by Almney King
“It wasn’t necessary, 2102. All of this bloodshed,” Raine called. I held still, trying to ease my breathing. I could hardly stand.
“It’s a shame isn’t it, people killing people?” His tone was teasing. “But we just can’t seem to stop, can we?”
My breaths were shallow. Blood trickled from the chain into the snow. “Y-you,” I panted. My lips were dry. I could barely speak. “This isn’t you, Elric... you’re everything but this,” I uttered.
“I know who I am,” he pronounced proudly. “And I keep my word. You gave your word. Then you betrayed us. Everything we stood for. The promise we made. Because that’s who you are.”
“No Elric... I do know who you are. You hunger for the light... you seek the truth... you have no fear of danger... no fear of fate. I haven’t betrayed you. I followed your will... for freedom... for compassion... for truth.”
“What the hell are you saying?” he snapped.
“I am not the lie. ARTIKA is the lie,” I said. “And I would die before I let them keep what they have stolen. So I’m telling you... wake the hell up damn it... or I’ll do it for you. You coward.”
Ellis blinked, staring at me as if I had lost all of my sense. Raine only smirked. The other arsenal simply stood there, fascinated that I was still standing.
“Look at you,” Raine said. “You can hardly stand. And by the looks of it, you’re all out of juice.” He glanced at my blood in the snow. “Literally,” he smirked. “You can talk all the treason you want. But we’re taking you back to New Eden. Give it up, 2102. You’ve lost.”
I tugged on the chain. Ellis skidded forward. I felt Raine move behind me. The other arsenal advanced from the left. I yanked the chain through my back, dodging their line of fire.
I crashed into Raine. He raised his firearm and I gripped the weapon. The gun jerked right, firing at the third arsenal. He staggered to the left. Ellis pulled again and I wound the chain around my arm, pulling against him.
The third arsenal closed in, firing three shots above the wound in my side. I yanked his arm, twisting the gun out of his grasp. I turned again and blasted my elbow into Rain’s chest. He doubled over. And as he bucked forward I used him as leverage to lift myself into the air.
I loosened the chain and thrust the sling through my side. As I turned, the chain looped around the other arsenal’s neck, jerking tight around his throat.
A cry exploded from my lungs as I pulled, and wrenched, and bled. The arsenal lurched forward. The chain vibrated with the pull. A gurgle of blood bubbled from his mouth. I yanked again and felt his neck break with a snap. The chain went slack.
“You really are remarkable,” ,” Rain growled. He held me at gunpoint. I held my breath, not even daring to move.
“Since the day you entered Pilot with that haughty strut and your hair ablaze like a flame, I’ve wanted to test your strength. I wanted to see the rage, the bloodlust. How deep it ran.”
“You have no idea!” I spat.
“But more than anything. I wanted to see you just as you are now. Didn’t I say it, 2102? That we had a score to settle. I believe I did. And we’re about to settle it . . . right now.”
“That’s enough, Raine!” Ellis uttered. “We have her. Let’s take her and be done.”
Raine glanced back at him. His lips curled back in a smile, his eyes wide with madness. “If it puts you at ease Elric, I’m feeling merciful today.” Raine licked his lips.
“Raine!” Ellis snapped.
The spearhead snapped closed. I released the chain and the sling jerked back. A scream caught in my lungs as it ripped from my side. I fell to my knees. The bridge was there in front of me, and I stared, through the blur in my eyes, at that bottomless scar in the earth.
A shadow hovered behind me. Raine gripped the back of my neck, pushing me up and forward. He dragged me to the edge and gripped me by the face, forcing me to stare into the deep. There was nothing there except the rush of snow and the white twinkle of stars against the black.
He wrapped an arm around me, rocking my body softly as if he were comforting me in those wicked arms of his. “I guess it’s true what they say. Pride can kill,” he said. “I could make this your grave, you know. This beautiful dark abyss. Your life belongs to me, right now, in this moment. Isn’t it amazing?”
He threw me down into the snow. Blood rose from my lungs. I gasped, chocking as it rushed into my throat. Raine climbed on top of me. I wrangled against him, fighting the pain, fighting the cold. Then he lowered himself, so close that my reflection caught in the copper of his eyes.
“You know something, Celeste?” I grimaced, my arms thrashing. He pressed harder, holding tight to my wrists. “You and I could have been something else.” He raised his hand and I flinched. But he brought his fingers down gently and stroked the soft of my eyelids, then my cheek, slowly caressing the underside of my face. “Our rivalry was fierce, exhilarating. But I must admit, beauty and strength like yours, it’s too rare to ignore. Only a fool would.”
I struggled against him, but he held me still. I couldn’t move. The light was slipping.
“I vowed to tame you. And I have, yet still you reject me. I had hoped not. But either way,” he gripped me by the hair, “you will submit to me.” Our lips crashed. I jerked in his arms, twisting and scratching to break free. His mouth was poison. And I could feel his heart throbbing hard against my chest. There was a wicked sound to it. I hated every beat of that sick and awful sound.
When his mouth retreated, it was as if the lips of death had kissed me. “Bring the wire!” Raine called.
I lied still in the snow. I couldn’t move. I was ill from the pain, ill from the bleeding, ill from the tangle with enemy lips. The world was spinning and shaking all around me. There was nothing but the cold and the silence. I saw the snow fall, flake by flake, as it vanished in the smoke of my breath. I watched my spirit breathe. In and out. Out and In. Just like Fern’s breathing from long ago.
Suddenly, my ankles were bound. I pitched forward through the snow. I was being dragged like an animal for slaughter.
I saw the trees, white-iced and beautiful, the pink blossoms folding out, blooming with a soft and gentle ease. I watched them spring to life, again and again, until it was all a dream, a fantasy clinging between consciousness and the dark.
“Stop!”
It was a voice. There was someone there.
“She’s... too much blood. She’ll... dead... we reach New Eden.”
Darkness colored my eyes.
“Untie her. I’m sure her corpse... no use to them.” A flash of light woke me.
“Are you sure... leave her?”
Shadows circled around me.
“What are you doing?” That voice, it sounded familiar. The light was dimming. There was a beat in my head, a gentle tapping that was ever so slow.
“Shouldn’t we at least...”
“No... I want her to suffer.”
The shadows faded, and once they had gone, that gentle tapping ceased. Then there was nothing. Only death.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FAREWELL
I awoke to the light. The world was quiet. I hardly remembered where I was. I hardly remembered who I was. From where I lay, I watched the sun rise to the east. It smiled over the forest.
I sat up and immediately felt a dull pain in my side. All was quiet, and in the lonely stillness, I heard my name in the wind.
“Corrine.”
I looked up. “Ellis?” I called. My eyes searched the underbrush, but I couldn’t find him.
“Corrine, we have to go,” he shouted.
He vanished into the woods and I stood to follow him. I stumbled a bit, pushing a tangle of trees from my path. “Faster, Corrine. We’re so close,” he said.
His voice came from all around. I moved faster, dashing through the trees. “Wait!” I called. “Ellis!”
“Hurry, Corrine,” he called. “We have to find the truth, remember?”
I ran faster.
Why couldn’t I reach him? He sounded so close. “I’m hurrying!” I panted. I could see him through the trees. I saw him as the Ellis I once knew, as the reckless spirit he was back on Earth.
I reached forward and almost touched him. “I’m hurrying,” I said. “Just wait for me...”
Then he disappeared. He vanished right before me, his hearty laughter dissolving in the wind.
I stopped running. Only a fool would have kept running. I remembered now. I remembered it all. He was gone, lost, a stranger. All of him.
I fell to my knees, and suddenly, the world turned, and the trees crumbled to black. Everything faded. Everything changed, spinning into shapes. A blur of darkness swept the stillness, and I found myself waking up from the dream.
I was somewhere else again, lost in a yellow tall of trees. That land of frost had died, just as the dream had died. And just as the dream, the sun was rising, and that shimmer of light touched the yellow woods, breathing softy against that body of nature.
For a long time, I didn’t move. I simply stared up into the falling light and blinked. The pain had numbed. But still there was blood running warm from the open wound in my side. I could smell the iron rot of my flesh. And I remembered it all too suddenly. The flash of death. The red and white snow. Ellis.
He was gone now, so far gone that no truth, or light or, manner of awakening could save him. That was perhaps my greatest pain. Ellis, my friend and my brother, was beyond my reach. That he had left me to die and to rot in the winter of that faraway land.
It was so cruel for it to be this way, for me to return home without him. I wondered if my leaving him would be as cruel and cowardly as my father had been. I wondered if I could abandon him, leave him to his own suffering, his own freewill, and his own fate of live or die. A part of me wasn’t sure. But a part of me was selfish, content with that degree of ignorance. I should have been ashamed to face away from him, from truth. But I was not like Ellis. My desires were not in the truth. They were in the grave.
There was a snap and crackle between the trees. Then out from the yellow woods came a herd of deer-like creatures. Each of their colored scales were ablaze in the light.
I kept still as they passed. They moved with poise, with one leg rising and the other falling softly behind the next. Their hoofs shone with a gleaming silver, their deciduous horns bright as bronze. They were the shining nobles of the forest as they went.
They kept a slow and graceful rhythm, their heads to the sky without so much as a glance in my direction. For a moment, I thought perhaps I was in a dream again and that they simply could not see me. But one of them happened to look my way, slowly, and almost eerily as if it had read my thoughts. It came to me, veering from the agile march of the others with a startling fearlessness. I noticed then that it was wounded, one of its hind legs cut deeply by some savage predator.
As it came, I didn’t move. My body tensed. The pain in my ribs returned. I would die soon without a shot of halos. The blood wouldn’t stop, and although the wound had closed a little, the healing was progressing too slowly. My flesh was torn and twisted, and I could see the bone of my rib protruding through the open gash. Will, and only my will, was keeping me alive.
The creature came closer, determined and unafraid. I could smell the piney scent of an earlier rain lingering over its hide. It made a sound suddenly, deep from its throat, and eased its head to the side, his bright eye staring at me. And there seemed to be a supernatural knowledge in that glowing white haze, like the eye of God was staring straight at me through the blink of this docile creature.
He rocked the silver of its hoof and turned beside me to the trees. Then he rose up, his back stretching, his one good leg standing strong as he plucked a fruit from the tree to eat. I watched him, and slowly I began to notice something, something impossible, so impossible I was sure death had taken me without my knowing.
The creature’s wound had healed. The glossy leg was now fresh and as strong as all the others.
The creature made a sound again, and with its silver hoofs, knocked three times against the trees, and the fruit fell, glittering gold in the grass. The creature came down then, and turned without another look my way, disappearing with the last of the herd.
I stared down at the fruit and reached out to it with all my strength. I picked it up and held it. It was like light in my hand, and I could feel it moving, beating like a heart of energy. I brought it to my lips and ate. It was tasteless almost, but still saturated with flavor. It was like water in a way. Not sweet. Not bitter. Not sour or salty. And as I ate, I could feel it, the broken seams of my body winding together, my skin returning to that brilliant honey glow.
I heard a sound not too far away in the woods. I was on my feet before I could think, climbing high into the trees. They came softly, deftly, prancing along the low of the forest. I peered down at them and knew in a second what they were—hunters. Their weapons ready. Their bodies beautified in disguise. They were trailing that earlier herd of beats no doubt. They came to a steady halt just below the tree.
“What is it?” one asked.
The other held her hand up, her skin dark as red, her hair bright as gold. “Do you not smell that?” she asked the others. She adjusted her weapon, skimming across the forest.
“Nai. Should we not keep moving, The’essa-chal? We will lose the herd.”
The girl ignored her, stepping close to the fallen fruit on the ground. Then she gasped, kneeling in the grass. “Look at this,” she said. The girls hesitated then circled around her.
“Well, this is new.”
She reached down and touched my blood with her fingers. “An igle this far to the east. They must be getting bolder.”
“Or more foolish,” the other snapped. “Aieti will not stand for this much longer. Not if they keep continuing towards the mainland.”
“This has gone on long enough. Pillaging our villages. Digging up our land. Why does Aieti not end them! Return the peace?”
The taller of the Meridian stood up. She was silent for a moment. The young girls looked to her for a guiding answer.
“Because his mercy is too great,” she whispered. She sounded as if she were in pain.
“Why should he have mercy on them?!”
“Quiet, Rumi. You disturb the forest,” the youngest whispered.
“I don’t understand it!”
“And you will never understand it,” the blonde said. Her voice was strong and demanding, silencing the girl. “You are not our Aieti. You know nothing of his burden, so silence yourself of your judgments.”
“It is true,” the other said. “Did you not hear of the clash between Aieti and his father? He travels north as we speak, all the way to the beaches of Peradú for war. Then it is back to Isaya to deal with the hai’ek once again.”
They were silent for a moment, until the lead huntress turned back from the tree. “Let us go, children. We have lost enough ground as it is.”
“But teacher,” Rumi said, “what about the igle?”
I held my breath. They knew where I was hiding. I had wondered if they knew, but hardly expected it. And as I was now, I was in no condition to fight.
“Let the igle be,” the Meridian demanded. “Kurios has much to do with her yet.”
I heard them vanish into the forest, my body shaking at what the Meridian had said. How could she have known me to such an extent? What power did she hold that granted her to say such things?
From the moment I first encountered Uway, I had suspected that there were others of his kind who possessed such power. But that creature knew me without seeing me, without even hearing the sound of my voice.
But then I remembered how she had bent down and touched my blood on the grass with that mighty wind in her voice. The’essa was her name, and just like Uway Levíí, I would never forget it.
Uway Levíí—the mention of him still haunted me. And of course the relic of his I had yet to return. I suppose now was the time. The hunters had said h
e was heading north to the beaches of Peradú. I decided to follow him. If it was as they had said, and he was returning to Vatieria, I had no other alternative. Without a guide, the wilderness would consume me, and I would never see home again. So I would follow him, and I would find him. The keeper of the Meridian, Uway Levíí.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PROMINENCE
I traveled north for miles. The stars led me. I didn’t know where I was going. The beaches of Peradú were impossible to find. But where would I go but through these valleys of white? What could I do but stumble onward towards that crystal crown of the moon? I knew no direction. I was a blind spirit lost, and there was no question to what I had lost.
Suddenly there was a rustle in the wind. They had sensed me, long before I knew they were coming. And like a flash of light, they surrounded me, their weapons drawn, their colored eyes holding fast to the object in my hand. Uway’s relic glistened, holy as the light of the sun. No one moved. They knew that any step closer and I would shatter the jewel in my hand.
It was not about vengeance, however, and I saw that they knew that. But what they did not see, and could hardly come to understand, was my being there, why I had risked my life and my pride to show myself before them once again.
“I will only speak to Uway Levíí,” I told them.
“And he is listening,” a voice said.
Everyone turned. Out of the crowd, Uway came forth in an armor of jade and sterling silver, the shining plates casted by a work of blue steel. His hands were gloved. I found myself strangely dissatisfied that they were covered, that my eyes could not witness the might of those hands. He reached out for the relic, and with the sound of thunder in his voice, he spoke. “I believe that belongs to me.”
“It doesn’t yet,” I said. “My mr2. I want it back.”
The natives laughed, but when Uway looked their way, they were silent again. “You have come all this way for a mere weapon, hai’ek?” he questioned.