes. “Thank you so much. I was so wrong about you.”
Kaashifah turned away, ashamed and disgusted at herself. “Don’t thank me, sister,” she whispered.
At that, the winds began to coalesce around them, taking form. Winged forms. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Their wings lit up the frozen tarmac of the airstrip until it was almost too bright to see. They surrounded Zenaida, whose newfound childlike innocence suddenly parted in a flash of terror. “Oh please, no!” Zenaida cried, stepping backwards. “No, I’m sorry, please!”
And she was sorry, Kaashifah realized, her heart twisting in mourning, but it was far too late.
The winged figures, hundreds strong, their wings so searing that the entire runway became filled with a blinding white light of unearthly radiance, stood gathered around Zenaida, waiting in silence.
After it became apparent to her that those she had murdered weren’t going to attack her, Zenaida straightened, seemingly gaining confidence. “You want to condemn me? Fine. I don’t need your love. I went seventeen centuries without love! Because of you. Because of your lies! I will find my afterlife elsewhere. I don’t need you.” She turned and started shouldering her way through the silent gathering of angels.
Goodbye, sister, Kaashifah thought.
A moment later, the unearthly howl of dogs shattered the silence. They bayed, the sound longer and more sinister than anything that could be produced by the First Realm. Zenaida hesitated in shoving her way through her dead sisters, cocking her head at the sky. Then, when the Hounds bayed again, her eyes widened and she started scrabbling to get through, shrieking. As Kaashifah watched sadly, Zenaida took to the air, her ethereal body slipping up into the howling winds, radiant wings flapping frantically to gain altitude. Around them, more Furies were appearing, male and female, ringing outward from where Zenaida soared skyward, heads tilted to watch her. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
The baying came again, except this time, the sound was upon them, a howl from many throats. Zenaida saw her silent brethren parting, saw big black bodies moving lightning-fast between the radiant wings. Then they were jumping, flying, spreading light-eating black wings, their nightmarish jaws snapping in anticipation as they climbed towards Zenaida’s feet. Zenaida screamed and beat the air faster.
Kaashifah turned away, unable to watch. As the pitch of Zenaida’s screams shifted from terror to agony, Kaashifah collapsed on the ruined tarmac, staring down at the dragon’s favored sword, focusing on nicks and scratches in the ruined blade. She had broken it in half with the force of her last swing, severing her sister’s spine. Seeing its blade pocked and dented, its painstakingly-folded steel shattered by that final cut, Kaashifah felt her shoulders start to quake.
I killed a Sister, she thought, in misery. She thought of her birthmark, the one she had carved from her skin a dozen times, only to grow back in exactly the same spot, with exactly the same etchings. Her entire life, she had struggled to stop it, to fight it, but it had happened anyway. It had been a warning for her, one that she had failed to heed. She listened to Zenaida’s screams die over the howling of the dogs, then heard the silence descend back upon the ruined tarmac.
She let the broken haft of the sword fall from her fingers, where it clanged upon the icy asphalt beneath her. All around her, the glow of her brethren’s wings continued to light up the area like it had been bathed in the radiance of heaven. Kaashifah didn’t even see it, so deep was her wretched misery. The look of hope on Zenaida’s face, the bewilderment, the heartfelt, childlike gratitude… She hadn’t tried hard enough to save her. She hadn’t done enough to bring her back from the brink. She’d let the Hounds kill her.
She saw the wings move nearby, saw them part again.
The Hounds come to take the kin-killer with them, she thought, without looking. She pushed her wings from her body on instinct, though she had no intention of trying to fly away. She just felt…more whole…with her wings bared, and, after two thousand years without them, wanted to die with that small comfort.
But it wasn’t a Hound that tapped on her boot with a Roman sandal. Kaashifah frowned at it, then slowly lifted her head, following the muscular, greaves-clad leg up to the leather skirting of a Centurion’s scale mail cuirass. Tilting her head made her vision blur, and Kaashifah had to wipe at her eyes before she could see his face.
A freckled, aqua-eyed, athletic young man looked down at her from beneath the polished steel brow of a galea. The helmet’s red crest of rank rose above him in a fan of crimson horsehair that remained still despite the howling wind, and he smelled of leather and sweat. Two radiant white wings hung folded down his back, the black tips of their feathers almost touching the crumbled tarmac at his feet.
…black tips?
“You broke your sword,” he commented. His voice had the richness of an immortal, but the rumble of a man hardened and tempered by years of battle.
Kaashifah, never having seen a male Fury before, could only stare up at him, fighting that inner twinge of wrongness from thousands of years of taboo. “Hello,” she whispered, when it was obvious the young man was paying attention to her, specifically. All around them, the gathering of Furies had turned inward, facing them.
But the man only looked at her as if contemplating a puzzle. He comes to take my head, Kaashifah thought, wretchedly.
As she watched, the man reached over one shoulder and, with a smooth motion, drew a sword, one that gleamed with a ruby radiance, the luminescent glow of blood itself. Great ebony flanges spread off of the sword in razor points above and below the grip, and the thick, four-foot blade itself split down the center, becoming two distinct blades before re-forming into a single point. Its entire length seemed to glisten with a liquid fire, bathing the frozen ground around them in a crimson light. Kaashifah froze, looking at it. That is not the sword of a Fury, she thought, her heart catching in her throat as it drove little chills down her spine.
The man held it between them, eying it in quiet contemplation. “It is red to remind its bearer of the blood that it spills.” He slid a finger down the ruby blade thoughtfully, then touched a sleek ebony spine with his thumb. “Black, to remind them of Death.” He touched the spine’s point. “The flanges represent the pain that must be endured to wield it. The emerald in the pommel—” he twisted it so she could see the magnificent green gem in the base of the sword, glowing like a djinni’s eye, “—is a symbol of hope and renewed life.” He lifted his aqua-colored gaze from the sword and gave her a gentle smile. “For where War must pass, rebirth will follow.”