by John Corwin
I couldn't help but think of the parallels to our world, how the British had once used Australia as a prison. Then again, Seraphim history far preceded much of Eden's. It certainly hadn't made them any better than humans, though.
"So beautiful," Elyssa said, now enjoying the window beneath us. A sparkling green river wound through a forest of aquamarine trees. A roar echoed through the forest. Golden doves exploded like glitter from cover and burst into the air, pursued by something long, black, and scaly.
A gasp burst from my mouth as a flying black reptile streaked in pursuit, snatched a dozen birds in its maw, then dove into the river and vanished. "W-was that a dragon?" I said.
Elyssa's violet eyes were huge. "What else could it be?"
I wanted to ask Flava, but she and the others were asleep. "I saw a huge flying dragon the first time I was here."
"Where?"
"It was actually on a live-action holographic map of the Great Barrier Vortex Cephus showed me." I stared intently at the river but didn't see any signs of the creature.
"Do people still live down there?" Elyssa asked.
I pointed to the mountains in the distance where buildings clung to the cliff. "Nightliss told me this is like the suburbs for Tarissa."
"How do they get to the city if this skyway is restricted?" Elyssa asked.
"There are other skyways near the mountains." I shielded my eyes and found a long stone arch several miles ahead. "I think that's the last relay for the skyway system out here."
"That must be a two hundred-foot drop for us." Elyssa's gaze wandered back and forth. "How are we supposed to get down if the skyway ends there?"
"It'll probably work like the skyways in Tarissa." I flattened my hands and moved them horizontally. "When you're travelling on a skyway and you need to get off somewhere, you visualize where you need to go and"—I veered one hand from the other and simulated a smooth descent—"a cloudlet forms and takes you to the building or ground."
"Wow, talk about the perfect mass transit system." Elyssa glanced back at Flava. "I'm going to wake her up just in case."
Flava blinked awake at a gentle nudge and stood. "We are at the last relay." She shook Nailan. "Wake the others."
"At once." He walked back along the skyway shaking the others with his foot.
"What happens if it ends here?" I asked Flava.
"Walking is not an option," she replied.
I held up a finger and waggled it. "One does not simply walk into Kdosh."
Elyssa grimaced. "How are we supposed to get there?"
Flava looked west. "To reach Kdosh, we need the aid of the Mzodi—the sky fishers."
"Couldn't I just fly the rocket stick to the skylet?" I asked.
Flava shook her head. "The aether vortex would swallow you whole."
We were a few hundred yards away from and above the massive stone arch bridging the valley. Zooming my vision, I spotted the pedestal with the gray gem in it—presumably the relay. "When will we know—"
A vibration in the skyway answered my question before I could finish it and the cloudy road ahead dissolved into mist.
"The last relay is unstable," Flava said. She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes as if concentrating. "I cannot make the skyway stop."
"Can we run back?" I asked.
Her eyes lit. "Everyone run back the other way!"
My simple-minded idea actually worked, but not as well as I'd hoped. The Imperial Skyway was built for speed, and even at a sprint, we were like pugs on a giant treadmill. I drew in aether and was ecstatic to find it in ample supply.
"Who can fly?" I asked.
"We are all practiced with wings," Flava said. "But we cannot soar like Cephus's fliers."
"You don't need to fly," I said. "Just glide to the arch."
"I can't do it!" a young seraph said. "I can only channel one wing!"
I flicked out the rocket stick and turned it on. "Get on the seat. Push the stick down gently to descend, pull up to climb, and lean to the sides to turn." I made sure the stabilizing gyro for novice fliers was on.
The seraph took it and leapt on. "Thank you, Destroyer!"
The steady sprint was starting to take a toll on the others. "Channel your wings and glide!"
Sweat poured down Flava's face. She held up a fist. "Remember your training!" Ultraviolet wings blazed to life at her back and the backs of the others.
A seraph stumbled and flipped off the end, his cries fading as he vanished into the forest far below.
"Jova!" someone shouted.
A sera screamed and lost her footing. I grabbed her wrist at the last second. Her body bounced along the skyway as it tried to tear her from my grasp. I channeled a burst of Murk into her. "Grow your wings!"
She flailed with her other hand, trying to catch her balance. "I cannot!"
"Do it!" I roared. I sent another surge of Murk into her.
Wings burst from her back, slicing holes through the cloth armor eliciting a shriek of pain. The sera's sweaty hand slipped from mine and she tumbled away, screaming.
"Eoriss!" Flava cried.
The sera tumbled through open air, an ultraviolet meteor streaking to earth.
"Spread your wings!" I roared in my full demonic voice.
At the last minute, her wings unfurled and the air caught her. She skidded onto the wide arch and rolled to a stop.
I would have breathed in relief, but I was starting to pant already.
Elyssa didn't look tired, but even she was sweating. "Should I flap my arms to get down?"
I managed a smile. "No, I got you."
One by one the other Darklings spread their wings and spiraled down to the arch below. I sucked in aether and imagined wings on my back. It was like trying to pee at a public urinal while a crowd watched me from behind. I suddenly knew how Eoriss felt.
Sucking in aether like a vacuum cleaner, I imagined wings springing from my back. I felt an itch on my shoulder blades and focused on the itch. I had to activate the magical muscles in my back. "Just like wiggling my ears," I muttered. Unfortunately, I'd never been great at that. Even the great Barnaby Farnsworth, a fourth-grade prodigy who could wiggle his nose and ears at the same time had been unable to teach me those valuable skills.
My left foot slipped off the end of the skyway. I flopped on my belly and the skyway threw me off like a treadmill on the highest setting. Elyssa shrieked and tumbled into the air an instant later.
Wings, now! The itch on my shoulder blades flared into knifing agony as pinions of pure energy erupted from my back. Blazing white furled to my right, and ultraviolet to my left. I pumped a fist in the air. "Booyah!"
"Celebrate later, Justin!" Elyssa shouted.
I reached out a hand for Elyssa. She was inches too far away but the stony arch was far too close for comfort. I only had seconds before we both splatted. I spread my wings and slowed enough for Elyssa to catch me. I wrapped my arms around her waist and flared my wings.
The wind caught them and Elyssa suddenly felt five times her weight as gravity tried to rip her away from me.
The air exploded from Elyssa with a big, "Oof!"
We hadn't smashed into the arch, but we had another problem. I was way off course and too low. I saw Flava waving frantically from the arch, but there was no way we'd reach it. Instead, we were headed for the forest below.
"Find the cliff trail!" Flava shouted. "We will wait for you!"
She vanished from view as my last desperate attempt to reach the stone bridge failed and we flew beneath it.
Elyssa gripped my wrists. "The trees, Justin, the trees!"
I flapped my wings, trying to gain altitude, but smacked into one of the aquamarine trees I'd admired from above. Elyssa grunted and grabbed a branch. I tumbled backward, my wings slicing through the branches like butter. Using my demon-like reflexes, I grabbed a limb and hung on until I could get my bearings.
Red grass and glowing flowers carpeted the forest floor below. I looked up and saw Elyssa g
racefully navigating the patch of sliced branches toward me, swinging and leaping like Lady Tarzan herself, so I shimmied down the rest of the trunk to the ground. The forest whirred with insect life. A huge silver owl stared at us from its perch in another tall tree, and something rustled through the bushes to my left.
Elyssa landed next to me and immediately focused on what was most important. "Ooh, is that a glowing flower?" She held out a finger toward something that looked like a combination between a sunflower and a lightbulb.
I grabbed her arm and jerked it back. "Haven't you ever seen alien movies? That's how people die!"
"From glowing flowers?" She quirked her lips in regret, but backed off. "Well, I suppose it could be poisonous." Her eyes lit again. "Wow, look at that owl!"
"Ever notice how the animals here look similar to the ones in Eden?" I said. "I don't think that's a coincidence."
"I'm certain there's some cross-pollination of species," Elyssa said in a lecturing tone. She knelt to inspect a small blue lizard. "That's odd."
"What is?" I asked.
"It has something on its back."
I picked up a twig and poked the reptile. Wings spread from its back and blurred into motion like a hummingbird. Hissing angrily, the lizard glared at us and flicked out its tongue before flying away.
"That wasn't very nice," Elyssa said.
"Yeah, I don't appreciate being hissed at."
She rolled her eyes. "I mean poking it with a twig."
"What if its skin was poisonous?" I said. "I didn't want to touch it with a finger."
Elyssa groaned. "I'll bring biohazard suits next time we explore a strange new world."
"Ha, ha." I jabbed a finger to the left of the tree we'd descended. "The cliff is that way. Let's go."
"Uh, no it's not." Elyssa motioned straight past the tree. "It's that way."
I looked up and spotted the rocky face through the tree canopy. "Guess I got turned around when I fell."
She grinned. "Yea, you get turned around a lot."
I stuck out my tongue. "Whatevs."
"Don't stick out your tongue." Elyssa feigned a concerned look. "You might poke something poisonous."
I swiped a hand at her but she giggled and dodged it.
We juked around a clump of giant mushrooms and followed a trail of red grass between the trees. A bright yellow fox leapt atop a stump and watched us curiously. It mewled like a wounded cat then vanished into the foliage.
"So that's what the fox says."
Elyssa clasped her hands together. "How adorable."
I wasn't so sure the wildlife was trustworthy. "Don't try to pet anything. It might bite you."
"Someone's paranoid today."
"I didn't beat the Queen Bitch from Hell only to die from a poisonous flying lizard or a cute yellow fox that morphs into a monster and eats you." I looked around warily for signs of other strange creatures, but spotted only a purple-speckled owl watching us curiously from a tree.
Elyssa snorted. "We need to get you on medication pronto."
I looked up at daylight poking through the trees and wondered what was going on in Eden right now. "I hope Shelton had fun at his bachelor party."
"Maybe he postponed it until you get back." Elyssa squeezed my hand. "I really don't think he'd let you miss out."
"We're nowhere near Kdosh and don't even know if we can get the arch working if we ever get there." I booted a rock and sent it skittering through the grass. "Now I've missed out on the bachelor party, and there's no way we'll make it to the wedding."
"Because Shelton's wedding is more important than saving Tarissa," Elyssa said in a sarcastic tone.
I stopped walking and looked at her. "If we can't enjoy the little things in life, then what are we fighting for?"
She opened her mouth but the retort died on her lips. "You're right." Elyssa sighed. "I'm sad we missed it too."
A little knot formed in my throat. Shelton had once tried to arrest my father and hand him over to the Overworld authorities for a bounty. Another time, he'd reluctantly helped rescue my father from vampires and then kept him in a safe place after Underborn, the most notorious assassin in the Overworld marked him for death. I didn't know exactly when Shelton and I became best friends, but we'd been through so much together, we were practically family. It really sucked that I was missing out on some of the most important days of his life.
I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. "I'm adding this to Cephus's list of crimes, right below trying to destroy Eden."
Elyssa pushed through a thicket and stopped. "We're at the cliff."
I stepped beside her and looked up at the steep rock face. The stone arch seemed impossibly far away. Didn't Flava tell us to find a trail?"
"Yeah, but I don't see one."
Elyssa gripped a small outcropping of rock and hefted herself up a few feet. "We might be able to boulder to the top."
I shook my head. "It'd be like climbing the Cliffs of Insanity, but without a thick rope and a giant to carry us." Try as I might, I couldn't see any way up.
We were stuck.
Chapter 10
Thankfully, I already had a Plan B. "Remember the hotel in Thailand?" I said.
Elyssa's eyebrows arched. "How could I forget? Can you climb all that way with me on your back?"
I nodded. "I dragged my dad up a cliff at the Three Sisters while Nazdal tried to eat us, so I think I can manage it with you."
"What if I try to eat you?"
"I would lose my concentration, but for other reasons."
Elyssa leaned forward and traced her tongue along my earlobe. "Can I do that while you're climbing?"
I swallowed hard and shifted the crotch of my Nightingale armor. "Where are we again?"
She laughed and walked behind me, lacing her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. "I'm ready when you are." Her lips nibbled my neck. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
"You're making it hard for me to walk." I gathered my wits and flung a strand of Murk up the cliff wall. Like a web, it stuck to the rock. I willed it to contract. The web jerked us like a rubber band, launching us thirty feet up the rock wall. Using the momentum, I flung another web and yanked us up again.
"Whee!" Elyssa cried. "This is amazing!"
I laughed. "It's only fun when you're not running from a tsunami or hungry Nazdal."
"How far up can you throw a web?" she asked.
"Fifty feet at most." I grunted as the next strand tugged us upward. "Beyond that, it doesn't stick as well." I flung out another rope. Just as it contracted to pull us up, the section of rock it attached to crumbled.
"Fart bastards!" I shouted as we reversed course toward the rocky ground two hundred feet below. My reflexes responded before my brain, and another strand of Murk caught the cliff just above. We jerked to a stop and hung for a moment.
"Did you just say 'fart bastards'?" Elyssa said in an amused voice.
I wiped sweat from my eyes with a free hand. "How can you ask me that after we almost fell to our deaths?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "It all happened so fast."
A deep breath helped to calm my nerves. "Upward and onward."
Elyssa kissed the back of my neck. "My sexy rock climber."
I channeled a rope and began climbing again. "I'm about to take you back into the forest and go Tarzan on you."
"Me Jane," she whispered in my ear.
"You're going to get us killed," I groaned.
"I'm giving you a reason to live," she replied.
"My testosterone levels are off the charts." Another strand jerked us closer to the stone arch. "Junior is rubbing uncomfortably against the cliff."
She giggled. "Want me to shield it with my hand?"
"That's it, we're going back to the forest." The last aether rope jerked us up and over the lip of the stone arch. I landed heavily on my feet and stumbled.
Elyssa climbed off my back. "Aww, I thought we were going back down."
Flav
a and the others saw us and ran over. I stood slightly behind Elyssa so they wouldn't see the awkward bulge in my skintight armor.
Elyssa looked down and snorted. "Someone needs a cold shower."
"Shush, you evil woman." I looked at the approaching Darklings and plastered on a casual smile. Down, boy, down! Junior seemed to sag with sadness and deflated.
The Darkling I'd lent my rocket stick handed it to me. "Destroyer, I think your rocket stick is broken."
"Broken?" The odor of fried electronics stung my nostrils.
"It turned off during my descent, but thankfully, I was only a few feet from the ground." He looked down. "I am sorry."
I tested the switch, but the rocket stick didn't respond. "It's okay." I didn't like being grounded, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
Another seraph pushed past the first. "Did you see Jova below?"
I stood up and shook my head. "I'm sorry, no."
"He landed only a hundred yards from you," he replied, voice rising with agitation.
"He fell near the river," Flava said. "I am sorry, Axo, but he's gone."
"I wish to look for him."
Flava's lips tightened into a line. "Do you think your brother would want you to abandon the mission and look for him?"
"I do not care what he would want!" Axo said. "I will not abandon family!"
"We are your family," Flava said. "Your brothers and sisters who have fought by your side. Do you remember what Jova said before our attack on the crystoid?"
Axo squeezed his eyes and looked down. "Yes," he whimpered.
"If I die, I pray you fight on. Victory brings honor to the living and dead. If Cephus wins, the dead will be poured into mass graves and forgotten." Flava gripped Axo's arm. "Brother, I do not wish to be forgotten."
Nailan raised a fist overhead. "Remember the dead!"
The others roared the mantra.
Axo wiped tears from his eyes. "My only regret is that the Destroyer could not save him as he saved Eoriss."
His words stung, the venom making my heart so heavy I couldn't breathe. There were so many I hadn't been able to save—Vallaena, Nightliss, all those who fought in the wars. I knew it wasn't my fault, but every loss added another weight and this asshole wasn't helping matters.