Skyborn

by David Dalglish

  The woman in her arms screamed something, but Bree was too out of it to understand.

  “What?” she asked.

  “My husband!” the woman shouted, tilting her mouth closer to Bree’s ear. “Please, you have to get my husband!”

  Bree didn’t know what to tell her. Elern was close, and Bree angled for a landing, steadily lessening the power of her wings. As the woman’s feet touched down she let go, still screaming as tears stuck her hair to her face.

  “His name is Thomas!” she screamed. “Please, you have to—”

  Bree flew away, her whole body trembling as she prayed for a way to endure the madness.

  She kept to an outer path, hoping to avoid most of the chaos as her wings shone with power. Skipping through the edges, Bree chose one of the cities near Galen’s very center. All along the rooftops she saw families gathering, and upon her approach they waved their arms and screamed, crying for her to choose them. No matter whom she chose, Bree could not shake the guilt clawing at her throat. Of the families, she saw a dark-skinned woman with three young children atop a pale stone roof, and Bree landed before her.

  “God bless you,” the woman said, handing over a boy no older than four. “Please, take them somewhere safe.”

  Another, a beautiful little girl of six, stepped closer and lifted her arms. Her older sister held her hand, and she looked eight, maybe nine, her long hair braided and tied with a crimson ribbon.

  “I can only carry two,” Bree said, trying to cut off the woman’s thanks. “Please, only two.”

  Bree took the youngest in her left arm, the older one in her right, and both wrapped their arms about her neck. The mother tried to argue while the remaining girl started to cry.

  “I’m coming back,” Bree said as she gently lifted into the air. “I’ll come back for her, I promise.”

  “Mommy!” the four-year-old cried, and she pulled an arm back to reach for her mother.

  “Hold on to me,” Bree told her, and she spun so her back was to the mother, blocking the child’s sight of her. “Hold on to my neck. This’ll be like a ride. A fun ride, all right?”

  The girl sniffled and replaced her grip. Shifting her arms so she held the two better, Bree increased the throttle as high as she dared. She couldn’t fly at a proper angle, and the wind blasted against her far more than normal. Doing the best she could, Bree flew back over the edge, more drifting than flying toward Elern.

  By now it seemed every set of wings that existed was flying toward Galen. A veritable army of theotechs and their gold wings had arrived from Center, landing together at one of the docks, and they were a welcome sight. Most of the ferrymen had dropped off their first platform full of people and were on their way for a second trip.

  Just one more hour, Bree thought. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

  The edges of Elern were starting to overcrowd with people, not only refugees but Elern’s native population rushing in to help. Bree searched for an open spot farther inland, then set down the older girl first.

  “Take care of your sister,” Bree said, handing the four-year-old over into her arms. “You keep her here, all right?”

  “I will,” the girl said.

  Screams sounded from the island edge, loud and unified. Turning, Bree lifted into the air so she might see.

  Galen’s Beam, already weak, was now gone.

  Bree tore into the air, screaming like a shot toward Galen. The Beam flared back to life, barely at half strength, and it seemed the entire island shuddered. Despite the Beam’s return, the island was clearly drifting downward. Whatever time they had, it wasn’t much. Bree shifted her angle, and she weaved through the fishermen as they desperately pushed their own clunky wings to their limits. Bree’s eyes remained focused on the distant city in the heart of the island. She’d made a promise, and she would keep it.

  When she was almost there, the Beam collapsed again, and this time it did not return. The island was crumbling. Bree flew forward, telling herself she was unafraid, telling herself she could make it in time. As grass and fields passed before her, she saw those at the docks lifting off the ground as if floating. The wind, which had been soft and ignorable, suddenly raged into a maelstrom as the island increased speed. Bree’s downward curve became a dive.

  I can make it, Bree thought as she closed in on the city. She saw people on the rooftops, only now they were several feet above them, screaming helplessly. And then she saw the mother, the eldest daughter held closely in her arms. The wind fought against Bree, shoving her away, denying her speed. Bree pushed into it, teeth clenched, painfully aware of the ocean’s approach. The two saw her, and they reached out to her. So close now, so close…

  Bree’s eyes flicked to the side, she saw water, and with a scream she banked upward, knifing into the air until her momentum died. Hovering in place, she spun, and with tears in her eyes she watched Galen’s fall.

  The island struck the ocean waters. The sound was like the fist of God striking the world, deep, overwhelming. Rumbling followed, a thunder that continued unendingly. All the people who were still there, those who had floated just above the falling ground, were now hit with violent suddenness. There was no pretending to survival, no delusions of enduring. Bree saw the bodies hit, saw them break. Shocked still, she watched as the ground broke into chunks, houses crumbling as if they were a child’s playthings. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even form cohesive sentences in her mind. The Endless Ocean seethed with fury, rushing in with a terrible roar as it buried the remnants of the once proud civilization. Enormous waves crashed outward, towering so high she saw several Seraphim vanish into their white spray.

  Slowly the sounds diminished as the ocean swallowed the island, and it seemed her frozen world returned to life. She heard crying and screaming, but only from above. Above flew an army of sorrow, wailing with terror and anguish. Not below. Nothing from below but the rushing water swallowing fields of grass and destroyed buildings. Bree hovered there, not wanting to move, not wanting to even breathe. Never before had she felt such guilt. It crushed the air from her lungs, and it peeled back her eyelids so that she could only stare and watch, lost, alone, overwhelmed.

  “Bree!”

  Kael lowered to a hover before her, and his appearance matched how she felt. Blood was splattered across his armor, the left side of his face bruised. Bree opened her mouth, trying to say something, anything.

  “I could have saved them,” she said, and the words broke something deep inside her. “If I wasn’t a coward, I could have… I could have…”

  Kael pulled her into his arms, and she buried her face against his chest and sobbed.

  “It’ll be all right,” he whispered as they hovered there. “It’ll be all right.”

  It was a lie, just a lie, but she needed those words nonetheless. Bree clutched him as if her life depended upon it. In his embrace, she let the horrors of the day sink in. All their earlier trials and battles seemed so trivial now. Their world, and everything they knew, had irrevocably changed. Tilting her face to one side, she let her tears fall as she watched a legion of grim men and women fly past them to the Endless Ocean below, searching in vain for survivors.

  CHAPTER 32

  Bree knelt before the wall surrounding the academy. She’d picked roses from the park behind the apothecary and placed seven against the gray stone. Silently she stared at two names, one directly above the other. Liam Skyborn. Cassandra Skyborn. The bright sun, green grass, the gentle breeze; it all seemed in cruel mockery of yesterday’s absolute horror. As if it’d never happened. As if, without names written upon stone, the dead had never existed. But something had to be done. Everyone felt it in their bones. Already Bree heard debates between Seraphs on the proper way to show remembrance for the fifty thousand dead.

  There is no wall big enough, Bree thought, forever haunted by the image of the bodies slamming down when the island of Galen first struck the ocean. Build one spanning all of Weshern and it still wouldn’t have
room for the names of the dead.

  She heard footsteps in the grass behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder to see Kael approaching. His hands were in his pockets, his eyes downcast.

  “Hey,” he said once at her side.

  “Hey.”

  A soft gust of wind blew over them, and Bree let it fill the silence for her.

  “I still miss them sometimes,” Kael said, easily figuring out why she was at that particular stretch of wall. “It’s stupid stuff, too. Like, I wish they could have seen me when I first tried on my Seraph uniform. They’d have been so proud, you know? But I’d loved to have seen it on their faces. Or can you imagine what Dad would say after hearing about your swords?”

  “He’d probably say they weren’t proper weapons for a Seraph.”

  “And Mom would have immediately elbowed his side and called him a stubborn fool for thinking it,” Kael added.

  Bree smiled, but it was fleeting. Her head ached, and she’d barely slept more than an hour or two last night.

  “What do you think Mom and Dad would have said about Galen’s fall?” she asked.

  Kael fell silent once more. He had no answer to that, and honestly, neither did Bree. She’d like to think they’d have been compassionate, that they’d have known exactly what to say… but these were the people they’d fought against, the people they’d died fighting. What were the people of Galen to her anymore?

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Bree said when the quiet began to grate, even to her. “I keep seeing the same thing. This poor mother and her daughter. I was flying to get them, right at the very end. But then I turned away. I thought I was out of time. I saved her two other little girls, but they’ll grow up without a mother now, all because I was a coward.”

  Bree rubbed at her eyes.

  “It’s like a bad joke. I keep seeing her, reaching out for me, crying, and I don’t even know her damn name.”

  Kael sat down cross-legged beside her. He absently picked at some grass, seemingly more comfortable looking at it than at her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  A simple enough question, but the answer wasn’t quite so simple. Part of Bree wanted to forget it all had happened. It’d be easier that way. But that way led to constant nightmares and a thin wall of denial that she knew would one day crack. So instead she tried to get her tired mind to form into some approximation of order.

  “After Mom and Dad died, I swore I’d make them pay,” she began. “I don’t know who, just… Galen. Her people. Her Seraphim. They took them from us, Kael, took our parents, yet we didn’t even have the names of their killers. And when Eric killed Dean, I swore it again. I wouldn’t stand by. I’d do something, I’d have my revenge, yet when I slew Eric, I didn’t feel happy. I didn’t feel satisfied. I had to do more. I had to fight even harder. The people of Galen had all these awful drawings of me, insulting me, and I swore I’d make every single one of them remember my name. I’d make every one of them fear it as I avenged what they’d done.”

  Bree shuddered. After the fall, Kael and Bree had returned to nearby Elern to regroup with the rest of their squadron. The refugees from Galen had lined the island’s edge for miles, an overwhelming, frightened, heartbroken mass.

  “Do you remember the looks on their faces?” she whispered. “All those people, shocked and broken. That’s who I swore vengeance upon? That’s who I spent so much time hating?”

  Her tears were growing stronger, and she couldn’t wipe them away fast enough.

  “I don’t hate them anymore,” she said. “I don’t want them afraid anymore. I don’t even want them to remember my name. I just want to have saved two more of their lives. Just two more, a mother and her terrified little girl…”

  Kael’s arm wrapped around her, and she leaned limp against him and let it all out. All the lingering pain. All the confusion and doubt. Every aching memory that haunted her failed attempts to sleep, faces of the dead, the crumbling nation, the breaking bodies of her people… she cried in her brother’s arms, accepting his silent strength.

  “Everyone’s scared,” Kael said after several long moments. Bree kept her eyes closed and let his voice float over her. “Everyone’s confused. The world we knew has changed forever, and we don’t even know why, or whom to blame. But no matter what happens, I do know this, Bree. I know you did all you could to save those people.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said. “I feel it in my bones. I know I didn’t do as much as I could have. Not like you. Not like everyone else.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  He said it with such sudden anger Bree was shocked, and she peeled away to meet her brother’s gaze. There was no hiding the hurt in his eyes.

  “Kael,” she asked. “What happened to you yesterday?”

  He stared at her a long moment, debating.

  “I decided I’d try to go to one of the smaller towns,” he said, gaze loosening, mind easing into the past. “Somewhere people might overlook, you know? I kept thinking… I kept thinking, if this happened to Weshern, we’d have been forgotten down in Lowville while the bigger towns were evacuated. So I flew… I think I was in shock at the time, and I just flew until I saw someone, a man outside his home on a farm. He had no clue what was going on, only that the land was rumbling beneath his feet. So I told him.”

  Her brother took in a deep breath, and when he let it out, his upper body shuddered.

  “He refused to come with me,” he said.

  “Did he not believe you?” Bree asked.

  “No,” Kael said. “It was because I couldn’t take them all at once. He had a wife and two sons, and he didn’t trust me to come back after I took their sons. It’s your fault this land’s dying, he tells me. I’d rather we die here at our home than let you tear us apart and raise our kids as Weshern slaves.”

  Bree couldn’t imagine how she’d have reacted. At the outer edges, everyone had been so frantic to escape. The idea that someone would refuse was baffling.

  “What’d you do?” she asked when he refused to continue.

  “I… I told him I was taking his sons anyway,” he said. “I told him he was killing them, and I wouldn’t allow it. He struck me, I drew my sword…” Kael wiped his own tears away as he fought for strength to speak. “They were so mad, so scared, and I was no better. I brought the youngest son back with me to Elern, a little four-year-old boy. He was the only one. I slew his father, Bree. His own father, just to save him. My only prayer is that he’s so young he won’t remember when he grows older. After that, I didn’t go back. I couldn’t. Like a coward, I watched Galen until it fell.”

  Bree grabbed Kael’s hand and held on tight. She couldn’t believe how selfish she’d been. He’d not spoken of his own attempts when they met, and she’d not thought to ask. Haunted by her own guilt, of that outstretched hand she refused to grab, she’d not imagined her brother suffering the same. He’d seemed so strong on the outside, so held together, but it only hid his pain and guilt.

  Just like his sister, she thought.

  Bree wished she had wise words to offer, some sort of consolation, but she did not. Shifting so she sat before him, she hunched so he’d see her despite his lowered gaze.

  “Kael, I want you to make a promise with me,” she said. “I want you to promise that you’ll let this guilt go, and never blame yourself again. If you do, I’ll do the same.”

  “Like it’s that easy,” Kael muttered.

  “I don’t think it’s easy. I think this will be one of the hardest things we ever do, but we have to. We have to. The guilt is too much, Kael. Too many people were lost that day, and I don’t want my brother to be one of them. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you want to lose me, either.”

  Kael sniffled as he looked up.

  “Not for anything in the world,” he said, and he forced a smile to his face. “And fine. I promise.”

  Bree fought back another round of tears, these of exhaustion and
relief.

  “And I promise, too,” she said. “Now don’t you dare feel guilty about that ever again.”

  “Or what?”

  She laughed, weak, nervous.

  “Or I’ll find a broom and do to you what I did to Saul.”

  This time Kael’s smile was genuine.

  “Then I best not upset the almighty Phoenix of Weshern,” he said. “I’d hate to be beaten with a broom handle.”

  “A burning broom handle,” Bree added. “I have an image to maintain.”

  Kael laughed as he rose to his feet and offered his hand.

  “Come on, Phoenix,” he said, greatly exaggerating her name. “Let’s go find Brad or Clara. I think we need to spend some time with friends. How does that sound?”

  “Right now, that sounds like the best thing in the world.”

  EPILOGUE

  On the third day, Center finally issued its response.

  “Hurry up,” Brad shouted from the door of his room as he slipped an arm through his jacket.

  “Trying,” Kael said, tucking his shirt into his pants with one hand while grabbing a belt with the other. The call for assembly had come less than five minutes earlier, sending everyone scrambling to dress and prepare. A representative from Center was on his way to Weshern, and all Seraphim were to be ready in greeting. While part of him was nervous, mostly Kael was relieved. It seemed their entire island had spent the past three days holding its collective breath while the theotechs investigated the cause of Galen’s collapse. Everyone, even Kael and Bree, had spent their turn at the library being questioned by the men and women in their red robes. At last, it seemed they would have an explanation for the worst disaster ever recorded since the destruction of the old world during the Ascension.