All Light Will Fall

by Almney King

  The Meridian raised his hand. A wind of energy burst from his open palm. All of a sudden, I couldn’t move. My body was stuck stiff. “Kneel,” the Meridian ordered. I did, against my will. My knees bent, inch by inch, until they touched the ground. The Meridian raised his other hand. I tried to hold tight, but the mr2 slipped from my grasp and settled into his hand. The power this being possessed was unfathomable. “Zurel,” he ordered. The subordinate nodded, taking hold of the mr2.

  I was powerless, weak against the might of this creature. He came to me and knelt to the ground. Seeing him up close terrified me. His eyes were glowing. And among them, there were shapes, rings of blue and bright angles of gold, moving with a majestic rhythm. The Meridian pulled me in so that our temples touched.

  I stared in his eyes. I could look nowhere else, and as I did, the world began to fade. I followed the shapes, watching them tessellate, my thoughts winding around that never-ending dance of light. He was in my mind. I could feel him there, trying to force himself into my memories. I fought him. Those memories were buried so deep in the tombs of my heart that they would never return. If he wanted them, he would have to cut me open and take them by hand.

  Suddenly the world returned. I blinked the blueness from my eyes, looking up at the Meridian. He stared down at me. It was a cold stare full of spite. “What is it, Aieti?” his subordinate asked.

  The Meridian didn’t answer. He simply started at me. He looked frustrated. “Zurel, bind the hai’ek!” he ordered. “You resist me now, hai’ek,” he said to me, “but I’ve only just begun.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NEMESIS

  The blindfold fell loose. Finally, I could see. I was under a tent, the gold curtains falling high from the treetops. The sun shined in. A reddish hide covered the grass. The head of the beast stared at me, bearing its teeth. Its eyes were dark and hallow. They looked haunted. I had never seen a skinned animal. Seeing one now seemed brutal, like a horrific foreshadow of what was to come.

  The Meridians had restrained me well. The binds around my wrists were unbreakable. They were made from some kind of hard rubber. The more I worked to get them loose, the tighter they became. I kept at it anyway, kneading my wrists to break the material. The guard standing watch didn’t notice much. He simply stood there, steadfast and serious.

  The chief Meridian breezed into the tent. Once again, his beauty startled me. He was too bright. His hair was like silver. It was beautifully woven on one side with delicate feathers and colored beads braided in the shiny silks of hair.

  Even his armor beamed under the light. Like the glow in his eyes, it was a steely blue. Streams of jade glinted across the breast of the armor, forming a calligraphy of symbols. He turned towards the guard all of a sudden. And I watched him move. It was magic, the way the gloss of his cape shimmered with the sway of his step. Of all the natives I’d seen, he was the most striking. It was strange of me to think it, but to not think it was unthinkable in itself.

  “Leave us,” he ordered. The guard bowed then humbly left the tent. There was only the two of us now, me and the mighty Meridian. I was wary of him. Remembering how he subdued me, how he brought me to my knees with the rise of his hand, frightened me.

  “You have great strength, hai’ek,” the Meridian spoke. “You are unlike the others of your kind, but know this . . . I will break you. The power you yield, that mighty spirit of resistance will crumble. I promise it. I will bring to you a misery unending.”

  What was he saying—power? What power did I possess that could stand against him? I couldn’t think of it. I wondered what it was that this Meridian could see. “Who are you?” I asked. I had to know. I had to hear his name. Not knowing was impossible.

  “That is not the question,” he said. “The question is who are you?”

  Who was I? Not even I knew. Shouldn’t I know? Was it not a human’s pride to know his name? Perhaps that was it. I had no pride. Dignity—innocence—I could never have them. Not after what I had done. Not after what I’d become. “I’m Celeste,” I answered.

  The Meridian narrowed his eyes. He picked up my life pack and came to kneel in front of me. He looked me in the eye again. I felt him looking through me; passed the mind, passed the spirit to the other side of some distant world. “You have a darkness within you,” he said. “Your heart is heavy with grief... and deception.”

  “Who are you?” I asked again.

  When the Meridian answered, his eyes lit a fiery blue, and the symbols on his body blazed just as bright. “Aieti,” he said, “keeper of the Meridian . . . Uway Levíí.”

  I wouldn’t forget it. That name of his, there was something immortal about it. There was something that broke the waves of the sea and stilled the voice of the wind. It was a name of destiny, a name written by legend. “What do you want?” I asked.

  He looked at me a long while, holding the question in his mind. I saw it turning in his eyes, going round and round with his thoughts. It seemed he had no answer. It seemed his want was not a want, but a curiosity, a deep, unexplained river of wonder he could not understand. I noticed his beauty again, watching him think. His face looked polished, like a plate of white gold, like the hands of youth took up a chisel and craved beauty on the rise of his cheeks and the bend of his brows. “I have many questions,” he said, “and you will answer them all.”

  I said nothing as he took the halos from my life pack and held one of the vials for me to see. “This item you have. Tell me of it,” he ordered.

  Halos? He wanted to know of halos? I always knew it was an extraterrestrial energy. I didn’t know, however, that perhaps it was from here, from Niaysia. ARTIKA’s refusal to leave—it made sense now. As the years passed, halos became our framework of life. We couldn’t function without it. It was in our bloodline. Still, it was difficult to believe. All my life, war was around me. All my life, I carried it, like a cloak of madness, like a shadow I couldn’t see. It was behind me all this time, nurturing me, tucking me in at night, singing death in my ear. It was disturbing to know that I allowed it, that I laid my head on the breast of deceit and slept, night after night, with my arms around it.

  “It’s halos,” I told him.

  The vial hovered over his hand. He studied it with a curious eye. That shine of wonder made him look open somehow, like a child almost. He seemed fragile to me in that moment. It was only a flash of invulnerability, but I saw it. And I understood what it meant. Meridians and humans, we were the same in that way. We were curious beings, and dangerously romanticized by our freewill. And that freewill, while striking and gloriously invaluable, was still a curse. Because with freewill was the desire to taint, and steal, and destroy that will. Because no heart was pure, and the soul is always corruptible. Nature made it so. God made it so.

  “This... halos. What is its purpose?” the Meridian wondered.

  “To keep me alive,” I answered. I couldn’t lie to this creature. If I lied, he would know it. That’s who this Uway Levíí was. He was not a god by any means. But I could tell that at some moment in his time of living, he had seen some form of a higher power. He had seen a god. And that god had bowed over him, with a beam of light on his lips and exhaled the flames of knowledge into his lungs.

  “It keeps you alive. Tell me.”

  “It’s inside of me,” I said.

  He looked at me, startled. “Inside of you?”

  His voice was a whisper. It sounded something like an echo. It was a haunted question that trembled against his lips. The Meridian was gone for a moment. His mind had left me. He only stared, looking into a world unknown. I wondered what he was seeing. Then I wondered if he was seeing his god, if he was walking through the forests of heaven beside him, speaking in a language only they could ever know. It seemed like that, and knowing it, realizing it, made me all the more wary of Uway Levíí.

  “It is inside of you,” he repeated. Rage flashed crossed his face. It was a beautiful rage. The embers of that fire rekindled with such a fiercenes
s that I could no longer look upon him. The Meridian stood, and with the halos still in his hand, he shattered the vial to pieces. “You will answer for this,” he hissed.

  I shivered at his words, at the vigor of his voice. ‘You will answer for this,’ he had said. But it was more like a promise, like a declaration of truth. His words were furious, punishing, condemning. And I was afraid. The ‘you’ he spoke of, was not only me. It was all of us: ARTIKA and its mindless army of slaves, the Ardent, who were nothing more than a dumb and ignorant children, and the Defiant, who knew everything but nothing at all.

  “You have sullied the sanctity of the Meridian. You have robbed and chained the grace of Kurios!” His voice rose high, like a wave from the sea. A mighty wind ripped around him, his hair lashing like a whip of light.

  The halos in his hand began to glow, surrounding him in a nimbus of fire. The hangs of the tent rippled around him. Then there was a shrill whistle in the jagged air. An explosion followed. A whirl of dust blasted into the tent. I heard shouting, and the throbbing sound of missiles, beating like drums into the earth.

  Someone rampaged into the tent. It was the Meridian’s subordinate. “An attack, Aieti. The hai’ek,” he said in Hedai.

  “We shall deal with them swiftly,” the Meridian demanded.

  The subordinate turned to leave, but looked back when he saw that he wasn’t followed. “Aieti?”

  The Meridian held eyes with me. I braced myself. This Meridian, he was going to kill me. “Go, Zurel. Soon, I shall follow.” The subordinate nodded then rushed from the tent.

  The Meridian didn’t wait. In a flash, he drew his sword. I rolled to the left, barely dodging the quick strike of his blade. He swung again, faster than before, but I was ready. I lifted my arms, and with a dangerous mind, let the blade of the sword glide between my wrists.

  The restraints loosened. I was free. The Meridian attacked, and I rose up to meet him, blocking the force of the strike. For a second, he couldn’t manipulate the sword, so he snatched me by the throat with his free hand.

  A silent cry broke from my lips. He pinned me against a tree, his hand a clasp of stone around my neck. I struggled, writhing beneath him with my feet off the ground and my lungs clinging for breath. He raised his sword. I held tight, feeling the frigid edge nick my throat.

  Then… I reacted.

  My hand, with its own mind, reached out and gripped the bend of his neck. There was something there, a chain of red glistening beneath the collar of his armor. I snatched it, twisting the metal until the chain was tight around his throat.

  It didn’t harm him, but once I touched that shining relic, a ferocious look came over his face. He ripped me from the tree and threw me across the way. I felt the chain break, and as I tumbled to the ground, it was still there, smooth and fragile in the clutch of my hand.

  A blast of fire whizzed into the tent. There was gold all around me, flaming waves of silk melting into the air. I rolled from under the flames. When I looked up, the Meridian was gone, vanished into the smoke of battle.

  I found my life pack buried in the dust. Everything I needed was there. Everything but the mr2. The Meridians had taken it, and finding it now was impossible.

  I made my way into the open. I stood alone on an open plateau, and down the way from where I stood, was a deep valley of gold. There was war there in the long, gilded grasses, streaks of amber and exploding whirls of white.

  I saw my people at war, a mindless and savage people. I saw blood, scarlet rivers flowing through the hills, those lovely starlit hills. For some reason, I couldn’t look away. I simply stood there, watching those golden isles burn, watching the smoke billow like a black twister into the sky. And there were screams, clashing together in the heat of battle. They were all one voice, clawing up the hills, thundering like a vicious storm across the land.

  For a second, I thought of moving closer, just to see it. I had known war all my life, but seeing it in this moment was the first time. I was tempted to feel it, to know it by another name. There had to be something more, something mighty, and something necessary about the spirit of war. Why else was it so long? Why else was it such an immortal soul, corrupting mortal men? Why was it living, with more emotions than men and more consciousness than the mind?

  War. I could feel it, like a drum in my blood. It was so alive, such a real and palpable thing. It had a mind and a voice, and I could feel it, lingering so loudly behind me. Then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t bare it, the way it put its arms around me so warm and gentle.

  I turned from the valley. A line of trees stood ahead. I walked, one foot after the other, into that glaring wood. The trees were angry, their leaves hissing in the wind. They should have been. I was shameless to walk away. But I wasn’t human anymore. I was a rogue solider, an arsenal. I had no room for shame.

  I found myself wandering for a long time. My halo-com was down. And eventually, I abandoned it. It was never said, but I wasn’t a fool. The halo-com was just another tracker. I traveled by instinct, losing myself deeper and deeper into the woods. As I walked, a flood of water rose over the thicket. Beautiful.

  The trees were tall, bending in and out of the marsh in periwinkle curls and rings of violet. Strange creatures glided through the watery forest. Some were long-legged, their colored strips gleaming beneath the shrubs. Others were short-finned with bulbous eyes and ray-like tails.

  The water was pleasantly warm as I moved along. It came to my waist, the musk of sea flowers stinging my nose. A bluish mist rippled off the surface, swarming the swamp. The dew was hard in the air, like tiny beads of steel. They were slow moving too, and when they drifted, they collided into each other. It sounded like the ringing of bells, like the wind was singing.

  Deeper in the marsh were these spider-like critters shining white in the sun. They sat atop the water, spinning cocoons into the air. I moved gently around them, watching their claws ticker and their eyes flick side to side. Their bodies jittered as they worked, making small ripples over the water. The cocoons flew from their hind legs and clung to the plants and trees. They looked like stars shimmering across the velvet stumps of darker trees.

  I found one crawling over my shoulder and gently settled it back onto the water. Holding it reminded me of before. Uway Levíí’s relic was still in my hand. It was a fantastic piece of stone.

  On a plate of blue steel sat a beautiful tear of sapphire. Around it was a shield of jade, branching from the gem in bright, elegant swirls. There were markings etched in the steel, magenta symbols all around the vines of jade. The relic burned white in my hand, like a beating heart, like a living spirit. I took a lingering look at it then slipped it into my pocket.

  I came to a rest in the heart of the marsh. There was a tree there, a great temple of stone surrounding it. The arcs were high and smooth as if they were made. I saw images on them, ancient languages carved deep into the rock.

  I climbed the grassy mound to reach them, using the foliage to hoist myself up. When I reached the top, the bows of stone were almost frightening. They were humming, speaking to each other. And there were murals, giant hands and faces telling stories, telling the ancient tales of the Meridian.

  The image in the center awed me most. It called to me, luring me in, compelling me to look. There stood a masterwork of art engraved in brilliant colors, struck bright by the light of the sun. The stone glistened, an ebony pillar hammered with lines of ruby, and emerald, and amethyst.

  As I stood there, with my breath long forgotten, it seemed like the images were moving. From the top of the mural, there came a divine light breaking from outer space. And in the sky, a circle of planets and stars lit the dark, revolving around that beam of light. In the following image, the light was turning, spinning up a hurricane of color until a world formed from the dust.

  I saw a land of green, overflowing with holy waters and golden fruit. Then there was a hand taking up the fruit and a pair of lips, raw with innocence, sinking deep into the core of that fruit. A
nd suddenly, the world of light went dark, black with rot. A sweep of darkness came in, and then, there was nothing.

  I drew back from the images, stumbling over myself, my breaths swallowing themselves, going in and out of my lungs like knives. I moved along the stones, searching for the image that followed. When I found it, my hands shook. I was far too afraid to touch it.

  A legion of creatures feathered from the dark sky. There were hundreds of them. And they were large, each of their six wings casting away the dark. I saw them singing and heard their song opening the gates of space. And as the gates were open, the world formed again. And again, the waters were holy. And again, the fruits were gold.

  I took a step back. I felt disturbed. These images, they couldn’t be true. Of course they weren’t. They were only legends, images crafted by an old and imaginative mind. They were myths, created for the curious and wondering eye. They held no truth. No truth at all.

  Then why was I so still, trembling inside of myself? Why did my heart beat cold and my skin stiffen with a chill? I didn’t know. I couldn’t understand it. Nor did I want to. Because if I did, those images would haunt me until they became a part of me. And if they did, I could never escape them.

  I rested away from the temple, on a mossy hill. I could still see them across the way, the great arcs bending between the trees. Something suddenly splashed in the marsh. I looked out over the water to find what was moving in the reefs. Down in the banks, large humpbacked creatures trudged in the shallows. Their moans echoed, long and deep over the soft chirps of nature.

  I closed my eyes—thinking but trying not to think. It was impossible. I thought about Uway Levíí, and how he spoke, with a voice of fire and his eyes like lightning. I remembered the relic I took and the horror on his face as I touched it. The relic was mine now, mine to keep and use however I wished. If we were to ever meet again, I would keep it hidden, say I lost it. Because I was vengeful that way. I wouldn’t forget it. How helpless he made me. How his eyes ridiculed and cursed me.