All Light Will Fall

by Almney King

  As I walked the carnage, the smoke began to clear. A dense and eerie fog had slithered into the village. It dripped over the dead like a liquid sheet, crystalizing over their bodies.

  I came upon one of the houses where a dead Meridian lay half curled out of the tall window, his frozen hand sprawled open in death. He had been reaching for something, reaching for life, for his soul in the cold, winter light.

  From the door of the house, there was blood. Thick trails of blue slithering from the gray of the house. I wished it wasn’t real, but death was death, and once it came, it could never go back.

  I looked away finally. I had seen too much of death. It was a part of me now. In my heart. In my bones. In my blood. It was a living and lonely death, and I could feel it feasting inside me. Because of all the death I had come to face, lonely death was the worst of it all.

  I made my way to the edge of the village. There were tracks there in the snow leading north. I followed them into the hills. I knew not why, but in this lonely smoky winter it seemed the only path for me to follow.

  There was a small cave there in the cold of the north, an arc of green bending in a sea of flowers. Spring filled the air. It was pure and sweet smelling. It was the scent of life, and as I walked the heavenly grasses, I heard the warming whisper of water. A quiet lagoon rested near the mouth of the cavern.

  I went to the waters. A fiery halo gleamed in the deep, unraveling in bright spirals of light. They were enchanting somehow. They were godly, like the holy waters in the murals I had seen, and I felt my heart stirring, beating to a strange and lively sound.

  Deeper in the spring, I saw the dead. The survivors of the carnage had most likely brought them here. It was a beautiful shrine, I thought, the perfect place for passing. The dead seemed content enough. They looked rested, pale and beautiful in the gentle waters.

  I saw a young Meridian boy there. The look of him startled me. He reminded me of the young Ellis I knew. He was golden, his hair blonde as daylight.

  He looked broken somehow, his face torn by the bite of the wind. He was too young to have that face. Innocence should not have that face. But it did, and I couldn’t bear it. My body shook suddenly. Because the beauty of it, the look of his innocence, was painful. How could a face be so graceful in death? I didn’t know. It seemed impossible.

  There were others with him in the water, floating just below the surface. As I watched them, my body ached. My hands were struck with a painful numbness. Life and death never looked so precious before. We had forgotten it on Earth. We had forgotten the beauty of live and die. Because we had cursed it long ago in our obsession with immortality.

  There was something inside me all of a sudden, something alive in my heart as I slid near the edge of the spring. I reached into the water and touched the Meridian boy.

  The water was surprisingly warm and smelt of sweet balm oil. The boy’s body rocked beneath my touch. He was so still. But he was ready, I knew. He was ready for another world, so with an unexplained pain in my chest, I drowned his body, releasing him into the water.

  Emerald rays shined beneath his silhouette, slowly and beautifully enveloping him until he was but a twinkle of light. The others went the same way.

  I was careful not to disturb their peace. I touched them lightly. They were warm, their hands soft, their skin flush with color. They smelled like lily blossoms.

  One by one, I released them into the river. I watched them disappear into the deep with a strange sort of envy. I thought how wonderful it must have been to vanish beside another soul, to not go quietly alone into the grave. But I would undoubtedly go alone. For I fought alone, wandered alone, and existed alone. For me, there was no other ending.

  Hours passed. From the cave, I watched the sun fall. It was a beautiful evening light, a crest of amber shining far in the east. But when the shimmer faded, a darkness, richer than any night before came swiftly upon me.

  I lit a fire. The flames burned low in the lick of the wind. The village was still seeable in the distance, faint, but still standing, still calling out in the voices of the dead.

  An arctic breeze whipped across the land. It bore no mercy. I wondered if mercy had always been as cruel and fierce as the winds of nature.

  I raised my hands to the fire, thinking myself a fool for speaking of mercy in such a way, as if it were a god. But even so, what of God’s mercy? Why did He suffer those souls to die? What had they done to deserve this torment? What mighty purpose did He have to hide?

  I did not know. But perhaps it should remain hidden. Perhaps our curse made us unworthy of knowing, our desire to destroy and redesign all things beautiful.

  I looked to the sky. The stars, and the moons, and the midnight suns were ablaze with color. It had to be it, I thought. The reason we would never fully grip the throne of destiny. Because we were the fallen. The saved and the damned. The prophets and the wanderers. That was our fate.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TRIUMPH

  I hoped to reach E’elga soon. A storm was coming. I blinked back the falling snow. It was thickening and falling fast in the haste of the wind. Yet my heart felt light with the air.

  It reminded me of that frigid evening on Marx Avenue when the wind blew strong, and the cold was like freedom as it rushed around me. I remembered it clearly now. The starless sky soaked in a mist of gray. The smoky haze of streetlamps. The ring of Ellis’s voice in that blind and soundless nightfall. I ached to hear that voice. Just a word. Just a whisper.

  I was sure to hear it soon. Every step through the snow I felt myself coming closer to him. But every battle I fought and every life I took, I found myself straying farther from the girl I once was. I was hardly human and hardly a child of the earth. I was no one from nowhere.

  My existence seemed that insignificant, yet here I was, wandering, given some indefinite purpose by a higher power. I was sure there was some hideous reason to my pain, but I did not wish to think of purpose. I did not know why I lived, or why day was day and night was night. Perhaps one should never know.

  But ARTIKA did. They wanted to know it all, to kill the unknown. Without question, there was only one way to do so: kill everything that was already in existence. The world must die, nature must die, the very order of life must die. Only then can destiny be rewritten.

  But I could not allow it. I would bring Ellis back to life. Everything ARTIKA feared, I would bring it tenfold to the foot of their throne. I would show them rebellion. I would show them defiance. I would show them my heart of hate. They could not have Ellis. I would never surrender him, not even to death.

  I came to a bridge a few miles north of the village. It was a spectacular work, the crystalline passage shinning blue in the sun, and beneath it, stood a foggy sapphire abyss, stretching long into the earth. White gems twinkled in the darkness, stuck deep in the glassy, rigged walls.

  There was such beauty to this world, but it was a fragile beauty easily destroyed. Even the forest was delicate. The blue-white trees were in bloom, the periwinkle buds crusted with ice. I could see Fern there, singing songs to the blossoms. Her voice would warm them and the ice would melt, like sun tears upon the snow. It was a wonderful dream to imagine, but still so cruel a dream, because it could never be so.

  Suddenly, something stirred in the silence. A sound so gentle not even the silence could have heard it. But I had. It wasn’t an alarming sound by any means. It was soft as the snow. It could have been anything. A bird in a nest. A creature in a burrow. A chime in the trees. I wished it were, but I knew that sound, and I knew that scent. I remembered it well. My chest tightened, and I could feel my blood burning hot in the cold.

  I ran full force across the bridge. It was dangerous for me to pursue them. But the village, that rust of smoke and heap of the dead, was too deep inside me. I vowed myself against vengeance, and I cannot say I knew anything of justice. I knew nothing of my heart, or my flesh, or my mind. But I knew my spirit, that when darkness comes its way, it is drawn to it.


  I was headed for blood, and knowing this, I was glad my dream of Fern was only a dream. She did not need to see this. Death, like this, was not beautiful. But as I ran fast in the stillness, perhaps it was not death, but I myself that she absolutely could not see. My kills were cold. They were ruthless and agile—the perfect kill. And I was glad that she could not and would not see it.

  I crossed the bridge and looked to the wood line. They had turned back when they heard me coming. I waited. I could hear them. It seemed like a century waiting from them to come, and then there they were, sailing gently from the trees.

  Raine took the lead, strutting haughtily through the snow. Four armed arsenals trailed behind him. They marched in a perfunctory rhythm, like toy soldiers.

  West was closest, the barrel of his LPC staring at me. There was nothing in his face. No hate. No glint of betrayal. He was that empty. He was that controlled. I wondered if there was anything left, any humanity in him at all. And as I looked at him, I realized how close I was to that same edge of forgetfulness. I had stood there, staring into that nameless, shameless darkness. And very well, it could have been me, swept up by those black tides. It could have been me, standing there with that look of death in my eyes and no will for freedom.

  West steadied his aim. To the left of him, a tall burly soldier twiddled with the trigger of his weapon. I faintly recognized him. There wasn’t a face I could forget. And that’s what pained me about this moment. When I killed him, I would never forget.

  On Raine’s right, a third arsenal cocked his weapon. The Zed gun was aligned at my chest. A sweat broke between his brows and his hands trembled slightly. He was afraid. I could hear the sound of fear in his blood. And as I listened to that solid sound, I turned and looked, and I nearly lost myself.

  He looked the same, but not the same. His eyes were the same gray, dark as the smoke of the earth. His hair shimmered, blonde as white in the daylight. All of him was there. All but that joyous shine, that golden spirit that once was his. It was gone now—stolen, but still he was beautiful, lovely as the winter snow. My hands ached again, screaming to touch him. Just a touch. I could have cried then, fallen to my knees in a scream. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

  “Ellis,” I whispered.

  “I’d say we were meant for each other, eh 2102,” Raine smirked. I looked to him and he lowered his weapon. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “ARTIKA wants you alive. Looks like it’s back to humanization for you. It’s a shame really, but then again, I could think of worse possible outcomes . . . for a traitor.”

  I said nothing, bending slightly to retrieve my hand knife. I stood slowly. My eyes never left Ellis. I had to be careful. If Ellis got in the way, he would suffer. I had to end this quickly. Not only for Ellis’s sake, but for my sake as well.

  The hilt of the knife bit into my palm. The snow fell softly on the blade.

  “So that’s how you want it, 2102?” Raine smirked. “So be it.” He nodded to one of the arsenals.

  The soldier nodded back. Then he took a step forward, then another, and another. The wind howled all of a sudden, long and full in the quiet. Then I let it go; all of my reasoning, all of my consciousness. My movements were swift, a blur in the semi-blizzard. I was behind him in seconds, gripping him with one hand, and disarming him with the other. My arm coiled around his throat and squeezed. His body bucked forward, nearly jerking out of my grasp. I took the blade to his neck and stuck it deep. His muscles twitched against me, his body lurching forward as I sunk the knife deeper into his windpipe. I could feel him dying; the violent jolts of his spine, the mellow drum of his pulse. I pressed his warmth against me, that gently weakening warmth and held tight to him.

  Raine smirked. “Beautiful, 2102. You kill with such grace. I admire it.” he chuckled. Then he tossed his weapon to the ground. “What do you say we have that rematch? You win, and we leave. I win, and you surrender? How about it, Celeste?” He raised his fists. “Show me some of that female fire.”

  I glared at him and nodded. Raine grinned and I ripped the knife from the arsenal’s throat. His body jerked and a spray of blood hit the snow. Then I released him. He fell into the ice, his eyes rolled back, his open mouth full of blood. The body tumbled and fumbled over itself until it stilled in an awkward twist upon the ground.

  I took several steps towards Raine. A wintry silence lingered among us. We were so close I could feel the wild heat of his breath. “No one interfere,” he ordered. “2102 belongs to me.”

  I dropped the knife.

  Raine’s fist cut quickly through the snow. I blocked the strike and he swung again. I dodged right, blasting my fist against the edge of his jaw. He flew back, sliding to a stop in the snow.

  “You sure are one hell of a spitfire,” Raine huffed. He rolled his shoulders then wiped the blood from his mouth. “Round two,” he grumbled.

  I altered my stance. And when he came again, he was relentless. His strikes were fast and agile. They came one after the next, controlled and full of power. He was calculating, analyzing the pattern of my steps.

  Our hands were a blur. Our fists clashing. Flesh ripping flesh. Bone breaking bone. The snow whirled around our swift moving bodies.

  A fist flew forward. I blocked the attack and spun with a kick. Raine caught my ankle, holding tight with a bone-breaking grip of his hand. He lowered his forearm and I jumped, twisting free of his grasp.

  Then we collided, our arms pulling and twisting. I pressed a hand to his face, ripping the flesh of his eye. He growled and gripped the bend of my neck. I drew my nails from his eye and across his face.

  He released me suddenly, and with a free hand, yanked me flush against his lips. I screamed as he bit deep into the bone of my collar.

  I threw him off of me. He rolled to the side then rose up from the snow. Blood seeped from his wounded eye, dripping slow from the scratches on his face. Raine smirked then spat my blood into the snow. I grimaced, rising to my feet.

  My hands burned in the cold. The skin of my knuckles were battered and raw. There was an unbearable ache in my chest from a blow I had suffered. I found it painful to breathe.

  “I could do this all day, 2102. Unfortunately I don’t have the time,” Raine chuckled. I noticed it then, after he had spoken. There was something amiss. The land was strangely quiet and that howling soundlessness terrified me.

  They had surrounded me, no one moving as they aimed their weapons. In my pursuit of them, I had the intent to survive this battle, but with Ellis here, I wasn’t so sure. With him as my enemy I wasn’t sure if it would be his life, or mine.

  “I really must understand,” Raine said. “You flee from your duties as a solider. You attack and murder your own kind. You commit treason, suicide even. All for what?” Raine demanded.

  “You know nothing,” I growled. I made a move suddenly, and West fired at my feet, keeping me still. I looked up at him, and I was sure there was fear in the look of my face, because Raine’s eyes narrowed, deep in question, staring at me, wondering just who I had become.

  “You know something, 2102,” Raine scoffed. He looked at me with his head cocked to the side and a proud smirk on his lips. “You aren’t as smart as I thought you were,” he said. And by the calm in his voice, I could tell he knew that he had me. I was at his mercy. Because I had lost my reason. I had stripped myself naked in the heart and mind. All in my desperate return to the grave. I was searching for myself, wandering without consciousness, blind and dumb in the deep. And I had found something there, buried in the bones of my body and in the flesh of my guilt. And I couldn’t let it go. It was mine to cherish and mine to suffer.

  “We’ll make this simple, 2102,” Raine said. “If you beg mercy. I want to hear it, on your knees,” he ordered.

  My body tensed. Get down on my knees? “You’ve lost your mind,” I hissed.

  “Perhaps I misjudged the situation, 2102. I should have known. After all, that pride of yours was always far too dangerous.” He nodded to hi
s left and West broke into a stride.

  His hand ripped at my shoulder. “On your knees!” He pressed his gun to my temple.

  I snagged his forearm. His weapon fired and missed. He spun free from my grasp and I grabbed him again, dodging the second shot. Then his arm was around me, crushing my ribs as we crashed in the snow.

  I wrangled from his grasp with a powerful knee to the chest. I was on my feet again and spotted my knife in the snow. Shots fired and I slid into the ice, catching the knife in my hand.

  When I looked up, West was there, his lpc staring me in the face. I slashed the blade up through the snow. The ice hit his face and the lpc altered slightly. A shot of fire snipped my shoulder.

  The other arsenal moved in, firing recklessly. I pushed through the pain, slowing the attack in my mind. West was turning, his eyes wide and wild as he fired. The bullets curved, and before they could come full circle, I stuck him three times in the chest.

  He stumbled back. I swung again, lashing the blade across his throat. The splatter hit my face and as he staggered to the side, I stole the lpc and fired twice at the third arsenal. He dogged the first shot, the last bullet snipping him in the chest.

  I fixed my aim on Raine. There was a sound, the crack of thunder and the hiss of steel.

  A throbbing and vicious pain broke through my ribs.

  The chain rattled as it zigzagged through my side. Fire rose in my lungs. I swayed on my feet. The heat was dizzying. My throat clenched. And I could feel my stomach winding in and out of itself.

  The sling jerked backwards, the spearhead breaking open. I gripped the bloody chain, keeping the iron blades from ripping through my waist. I looked up at Ellis. He held tight to the Iron Sling. I felt his name on my lips, sour as the blood in my mouth. I wanted to scream. To cry out to him. Anything for him to stop. Anything for him to remember.