by John Daulton
He ran past the scene in search of him. The demons would take the square, even if all the orcs aiding them were turned to stew, the same as they had been in so many other parts of the city. They died in the glorious cause, and their deaths were welcome.
He ran past the wide square and followed the sounds of fighting deeper in the city.
He heard the metallic whine of the warriors of the new god, for what else could those giant things be? Weapons of other humans come to aid the golden queen. He ran to that sound then, enraged by it. He wanted to find the human who had shot him in the head with that red light.
He found two of the humans in the ogre-sized armor suits. They fought together against a demon and a pair of orcs. A burst of the short fire emitted from one of the armored arms and the nearest of the orcs turned to mush. The demon bashed the other armored human and sent it flying into an artificial pond, a large thing, perfectly round, and layers of water pouring from stone troughs climbing into the air. Water spat from its top like a geyser and ran down its layers like little waterfalls, but the flying human in all its armor crashed down through it, shattering its tiers one by one with its weight until it landed with a splash. Water and bits of marble flew all around. The white-stone water tribute was destroyed, and the human did not move, its armor lying motionless just beneath the surface of the pond. Gromf saw the human’s hands press against the clear surface of its armor then, the flat white pads of its hands pounding on the transparent substance near the top of the great metal thing. It was clearly desperate. The human’s face lifted up—a male human, Gromf thought—and by its wide and frightened eyes, Gromf knew it was in trouble. He watched the human for a moment and realized its armor was filling up with water then. He watched the human drown and was satisfied.
The other human crushed the remaining orc with a backhanded swipe of an armored arm, and made sure the job was done by stomping the limp body under foot even as the demon lunged with a huge crab claw that caught the armor firmly in its grasp.
It lifted the human up and slammed it down once against the ground, while the human punched at it with its left arm. The powerful arm had a protrusion, a long iron spike that looked to Gromf like a short spear, though the human never threw it. The spike moved in and out rapidly and made an awful sound, but never flew away. The human did thrust it into the demon’s claw, though, and it drove the point into the shell with rapid vibrations and a tremendous hammering noise.
At first Gromf thought the demon’s shell would be sufficient to prevent such an attack, but it was not, and soon the human had thrust its armored limb elbow deep into the claw, breaking it apart. A moment later the human was free and the demon reeling back and roaring in outrage.
The human ran forward and punched its other arm, the fire-emitting arm, into the demon’s open mouth. Gromf heard the muted sound of its metallic fire weapon going off inside. The demon’s back opened up in a spray of yellow guts. It pitched forward, dead, its weight driving the human back.
Gromf ran forward, calling up his giant ram of ice as the human yanked its armored arm free of the dead thing. The human saw him coming and raised the fire-emitting arm. Gromf had to let the ice lance go early and smaller than he would have liked as he dove to the side, rolling behind a piece of the broken water structure lying nearby. A few of whatever it was that the short-fire weapon spewed ticked off the street nearby, sending up bursts of broken stone and dust in a line that chased Gromf as he rolled away. The unseen projectiles careened off into the distance behind him with warped and whining sounds, but that stopped right away as the human was spun around by the impact of Gromf’s ice lance.
He laughed and regained his feet, starting another lance. The human inside the armor was shouting something that Gromf couldn’t hear, but he could see it was a human female again. The humans must have sent all their women into war. Which was just as well, for there would be no men to mate with them. They might as well all die. Their time was done.
He reminded himself to stay disciplined. They had also ruled for well over a thousand years. And he could not let a woman kill him.
He sent the new ice lance at the woman in the giant suit of steel. Her mouth was still moving when it struck her and sent her flying down the street. She landed a hundred paces from where she had been, and Gromf could see the flailing of her armor as she struggled to get up.
He ran toward her, grinning. He would kill her and teach her that women were too weak to fight.
The transparent portion of the armor opened then, it popped up and swung away. The woman climbed out of it, struggling to free herself of some tangle of thin flat ropes, some of which appeared to be jammed into her skin. She wore clothing just like that of the human that had shot Gromf with the red light, the light that was like the light that came from the sky, though not nearly as thick as that.
She pulled something from a long rigid pouch strapped to her thigh, drawing it out and raising it like a weapon at him. It was too late though, for Gromf’s ice lance was already away. A small one now, at least compared to the last. Warriors threw spears as big in practice every day. But it would suffice.
It struck her through the heart and drove her back against the upraised expanse of transparent material that had come open on the armor suit. She hit that hard, and nearly crumpled, but somehow stayed upright, leaning against it, her blood running down the clear surface behind her, visible between her legs as it poured into the hollow from which she’d emerged. She looked down at the shaft of ice in her heart, her eyes wide, clutching it, then looked up at him again. She spat a spew of blood at him and then pitched forward, dead, falling back into the armor in a heap.
Victory felt good, and Gromf’s confidence continued to renew. He did not have to face God or Warlord in shame.
He ran on, looking for them both. He came across two more skirmishes and stopped both times to help his side. He shaped a wave of fire using his God Stones, and in one great splash set a hundred of the golden queen’s warriors on fire. It was joyous.
It was much the same elsewhere along the way. Finally, he heard the sound that he was looking for. The deep roar of God and the lashing thunder of his vast reach, that arm that wrought death like a granite whip. He heard the crisp retorts of the humans of the new gods too, their armor undoubtedly spitting fire at God. That Gromf could not tolerate. God had spared his life twice today. He knew he would never understand it, never know why God would preserve his weakness and failure, but he must not ever doubt again. God had a plan for him, and he would not fail it, whatever it might be.
A few minutes at full speed brought Gromf to the heart of the battle. They were perhaps a measure away from the golden queen’s palace on a broad expanse of carefully laid stones, every one of them cut into perfect rectangles and set together edge to edge. These stones ran the full distance to the palace, and from side to side nearly a quarter as wide, a tremendous level expanse made for what? Yet another monument to human arrogance.
Such were their ways, their ostentatious displays. But today would be the end. The demons with their crushing feet were chewing up huge chunks of the carefully placed and carefully cut stone. Even the children of the new god trampled that work under with the stomping of their metal feet. More delightful irony.
But the most glorious thing he saw was God. God towered above them all and wiped swaths of humans aside like insects crawling in the dirt. That awesome length of his great arm swung back and forth to the roar of his immensity, splashing humans into the air as if he were stomping in mud puddles. The humans flew away from him in waves, flung out over the battle, over the buildings, and looking like flocks of wingless birds clawing at the sky as they tumbled and spun away.
Gromf looked for one of them to gleam with gold, hoping to see the human queen land at his feet. He would pull out her tongue and push in her eyes with his thumbs. Then he would drag her to Warlord to eat.
She did not land near him, however, for such was not his destiny. He saw it when he spotted her,
still in combat with Warlord. He found them by the sound of Warlord cursing her in the secret language of their clan. Gromf knew what he had spoken, though the golden queen did not.
How long had that battle raged? How long had Gromf been unconscious? Long enough for the army to cut this deep into the sprawling city. Long enough for God to stop the lights from falling from the sky. And still the two leaders fought.
He wondered why God did not strike her down, and yet he knew. It must be Warlord. Such was the prophecy.
But Warlord hadn’t done it yet. Why?
And then Gromf saw why.
It was the wicked elf.
Warlord ran at the golden queen and swung at her with his axe. The queen parried it aside and then dove back, away from the upward thrust of the axe haft as Warlord swung it toward her groin.
Then the elf was on Warlord’s back. It raised its daggers and went to plunge them in, but Warlord reached back and snatched him off and threw him into the crowded melee all around.
The golden queen leapt on Warlord in that moment and somehow drove him to the ground, where the two of them grappled for a time. Finally, with a mighty thrust of his legs, Warlord threw the queen in her gleaming armor off of him. She flew back several paces and rolled right back to her feet. Warlord was back on his. They circled each other warily again, and Gromf knew then that this had been going on for hours.
It was Gromf’s fault. He was meant to kill the elf.
He looked to the crowd where the elf had vanished. He could not find it, but he could tell by the way the crowd seemed to fall in on itself where it was. The thrusting spears and swords of the orcs trying to kill it dove and slashed, yet they found nothing to bite into, no flesh to cut, no bones to break. Such was the elusive nature of that awful thing.
The elf cut his way clear and once again moved to get behind Warlord. Then it disappeared.
Gromf shook his head and ran toward the fight. The elf would not cut Warlord down from behind. He sent a wave of fire at an angle, the farthest end of it just missing Warlord’s back.
The elf appeared when the fire passed over him. He spun and faced Gromf coming on even as he patted at places where the black leather of his armor smoked. The snarl that formed on his wicked face was an invitation to death.
Gromf sent two ice lances, each as long as the elf was tall, thick as his fist, both sharp to a needle’s point.
The elf vanished, avoiding Gromf’s missiles, and reappeared running straight for Gromf. Gromf had done this before.
This would be for the glory of God, Gromf thought as he gripped his God Stones tight. He had been given a second chance, and this time he would not fail. He would see how much fire the elf could endure.
The elf’s daggers were already on their way.
Chapter 42
Altin was down to his last seeing stone when he found the red sun. Ten stones to get there, a massive and desperate undertaking, but there it was, a giant red sun. It was still far away, barely bigger than a button in the distance, and perhaps a bit more orange than he’d expected, but it was where it was supposed to be, and there could be little doubt. Altin knew this was the one.
He also knew from what Orli had taught him about Blue Fire’s mate, and even about Blue Fire herself, who the fleet people had named Goldilocks for a reason, that there would only be planets capable of supporting life in a certain area around that enormous red sun. Too close, and it would be too hot for life. Too far away, and it would be too cold. And while that made perfect sense to him, he’d still have to guess at where that band was, and even if he got it right, he’d then have to hope there were planets in orbit there. And if there were, he’d have to find them and then determine if there was actually life living there. It was a lot of ifs.
Now certain that he had found the star they sought, he took up his last seeing stone and drew a deep breath. “Get me close,” he said as he gazed down upon it. Its surface was smooth, polished by time and the flow of water down that sweet little creek, a gurgling brook on a planet that was now so far away, a distance so great that measurements meant nothing, and the best Altin could do to comprehend the scale of it was through the way thinking of it made him feel. It was that far away. He almost felt bad for the little rock. It would never see that place again. It would be stranded out there forever. Thinking it reminded him of his first seeing stone, cast successfully onto the surface of Luria. He’d felt the same way then. His will sentencing something to eternal banishment. How easily it could be done, anthropomorphosis or not. He shuddered at the thought.
Then he sent the stone on its way, sent it to the place that needed to be right, that seemed right, which was all he had. It was a guess, a placement based on what felt like the right distance relative to the scale of what he already knew. He knew where Prosperion was in relation to its sun. He knew where Earth was in relation to Sol. He even knew where Blue Fire was in the same sort of way. He measured those distances and used that to guide his last seeing stone. It was surely not science, and he knew that some suns burned hotter than others. He’d listened to all that he’d been told. But he sent the stone, and it would have to be enough. He would have to begin the search for life from there.
He checked the scrying basin a moment after to see if there was anything to see. He immediately saw that the red sun was as he had hoped, or mainly so, a bloodied orange sphere glowing brightly and similar in size to the suns he knew, if perhaps a bit bigger than they were. He gauged he’d gotten a little closer than he ought to have, but he hoped he hadn’t missed by much. The rest would have to be done by casting seeing spells anyway.
He wasted no time and began looking for a planet nearby, plunging his vision out into the silent blackness and pushing it around.
As always, the distances, even within a solar system, were infuriatingly large, and quite despite Altin’s considerable experience moving his sight as quickly as he was. And this solar system seemed even worse than the three other solar systems he had explored so far. Orli had said the sun would be much bigger, nearly a hundred times more, but such things were intellectual concepts, abstracts for the mind that somehow never struck one properly until experienced for real.
Eventually, after a great deal of searching and wondering which angles he pursued might intersect the plane of planetary rotation, and wondering even if he did find it whether there were any planets anyway, he finally saw a “star” in the distance that was growing rapidly as he moved. It started out as a tiny dot of light like all the rest, but it began to expand in his vision, drawing attention to itself as Altin sped along. Finally, he thought as he rushed toward it.
It grew and grew as he approached. It was very red, and the closer he got to it, the more he began to despair that he would find water there. Closer and closer he went, and still no blue oceans shaped themselves as he approached. No white clouds or snow appeared, not the least brushstroke of color beyond ever-present red, though he did begin to notice a few dark spots, like freckles growing slowly as he drew near.
When he was close enough, he realized the freckles were moons. The planet had several, and he made a quick circuit of each of them. Blue Fire’s mate was, by Orli’s theory anyway, a moon around a colossal world, and that gave him hope. He’d almost forgotten about that. The planet didn’t need water if the moons had some.
They did not. They were all barren things, dark and rocky. Clearly without atmosphere, and certainly no large bodies of water anywhere. Frustrated at the lost time, he pushed his way down to the planet itself. He raced around it in a high orbit as he had the moons, looking for signs of small seas, large lakes, rivers, glaciers, anything that might give him a place to start looking for life. All he saw was red and the occasional whorls of what looked to be mustard-colored clouds. At least there was some kind of atmosphere.
He pushed his vision downward, and came upon the surface, discovering as he did a red place that was as much like Mars as it was Luria. It was barren, just like its moons, though heaped in places wi
th mountains that seemed to Altin’s magical eye as if they must thrust hundreds of measures into the sky. They dominated huge portions of the landscape like bloody teeth rooted in an enormous jaw. The roar of the wind in places sounded the shouts of that violence too. At times it roared with such power that Altin had to tweak the spell to mute the sound. The frenzy of this place, of the wind that blew beneath the mustard smears of that sky, was everywhere.
A few times he paused, awed by it, in particular, mesmerized by the great snaking tubes of enormous tornadoes that would suddenly pounce upon the land. They were thick and furious flutes of wind that, from nothing, would instantly appear, scores and scores of them like a mighty herd, tightly wound things that stretched upward as far as he could see, twisting and writhing ropes of turmoil that bound the violence of the land to the violence of the sky. They wove and danced around each other like the ghosts of awful giants celebrating hate and rage. It was both fantastic and horrifying at once.
Surely no life could live in such a place.
He spent a long time pushing around that seething red world, racing back into orbit and diving back down somewhere else, probing into the shadowed places between and around mountain ranges that seemed as large as Prosperion itself.
He even pushed through the surface, ran around in the darkness for a long time, hoping to chance upon some series of tunnels, some underground rivers or lakes, some winding passages filled with the dim glowing substance that lined the walls of the caves around Blue Fire’s core, the porous planetary tissues of a planet-sized organism.
But he found none of that.
After wasting what he knew was far too long on it, he pulled his vision back into the darkness of space again. He gazed out upon the sun. What had he missed? Why was there no life here? There had to be life. If not, well, then there wouldn’t be life anywhere.
Or maybe he’d just gone too far. Maybe this world was too close to the sun.