The Shivered Sky

by Matt Dinniman

  If he was surprised that Ungeo was suddenly in his territory, facing his injured human, he didn't show it. He was only seven or eight rounds away from capturing Alli's triangle—despite being slightly outnumbered. Alli had allowed anger to control his moves, and it was going to be his undoing. He was already making a desperate retreat to guard his starting spot.

  It had been a long time since Ungeo had participated in actual hand-to-hand combat. But it was just a stupid human. It had a wound to its chest; and it was still weak.

  The fight was short. A stinging slash of her sword, and it fell, almost cleaved in half. The urge was irresistible, and she licked the blade. She could taste the odd blandness of a denuded slave on the blood, but it was still delicious. The throng roared.

  Plehka ignored her. He allowed her to approach, seemingly confident that he'd easily win a hand-to-hand battle with her. Meanwhile, she also moved her Sedim into the triangle. Plehka was extremely close to capturing Alli's remaining pieces, which were down to three bloodied humans and Alli himself. She moved a step back and sent the Sedim forward a few rounds in a row, coming to different edges of the triangle.

  The Dahhak finally realized the danger. Imbecile, she thought with no little amusement. He seemed to think about his moves for a long moment, and in the end decided to step forward, one step toward Ungeo.

  Almost. She prayed he didn't count the triangles, see the jaws of the trap about to spring.

  His next round, his surviving pieces descended upon Alli. The cornered Dahhak cried for Moloch, begging for mercy—loudly and several times. In the end, the deity didn't hear his cries. The audience was whipped into a frenzy. They sensed endgame.

  With the two surviving pieces of Alli, Plehka now had six plus himself. Drunk with victory, he made another step toward Ungeo on his next turn.

  That was how Plehka, winner of seventy-six Dances of Libation, one of the greatest dancers in all of the written history of Molochism finally lost.

  He had become trapped. As he went after Ungeo, he had taken too many steps away from his spot. The whole time, Ungeo had been turning the Sedim up and center. It gave the impression that it was a leap toward Ungeo's rescue, but she had really been maneuvering the piece to a densely packed section of the board. The Sedim was one step ahead of Plehka, and even if he turned back to pursue the demon, she would reach the starting spot before he could challenge her.

  Instead, once he realized the jaws had tightened around him, he made a mad dash at Ungeo. But Ungeo did a very sneaky thing: she retreated. He couldn't catch her. The insane look of anger on his Dahhak face was beautiful.

  “At least fight me,” he roared. “Let us show Moloch who his true worshipper is!”

  “Now, now,” she said, her voice dripping. “Why would I be fool enough to face you when I can do this?”

  She moved her Sedim forward into the starting spot. The heavy footfall of the demon echoed satisfyingly.

  She had won.

  From above, a full moment of silence. Then they erupted, “Ungeo! Ungeo!”

  She took a bow as they roared her name. This is how it should be, she thought. This would make a great chapter for my book. She also felt something else then too, something she couldn't quite explain. It was a completely foreign feeling, like a wonderful injection of the illegal spine frenzy, but different. More intense and more personal. It burned inside her, lighting the darkest places of her soul, places that had never been cast upon before.

  “Praise Moloch!” she shouted. Her voice carried through the arena. The crowd responded in kind.

  Where did that come from? By no means was she becoming enraptured by their silly deity, but at the same time ... She could taste their religious fervor, and she envied it. She yearned for it. What's happening to me?

  “Unhand me!” Plehka squealed as the acolytes came for him. He lashed with his sword, cutting through them. They responded in force, beating him with their fists. Ravi was correct. He was an excellent fighter. He expertly cut his way toward Ungeo in a rage.

  Acolytes poured into the arena, rushing him. They were armed only with staffs, but it was too late. He slashed savagely at Ungeo, hate burning in his eyes.

  She raised her own sword, sparks flying like an uprooted hornets’ nest. The force staggered her. She leapt into the air, talons tearing forward. He ducked, slashing upwards. She screamed as a small tip of her left talon was lopped off.

  She allowed herself to drop onto him. They tumbled over each other, over and over. They stopped at the edge of the arena, and somehow her blade was up against his throat, his lost somewhere along the way.

  “You've shamed your family,” she said. “Your page will be burned.”

  “You are not worthy of Moloch, raptor.” He spit out a glob of dark blood.

  She nipped forward with her beak, tasting the flesh. She'd never savored Dahhak before. It wasn't that bad. A little tough compared to human, but it was seasoned with victory. She nipped again. And again. Eventually the screams stopped. She became aware of the complete silence around her as she devoured the Dahhak, but she didn't care. Today she had done the impossible, and she was going to feed.

  After, Ravi made his way to her. The arena had been opened, and Dahhak surrounded her. They looked at her in a way she had never before seen. Respect, perhaps. Ravi wrapped her talon in a thick bandage soaked with Gorgon blood.

  “You may never dance again,” he said.

  That disappointed her. Strangely so.

  “Take me from here, boy. I will now rest.”

  “Yes, sister,” he said. “Whatever you wish.”

  Names

  After Tamael's breakdown, Hitomi and Indigo were left alone at the edge of the clearing. Iopol and Verdan went off in search of survivors. Leefa attended to Tamael who just rocked back and forth, clutching that helmet to herself. Polsh went to inspect what the engineers had already built and scavenge off the Dahhak, and Frish went off on foot, her hands twitching with fury.

  Hitomi wondered about Gramm and Dave. She prayed for their safety, but she just had an inexplicable, terrible feeling about them. Like they were already dead.

  Don't think like that, Hitomi told herself.

  “I can make this work,” Polsh announced. Though he didn't seem too convinced himself. He stood, wiping dirt and leaf bits from his legs. In his hand was a round, basketball-sized object of metal and wires. “I'm not exactly sure what they were doing with some of this, but with everything we have I should be able to fashion something.”

  Tamael looked up. Her skin was splotched red like her hair. “Are you sure?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Yes.”

  She nodded, standing up and brushing herself off. “Very well. But not here.”

  As they flew, Hitomi clutched tightly in Verdan's arms, she thought about how foolish she had been. Despite her aversion for the angels, she couldn't help but feel for their cause. As far as any of them knew, they were the only angels left in existence. Six of them, yet they struggled on against the impossible.

  Like a single drop of rain praying to extinguish a fire that's devouring the world.

  It made her own trials seem so ... stupid. He was just a boy. A silly immature boy. How could she have let him consume her so? Maybe it was because she had given herself to him. Freely, and for that he deserved credit. He had never pushed or suggested; in fact he had been surprised that night when she pulled him onto her.

  Sweet Nigel. She did love him. She loved him still, like an old wound that would never really go away. But put into perspective with everything she'd seen, heard, and experienced, it was a different girl who had allowed his rejection to utterly shatter her, to break her into so many shards of hopelessness and loss that she had done everything in her power to make sure she could never be put back together again.

  It wasn't until after Hitomi died, after those last moments, eyes locked with her father, him forever blurring away, and then after a terrible emptiness, another face coming into f
ocus, that something changed within her, opening a conduit within herself that could channel the light like no other. It wasn't until now, reflecting on those terrifying moments between her death and her rebirth outside this city of angels, that she really began to comprehend. To understand why she was different from the others. It wasn't that she had something they didn't, quite the opposite in fact.

  “There,” Tamael said. They gently landed upon a new clearing, this one further into the forest, far away from any place Hitomi and Indigo had ever been.

  This was where Polsh would finish developing whatever plan it was he had, perform his own special alchemy on the machines. Two devices would be designed he announced after they set up their new camp. It wouldn't take long.

  “We will wait for you, then,” Tamael said. “And help in whatever way we can.”

  “You can do that best by making sure I'm not disturbed.”

  “So it will be,” she said grimly, looking at each to make certain they heard.

  And so it was.

  It came to pass that Polsh finished constructing his two machines after some time. Looking back, Hitomi couldn't quite recall how long it had taken. Only that much time was spent sitting, staring off into space, thinking of poison, fire, and revelations one has in the last moments of her life.

  * * * *

  “Do you not remember me?” said the wolf. Her face was right up against Dave's, and her breath was foul with the stench of meat, hot like a hairdryer. “We walked together. Hunted together. Shared each other in the black pools of shadows of the northern forests.”

  “No,” Dave pleaded, on his back, dragging his dying body through the leaves. His house was so close. But she had already rent his chest, and his innards spilt upon the forest floor, steaming, leaving a path in his flight. He prayed for unconsciousness, but he knew it wouldn't come. How can I pass out when I'm already asleep? “Please, I don't know what you're talking about. I just want you to go away, leave me alone.”

  “You left me,” the wolf said, keeping pace with his slow retreat. “To starve and die, while you prospered on another world. I promised you then your actions would have a consequence.” She licked her lips. The stench of his own pungent gore flared razor sharp. Something deep down within himself awakened then, craving the smell of his own flesh. The new presence alarmed him, like jumping at his own reflection while stumbling through the dark.

  What's happening?

  “Leave me alone,” he repeated, his voice a shriek.

  “It's coming back to you,” she said, blood dripping off her muzzle. She reached down and nipped up a red length of intestine and yanked it free, like pulling an earthworm too quickly from its hole. “It's in your eyes.”

  She reached forward with her enormous paw, pushing against his chest. It made the sound of a bag of potato chips being crushed.

  “I sense your presence now. You're in the broken city,” the wolf said.

  “Please,” Dave shouted, the pain so absolute, 1000 years of healing couldn't possibly ease it. His mind bent against the full capacity of sensation, and he willed for it to crack. Perhaps then, he could be free.

  Something, then, did break, though it wasn't his sanity.

  “Please, Vila, I can take no more.”

  She stopped at that, a wolven grin.

  “We will meet again,” the wolf said. “Outside of your mind, where you are no longer safe. You will remember, then.”

  He turned to look for his house, but it was gone. Standing in its place was a mighty stag, its antlers boasting a hundred points, reaching high into the forest's darkness. A sadness filled him then. I am too injured to hunt.

  * * * *

  “Dave, Dave. Wake up,” the voice cried urgently. It was Gramm. His friend. It was dark again. Another cave, he realized. The smell was different here, though. The stench of animal was thick. He first thought it was a shadow of his dream, but the distant groan of some unseen beast, rocking the ground underneath him, shook him fully awake.

  Ahh yes, he thought miserably. That was the easy part.

  He remembered the dream, and he bolted upright. What in God's name was that?

  Vila?

  The wolf's name was Vila. He used to be a wolf. At least in his dream.

  “Can you walk?” another voice asked, strained with urgency. It was Ashia, the Virtue. Dave rubbed a dirty sleeve across his face, his eyes adjusting to the damp cavern. His chest burned when he breathed. “There's room on the litter if you can't.”

  Dave turned to the speaker. The voice was distinctly Ashia's, but she was no longer the human child. Her form had shifted. He had heard they could do that. She now looked like an older, full-sized angel. Her whole form blurred, like she was vibrating impossibly fast, an image taken by a shaking camera. She lay on her back in a litter carried by four Principalities. She was injured, he realized. A bandage wrapped about her midsection, and the cloth was clearly visible while the rest of her body was not.

  They can move in and out of this world, Xac had said once. They don't truly exist in either.

  Dave slowly tried to stand. Pain rushed through his head like a wave assaulting a beach. He was dizzy, but Gramm steadied him, his grip reassuringly strong. The pain in his chest throbbed, but it eased with each breath.

  “Xac was shot. When we fell, you landed on the bottom,” Gramm said. “For a minute, I thought you were gone too.”

  A terrible realization came to him as he looked around. “Xac?” he asked.

  Gramm shook his head. “He was the only one.”

  Oh no. The dream was momentarily forgotten. Xac, dead? Of all the angels he had met, he had been the kindest, the best companion. Goodbye, friend.

  Then Dave pushed it all away. He made himself do it. It wasn't time to mourn. Not now, maybe not ever.

  But the pain didn't go away. No matter how hard he pushed.

  “He died to save your life, human,” a new, but familiar, voice said, stepping forward, patting him on the shoulder, surprisingly affectionate. “Do not mourn an act such as his. You must celebrate it to honor his memory.”

  “Colonel Yehppael!” Dave said. Through his grief, he was glad to see the brusque angel had survived. Barely, by the looks of it. The muscular angel's helmet was scorched from a direct hit. In one hand, his humming weapon still had a sliver of smoke rising from the barrel. Behind him stood both the Powers who had accompanied him and Gramm to the edge of the city. He was relieved to see they had also made it through this. So far.

  “We have far to go,” Ashia said suddenly. “They will be searching for us, and our task here is only half done.” The four Principalities lifted her litter onto their shoulders and started their way down a rocky path on foot. They all followed, warily searching about the cavern's heights for any movement.

  In the distance, away from where they were going, a shaft of light cut through the darkness, a pile of rubble all about it, still smoking. That's where Xac died.

  Dave knew they couldn't fly, despite the size of the cavern. Xac had explained all about the traps set within this place by the demons. Floating wires were set, impossible to see but so razor sharp they could cut right through an unsuspecting angel, slicing him in half before he even knew what had happened.

  Dave finally began to gauge their surroundings. Though it was dark, his eyes had already adjusted. Xac had described this place accurately, but his words could never have described the enormity of this underground world. Like the city above, there was too much to drink in all at once, the sheer vastness of it overwhelming him.

  This was where the humans lived. The home of his people who had died and successfully made it to the fabled gates of heaven. It was empty now, eerily so, and for that he was relieved.

  Honeycomb apartments, all with an open wall, towered into the darkness above. There would be no privacy, Dave realized. And no one lived together, either. Just like Xac had said, but the reality of this hit him now. Each wall of honeycombs made a triangle with two other walls, like mig
hty columns. The apartments themselves seemed like an afterthought, placed there because they wouldn't fit anywhere else.

  The streets, mostly covered with rubble and dust, were cobblestone. They went off in every direction as far as he could see in the dim light. He knew the underground world—called the undercity by some, the sett by others—was huge, a giant series of squares that spanned under this whole section of Cibola. Though it wasn't one whole piece. Several underground pockets weren't attached.

  Moving sidewalks sat frozen by the sides of the streets, long since fallen into disrepair. Other buildings sulked in the darkness also, placed at irregular intervals between the honeycomb columns; their purpose unknown as there were no markings. Far in front of him, a cluster of buildings took shape, a type of downtown area.

  It looked like it was at one time a perfectly efficient community. A completely tedious and sterile one.

  What sort of life could this be? Dave wondered. A horrible, drab eternity. What a disappointing and depressing place. Even with the warning he'd had, it still surprised and angered him. How could they allow themselves to live like this, like ants or bees?

  They had rebelled once, Xac had said.

  Gramm seemed to be thinking the same thing as he walked with open-jawed amazement. A look passed between them. Of all the horrors they had witnessed, including the marketplace with the people on skewers, the armies clashing against each other above and around them, this was the most ... disturbing. The demons and their atrocities were understood to be evil. It's what the angels were fighting against.

  But if this world, this appalling place, was the best that there was, why even bother going on? The revelation was like a jolt from the periscepter. Dave remembered Yehppael's words. Their leader—the mysterious God or deity, head angel whatever He was—had left to create a new world. He'd been gone a long time, and most seemed to believe He wasn't coming back.

  He wasn't sure he believed any of these stories about the creator making a new world, but right now he needed something to hold onto as he gazed into one of the apartments. There was barely enough room to even stand. It was smaller than a jail cell. They turned a corner, and there was nothing but more of the same.