Shower of Stones

by Zachary Jernigan

  Alone. They had both been alone.

  Neither had needed to be alone. Together, time could have been a cure.

  Instead, it had only rotted the framework of Adrash’s mind.

  The white god ground his teeth together and turned back to the moon. A furnace was stoked between the walls of his skull, was released from his eyes as twin columns of fire. Below him, a half-mile circle of regolith turned into a boiling lake. Vapor shot upward and immediately cooled in the airless void, rebounding against him as an iron rain.

  When his rage finally exhausted itself, he closed his eyes.

  The lake settled, fused into a shallow bowl. He descended and lay upon its swiftly-cooling surface.

  ‡

  With the full acknowledgement of his foolishness, came resolution.

  All three would die. He would not particularly enjoy it, just as he had not enjoyed ending their lives nearly thirty thousand years prior, but this was immaterial. He would see their bones bleaching in the sun, and realize his work done.

  He dug his fingertips into the iron floor beneath him and arched upward, attempting to ease the pressure lodged in every muscle. His nostrils twitched as the divine armor filtered the merest particles from the void, tailoring it to his mood, his unspoken needs.

  Death was not his sole concern. Duties yet remained.

  The smell of blood filled his head, and he opened his eyes again to take in the nearest sphere of the Needle. The seventh largest, it spun only a few hundred miles from him, looming massively in the star-shot darkness. Had it been placed before him, it would have obscured his view of Jeroun entirely.

  If he neglected it any longer, it would soon begin a rapid descent into the moon.

  He gestured toward it with his open left hand, drawing further from the well of power within himself, but also from the armor sheathing him in its cold embrace. The muscles of his arm flexed and shuddered with the strain.

  The sphere quaked in its spin, and slowly backed away.

  One, five, twenty, a hundred miles. It appeared to him as if it were waiting, impatient.

  He sympathized, but it would have to wait a bit longer. He would briefly rest, and then he would kill what remained of his children. Only with that assuredly behind him would he allow himself to return to the question that had plagued him for so long:

  Had the world proved itself worthy, or had the spheres of the Needle waited long enough for their promised day of destruction?

  ‡

  He allowed himself to move at a leisurely pace—the very pace at which an outbound mage such as Pol Tanz et Som had once traveled to and from Jeroun. Hurrying would afford Adrash no advantages, and moreover, by not taxing himself he took full advantage of the divine armor’s unique capabilities. It warmed itself in the sun as did a freezing man before a fire, replenishing itself and stoking the flames that existed deep in the crafted core of Adrash’s heart.

  For perhaps the hundred-thousandth time of his existence, it struck him as odd that his body worked in such perfect concert with the armor, that together they had crafted a god. He could conceive of no way for his creators to have anticipated such a fusion.

  Of course, he had never known his creators. By the time he woke, alone and soulbound to the iron egg Jeroun as it sailed the void, carrying the descendents of humanity, his creators were little more than shades of living men, a collection of ghosts wandering the long rust-pitted halls, muttering to themselves, standing forlorn watch over the rows upon rows of unborn men.

  Nonetheless, their intent in his creation was clear. It could not be denied, for purpose drove him in those unimaginably early years. Slaved directly to his mind, the caravan of vessels stretched one hundred miles and occupied every bit of his attention. Its navigation, while largely intuitive, ensured his constant preoccupation: he learned to care for it as intensely as a father cared for his children.

  This obsession nearly proved disastrous, however. Once deposited upon the surface of Jeroun (no, he knew nothing of the world his people had left, and so christened the new world with the first name to mind), he procrastinated on his next mission. He knew it must be done—indeed, a part of him ached for it to be done—but nonetheless he kept those he had transported closed within their caskets and bottles.

  For a decade, he walked the face of the world he had named, longing to return to the cold spaces between worlds where he alone had been master.

  Despite the distance separating them across the face of Jeroun, the eggs would open as one. Once opened, they would not be closed.

  His creators had not been stingy in his makeup: though in appearance and spirit a man, his body could withstand considerable damage. It would live for eons, storing its memories within the split courses of his marrow. He possessed an inborn desire to lead, an instinctive awareness of how to coerce. With violence, if necessary.

  And it would be necessary, he knew. During his journeys over the continent of Knoori (the second vessel that had followed Jeroun), he had seen the modified men outfitted for war in the various holds, arrayed like blades fresh from the forge. He had seen their beasts of war, their machines of destruction. There existed factions he had never anticipated, and they would challenge him as readily as they fought amongst themselves.

  He delayed the inevitable.

  Yes, because he was a coward.

  Only when he found the armor had he roused himself to do what must be done.

  ‡

  Now, as he moved between the moon and the world he had guided and then abandoned, thinking upon events he had not let his mind fall upon for millennia, he came to several inescapable conclusions—conclusions, he could not avoid admitting, he should have reached long ago.

  For all his strength, he was a coward still. The armor had been his crutch.

  It should have hurt. He did not like this word, coward.

  Yet it did not hurt. It hardly mattered, for death awaited him.

  He saw this, without avoidance. Whatever decision he reached after the murder of his children, he could not allow a coward to continue living in his body.

  The world would die, or it would continue living. Free. With no god to dictate its course.

  ‡

  He entered the atmosphere directly above Osa, slamming himself against air compressed into steel by his swift passage. His body neither flexed nor snapped in two. Flames hotter than those of the sun cocooned him but did not obscure his sight, which remained focused on his destination.

  Once within breathable sky, trailing smoke, he outraced sound to the accompaniment of a massive clap that shook the earth below, flattening trees and causing rockslides.

  Osa lay fixed before him, a circle of jade in an aquamarine setting. It expanded in his view rapidly, taking on detail. He smiled grimly, recalling its beauty from within the dome, regretting his next action while fully committing to it.

  He would not walk into the island as he once had—not now, after so many eons away. He would arrive as an agent of destruction. Pitiless, without remorse.

  A fraction of a second before impact, he finished projecting the words.

  Uperut amends. Ii wallej frect. Xio.

  It was a finely calculated move, potentially dangerous even to one such as he. The dome, he had discovered over the course of several centuries after arriving upon Jeroun, was neither a solid nor a liquid but a state between, granting it permeability and immense structural integrity—tensile strength enough to withstand even a direct blow from Adrash.

  Whenever a passageway into it opened, however, the surrounding area became brittle.

  Arms crossed before his face, he flew into the dimple marking where the tunnel had begun to form, slamming through the elder-forged material as though it were a thin pane of glass. A halo of crystal scattered around him as he slowed fractionally and turned in the air to view what occurred in his wake.

  Cracks branched out from the hole he had created. They were thin and regular at first, each extending no more than a few hundred fe
et before stopping.

  For the briefest of moments, he thought the dome would be able to repair itself.

  But no. The cracks thickened, spreading, spider-webbing to the sound of thunder.

  In the space of one second, the dome went from glass clear to opaque with innumerable fractures.

  Halfway through the following second, the entire structure liquified and fell.

  He turned back to earth and outraced the crystal rain, coming to a stop and righting himself a mere foot above Shavrieem’s killing floor. Relaxed, arms crossed over his chest, feet slightly pointed toward the ground, eyes dimmed to a low radiance. He remained in this position a moment, utterly still, staring at the temple Shavrim had built.

  He gestured, toppling it over.

  At his back, a familiar soul spoke his name, and it began to rain.

  ‡

  “Shavrim,” he said, speaking aloud. His own voice was much as he remembered it. He did not turn away from the ruined temple.

  “Do me the favor of showing your face before we begin,” Shavrim said

  Adrash smiled within the divine armor, turned, and obliged his first child. The enchanted material opened as a pin-sized hole at his scalp and grew, flowing over his features like oil over ice. He turned his black-skinned face toward the sky and let the rain—already diminishing to a light misting—enter his mouth. He tasted Osa, his smile growing wider.

  He breathed. The air smelled, felt on his his skin, much as he remembered it.

  “Have I changed?” he asked, lowering his gaze to lock eyes with Shavrim. “It has been a good while, after all.”

  “No,” Shavrim said quietly, stare fixed on his creator. “Some things never change.”

  Adrash bowed his head and set his feet upon the earth. “As with you, though it looks as if you’ve recently taken some beatings. It’s a consolation, is it not? There are few constants in life.”

  Shavrim shrugged his heavy shoulders, expression blank.

  To either side of him stood Vedas and Churls. Adrash looked from one to the other, left eyebrow raised. At once, he determined that Evurt and Ustert had not assumed control, merely influence. Though both humans bore the signs of their inhabitation, from this distance neither could be confused for truly ascendant gods. They stood stiffly, shoulders thrown back, chins up, Ruin and Rust clenched tightly in firm fists, yet to Adrash their fear was obvious. He could see it, smell it.

  Regardless, they did not flinch from his gaze.

  In another era, discovering two individuals able to defy the will of his creations would have overjoyed him. Simply to relieve the tedium of observing the cycle of human existence, he would have studied them, turned them to his advantage or set them up against his own interests.

  Now, it was an insult. He had come to ground to greet his children before their deaths. To look at them through clouded glass, through …

  “You’re beautiful,” he told Churls. It was no lie. Few, if any, would call her pretty, but there was a coarse allure to her. He nodded to Vedas, amused to note something of his own appearance in the man. “You, as well. Welcome, both of you.”

  “Your welcome’s a bit late,” Churls said. “We’ve been here a while.”

  Adrash’s smile did not diminish. “I welcome guests, even when they trespass.”

  Vedas lifted his horned hood over his scalp. The elder-cloth flowed to cover his face. His suit was a lovely thing, Adrash noted, filigreed with slowly-altering designs the man could not have produced on his own: surely, an external sign of Evurt exerting what control he was able.

  “I think you’ve confused which of us is trespassing,” the man said.

  Adrash laughed.

  Shavrim made a cutting motion with his open left hand. “Enough. I wanted to see your face one last time, and I have. Cover it and let us begin.”

  “No,” Adrash answered. “I want to feel my naked fingers around your throat, Shavrim.”

  Holes opened in the divine armor, at all twenty fingertips and toe-tips, retreating up his forearms and calves, thighs and biceps. It slipped to uncover his genitals, his sinuous torso. Before long, the only white that remained was an egg shape upon his chest.

  He was more beautiful than any man had ever been. His features were generous, almost prototypically masculine. No hair marred his sculpted perfection—no scar, no blemish. He appeared as though he had risen whole from a lake of cooling obsidian.

  He stretched languidly, feeling their eyes upon him, and then planted his feet.

  “Now. First one, then the other. Or all together. It makes no difference.”

  ‡

  They surrounded him. He faced Shavrim, but his awareness extended well beyond himself—far enough, in truth, to render sight unnecessary. Even without his armor actively covering his body, the three presented little actual threat. During the earliest years of mankind’s history on Jeroun, even with his own enhanced makeup, he had been appallingly vulnerable when unarmored, but experience had only made his bond with the artifact stronger, more efficacious.

  A small part of him lamented this fact.

  Vedas broke line first, coming in low with Rust in his right hand. Assisted by Evurt, he covered the twenty feet separating them quickly. His thrust, while graceful enough to catch most opponents unawares, was nonetheless pitifully inadequate against an opponent such as Adrash. He watched it coming in, no more rapid to his perceptions than dripping sap.

  He let Vedas in close, then spun and slapped the blade away. He softened his blow to the man’s temple, but it still sent him twenty feet in the air to land it a heap near his lover’s feet.

  She helped him up.

  Adrash returned his attention to Shavrim. “This is what you’ve been training them to do, boy? Hurling themselves against a wall might have serviced your cause equally well.”

  Tight-lipped, Shavrim raised Sroma and advanced. Adrash strode forward to meet him, arching backward to avoid Shavrim’s first downward strike at the last possible moment, savoring the cool wind of it on his chest and belly. Gooseflesh rose on his forearms and inner thighs, a nearly erotic sensation.

  Shavrim shuffled his right foot forward to pivot before Adrash and levered his blade upward, aiming its edge between the god’s legs. Adrash bent at the waist, head-butting Shavrim while thrusting his arms forward to catch the blade between his palms.

  The enchanted metal rang in his hands. As expected, loathing radiated from the weapon at his touch, suffusing his body with its cold fury.

  Yet it was not quite what he had anticipated. The force of Sroma’s hatred, so much greater than he recalled, nearly brought a gasp to his lips. It seemed it had found more reason, during its long entombment, to rage. Perhaps the armor had changed, as well, so gradually that he had failed to notice. The thought trouble him mildly.

  His grip faltered and Shavrim pulled Sroma free. Adrash turned in time to slap the blade to the side as Shavrim tried to disembowel him, and stepped into his opponent’s guard, laying his left palm flat upon the Shavrim’s chest.

  He straightened his arm, snapping Shavrim’s sternum, sending him flying backward.

  Adrash ducked. Churls’s sword, aimed to take his head from his shoulders, passed less than an inch from his scalp. Before her swing had completed its flat arc, his hand shot up and gripped the blade. It sliced into his palm to the bone, yet he hardly noticed the pain (indeed, before he registered it, his body had begun to heal, pushing the blade out from his flesh) and wrenched the sword forward.

  The woman held on, allowing herself to be hurled over his shoulder. He threw her sword to the side.

  She rolled cleanly and popped to her feet, fists up. He was there before she stood, however, standing at her back. He wrapped his right arm around her neck and lifted her from her feet. Burying his nose in the space behind her ear, he breathed in the aroma of her stale, ordinary human sweat. His cock moved against her bare leg, but it was only a stirring.

  Vedas ran at him. Adrash backhanded him to the g
round with his remaining hand, almost as an afterthought. The man’s right arm lay across his chest at an odd angle. He did not rise.

  He frowned, spoke directly into Churls’s ear. “You’ll be the first to die. Goodbye, Churls. Goodbye, Ustert, for what you’ve been worth.”

  He tightened his grip. Her fingertips dug into his forearm. Her heels slammed into his thighs. He leaned his head forward as though he would kiss her cheek, peering at her eyes as her life fled, hoping to see something more—a sign that either she or Ustert had more fight in them.

  She pursed her lips and tried to spit, but could not summon the breath to do so. Drool ran down her chin, onto his arm.

  “This is all too fast,” he whispered. “I’d hoped …”

  Her body stiffened, and he grunted in surprise.

  Her nails had bitten into the flesh of his forearm, drawing blood. He watched in shock as the cartilage of her windpipe pushed against his flesh and forced his wrist out. She sucked air into her lungs, arching against him. White light poured from her eyes and her grip intensified convulsively, the tips of her fingers slipping like sharp teeth between the corded muscles of his forearm, nails scraping over bone.

  Pain. Shocking in its novelty. Fury in its wake.

  He roared and flung her from him. She flew, carrying a pound of his bloody flesh in her hands.

  Cradling his arm, he witnessed with wide eyes as her body failed to impact the earth: it came to rest like a feather stopped in midair, horizontally, four feet above the ground. She sat up and swung her legs to the side, as if she were getting out of bed. When she stood, her feet did not quite touch the ground. Her eyes lost some of their radiance yet still glowed, as if a light had been struck in her skull.

  He assumed, momentarily, that Ustert had finally achieved greater influence over the woman, but the assumption quickly proved false. No child of his had ever possessed such a bearing. Or such a light. He fought the ridiculous temptation to shield his eyes from it.

  He glanced at his mangled forearm, horrified to find it had not yet begun to heal. A substance, blacker than the night, blacker than the void itself, mixed with his own blood deep in the wound.