Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  The one scythe is neutralized. I need to be wary of the other. I have to be moving before he strikes. I have to read his movements, the step he takes before—

  In a blur of movement, the Hiveking lunged at Enoch. And Enoch was already moving, dodged out of the way just in time. His clawed hand carved lines into the railing as Enoch dodged to the other side.

  The other hands are just as deadly. But I can see them coming.

  It lunged again, and again Enoch barely dodged the blow.

  And another, but this time Enoch followed the swipe with a jab from his derech. It wedged into the creature’s rib shell, piercing it a good two inches. The Hiveking returned the attack with a flurry of blows from his remaining scythe arm, and Enoch answered them with a blur of metal. Still, he was driven back up the next staircase.

  Higher. There’s nothing I can use down here.

  The Hiveking’s next attack was met with a lightning-quick series of parries and ripostes—Enoch’s reflexes had returned and he was seeing the patterns of the creature’s attacks. The tells he gave before a lunge, the way he leaned into a parry.

  He tilts his head into a lunge—

  And suddenly the patterns changed. A tell wasn’t a tell, but a fake that fooled Enoch into committing himself too deeply into his lunge. The scythe lashed out across Enoch’s right hand and severed his two end fingers. The derech spun away and clattered on the floor far below. Enoch stifled his cry, and a hoarse groan escaped his lips.

  Now the Hiveking came at him hard and fast. Enoch was pushed back up the stairs again and again, his iskeyar flashing right and left in a desperate attempt to keep the assassin’s claws from his vital organs. His movements were purely defensive now—the aggressive maneuver had cost him too much. It dawned on Enoch that this creature had been designed to kill him. Had killed his people for years before he had been born. Enoch’s time was running out, and another of the Hiveking’s attacks got through his defense.

  Blood spattered the stairs, and they had reached the highest platform. Enoch stumbled back against one of the enormous pipes that bent down from high above. Above them, darkness and the dripping of water.

  The Hiveking loomed over Enoch, red blood dripping from each of his claws in syncopation with the water. Enoch pulled back against the pipe, trying to tuck himself under its bulk in a primitive, animal instinct to get away from that predator. He was bleeding from dozens of cuts and lacerations, and his remaining blade slipped from his wet fingers. It clattered down the wet stairs and was lost in the darkness far below.

  Enoch wrapped his arms around the pipe and shut his eyes, whispering the litania eteria.

  * * * *

  Mosk d’Abaddon, once Hiveking and Swarmlord, Him without Brother, and Master of the Hunt, had the last Pensanden trapped and defenseless at his feet. There was nowhere to run.

  How fitting that I finally end his line here, underneath the lifeless wasteland that his own forefathers blasted into existence.

  Mosk stepped forward, shaking drops of water from his armored skin.

  And how fitting that the last etherwalker die cowering in the shadows, wretched and wet.

  Far above, distant hinges creaked and hidden machinery shifted. The dripping above suddenly became a stream, a torrent. Became an avalanche. A roar of water and sunlight as the floor of the lake above split apart along seams that had been bound for centuries, then tilted and emptied itself. The deluge drove down and bent the steel gantry, ripped the stairs from their moorings, and dragged the Hiveking into the darkness below. The water was a howling storm of torn metal and electricity, sizzling as broken wires fed lethal power into the flood. Mosk was torn to pieces in the darkness.

  * * * *

  The storm ended as quickly as it began. Warm light now filled the open space, gilded the last rivulets of water as they thinned in streams through the routed tunnel. Enoch crawled out from under the lee of the pipe he had taken refuge in, coughing. He held his hand pressed tightly against his chest, the slow stream of blood lost among a dozen others that coursed down his body.

  Enoch tried to crawl out onto the remaining edges of the gantry, his arms trembling. He was so tired. His lips still whispered the mantra, voiceless, repeating; even though the machinery overhead had now spent itself and gone still, the servos of the reservoir had obeyed his command and could do no more.

  “Enoch! Enoch!”

  The voice echoed from high above. It was Rictus. Squinting against the brightness, Enoch looked up, tried to wave to his friend. The top was too far away, the sun . . . too bright.

  “Ric . . .” His voice came out as a whisper.

  I can’t . . . I can’t . . .

  Enoch’s hand slipped on the bent steel, and he slid over the edge, only stopping when his scabbard belt caught on the jagged tip. Enoch swung over the darkness. He couldn’t fight any more. There was nothing he could do.

  “Ric . . . help me . . . help me . . . please.”

  * * * *

  Rictus couldn’t see into the blackness, even with his new eyes.

  I’d give my eyes, left arm, and functioning digestive system for one damn rope right now.

  He looked over to Sera, who was leaning precariously out over the ledge. She flipped her goggles up and carefully crawled back towards him. Her face was pale.

  “He’s bleeding heavily. We have to get him up here. Now.”

  G’Nor had already circled the pit twice, and he returned again, signaling to Sera in frustration. Rictus knew what the beast was saying without Sera’s translation.

  No dice.

  “The ledge that Enoch is on—I can barely see it from here,” muttered Sera. “G’Nor says there is nothing to hold on to for a hundred feet. We can’t climb down there.”

  G’Nor growled, lowered his haunches as if to size up the jump. Sera grabbed his shaggy neck.

  “No, my friend. The landing is too narrow.”

  There was silence as it sank in—they were going to have to watch Enoch bleed to death. There was no way down. After all of the danger they had passed through with the boy, it was ending here.

  Sera looked back at her limp wings, shaking her head. Rictus looked down at his hands. His smooth, strong hands.

  Damn it.

  “There is a way.”

  Sera looked up at the specter. She knew. They both knew.

  “I . . . I’m afraid of what they would do,” she said. She gathered the primary feathers in one hand, and the metal gleamed in the sunlight. Her voice was soft.

  “The . . . what did he call them? The workers in your blood?”

  “Saturated, overcharged nanites, Sera,” said Rictus, his old heart heavy. “They are still set on transference and regeneration.”

  Eyes closed, Sera nodded.

  “He said that they could . . . fix me. That they would know what to do.”

  Rictus tried to smile. He tried to show something, anything, besides the dread in his stomach.

  She has to know that this is going to hurt.

  “You don’t have to do this, Sera. Maybe if we look for another way—”

  “There is no other way. You know there isn’t.”

  Rictus couldn’t stop looking at his hands. In the bright sunlight, a thin sheen of sweat sparkled with grains of sand over firm, taut skin. He clenched his fingers once, twice, and released them with a sigh.

  “Let’s do this. Let’s do this now.”

  G’Nor signed to Sera, who relayed to Rictus. “He wants to know if this is dangerous.”

  “Not for you,” said Rictus, eyes down. “We don’t have time to worry about that now. Enoch is dying.”

  He grabbed Sera by the wrist. She was staring down the pit, at the boy whose life was ebbing away in drips and gasps far below.

  “We will need a knife,” said Rictus, voice soft.

  G’Nor had come up behind the two, and he extended the razor sharp claws on one paw, signing with the other. Sera nodded.

  “G’Nor can do it quickly, a
nd he says his saliva has an anticoagulant—it might keep your . . . your nanites from stitching you up before enough of them are transferred.”

  Rictus smiled and pulled back his sleeve. “I need to remember that our shaggy friend here probably knows more about field-surgery than any of us. Here,” he said, offering his wrist, “dig in.”

  Taking their wrists, G’Nor looked at them both in turn.

  So polite, for a purebred predator.

  Rictus nodded back, and then Sera. G’Nor ran his rough tongue over their skin from palm to elbow. Then he ran a razor-sharp claw down the specter’s wet wrist, parallel to the tendons to avoid unnecessary damage. Rictus grimaced as bright blood welled out, still sparkling with the supercharged nanites.

  Before they could seal the wound, G’Nor deftly cut into Sera’s wrist as well and then softly pushed their arms together. There was a jolt that caused both of them to catch their breath as the nanites tapped into Sera’s bioelectrical field. Rictus was surprised that he could feel this, feel the vitality draining through his arm.

  Off you go, little buddies. Do your business, but please be gentle with the lady.

  G’Nor sensed the transfer as well, his sensitive nose following the chemical tang as it passed from the specter to the angel. He wrinkled his snout and exhaled sharply, shaking his head. This was not natural.

  Sera began breathing hard. Her back arched, and her wings extended fully behind her—particles of light flowing from her arm, to her shoulders, to her wings.

  Rictus kept his eyes down, locked to their joined wrists.

  “Let it pass . . .” mumbled Rictus. “The pain is only temporary. Let it . . .”

  He couldn’t continue. He remembered his first resurrection. The nanites were wonderful healers, but they didn’t numb the pain. The pain served up valuable analytics, the most accurate gage of nervous system functionality.

  And the little buddies can’t let you pass out—you have to stay awake the whole time. That’s how they know everything’s working.

  Sera screamed. Her bones twisted inside of her, slid back into the tight spaces where irritated flesh had swollen and filled. Her own bright blood ran down her feathers, feathers that quivered as pain rifled through her wings like a hot breeze. She staggered away from Rictus and G’Nor, breaking the bond as the newly energized nanites shifted into the patterns that Enoch had set them to.

  G’Nor huffed in worry, took a few tentative steps towards the trembling angel. He looked back at Rictus, who had his face in his hands.

  The Alaphim convulsed and wrapped her wings around herself in one quick moment, transforming into a dome of bronze and crimson-spattered feathers. Lights flashed from within the dome, and Sera screamed again. And again.

  Damn it. I remember this. The pain. I shouldn’t have let her do this. What kind of monster am I?

  G’Nor growled and took another step forward, but Rictus grabbed at his mane with a thin hand.

  “Stay, my friend,” he said, voice weak. “She chose this and she knew what would come of it—Enoch warned her. Let her take this choice on her own.”

  G’Nor bowed his great head down to sniff at the specter, suddenly looking up in surprise.

  Remember that? The smell of rot?

  “Yeah, I made my choice as well.”

  Sera’s screaming had stopped, and her wings had grown still. Rictus leaned on G’Nor’s sturdy shoulder and pulled himself to his feet. With a sudden whoosh, Sera’s wings spread wide, extended in a bright crescent over her head.

  The angel stood triumphant. Even speckled in her own blood, she gleamed with a new power and vibrancy that echoed the lost glory of her people. The metal of her wings now wove into her flesh with a smooth, muscular curve that echoed the sweep of her feathers. Thin leaves of bronze swept from her shoulders, her brow, her wrists—the feathers that had once seemed so artificial in their juxtaposition with her human features now felt natural. They felt right. The lenses which had once snapped into place on crude joints were now part of a regal headdress which wove through Sera’s cerulean hair like an eagle’s crown.

  Rictus smiled a thin smile and nudged the beast at his side.

  “That’s worth the ticket price, eh?”

  The Alaphim raised her head, and the crown slid down over her eyes like an elaborate eyelid. She smiled, she laughed, and with a mighty lunge she was airborne.

  Rictus and G’Nor flinched as a cloud of dust and sand rolled over them. Sera rose into the air with a few powerful flaps of her gleaming wings, circled around the pair, and then dove into the pit behind them.

  G’Nor helped Rictus over to the edge, but already the angel had disappeared into the darkness. A minute passed. Two. The beast signed to Rictus, who weakly shook his head.

  “I don’t know. She . . . she should have found him by now. She should be—”

  And then the sound of beating wings, rising from the darkness. Sera rose into the sunlight, feathers flashing in the noonday sun. She carried Enoch in her arms, and the boy had never seemed so small to Rictus. He was wet and covered in blood.

  Rictus and G’Nor hurried over to Sera as she landed. She gently placed Enoch on the sand, using one wing to shade the boy.

  “He’s still warm,” she said. “Still breathing.”

  G’Nor sniffed Enoch, motioned urgently to his companions.

  “Yes,” said Rictus. “He needs to be cleaned and bandaged, and . . .” here he lifted up Enoch’s mangled hand, “ . . . he appears to have lost a few digits.” G’Nor licked at the bleeding stumps as Rictus tore a leather strap from his own jacket and wrapped it tightly around the wound.

  “That won’t be enough, though.”

  The ailing specter pulled his sleeve back and leaned over Enoch. He sighed.

  “Looks like I’m donor of the year . . .”

  “No, Ric,” said Enoch. “I need you alive.”

  Everybody gasped. Enoch opened his eyes and gave a weak smile, motioned at Sera’s resplendent new wings.

  “Do . . . do you like them?”

  Rictus rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh.

  “Half dead and half drowned, and now you decide to flirt?”

  Sera smiled, leaned over, and pushed a strand of wet black hair back from his forehead. “They’re perfect, Enoch. You fixed me.”

  She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.

  Enoch blinked and blushed, then closed his eyes. He coughed, shaking his head. Sera tried to quiet him, put her hand to his mouth. Enoch turned his head, amber eyes staring into hers.

  “No, that’s where I was wrong. I was wrong the whole time. The pattern was inside of you, Sera. Hidden in the adaptive cells on the boundary between your flesh and the metal—a place far too chaotic and messy for an etherwalker to see. Your people created this within themselves…and there is a lot more there that I barely caught a glimpse of.”

  Enoch coughed again, and waved away her help.

  “The Alaphim were not just fancy letter carriers. I finally realized that. Sera, in a world where Koatul can break through any coded message, your people became vital for communication amongst those who fought the Serpent. They transformed themselves into so much more than their original design, and Koatul hunted them just as hungrily as he did the Pensanden. That’s why he turned the Arkángels. He knew that you were capable of…of this.

  “I don’t know why, but the design was a part of your frame, a hidden code that only you could find. You had to open it yourself. Sacrifice yourself. That was the only way to—” and here he waved at the transformed angel with a weak hand— “to set these changes free.

  “You were already perfect. Already whole.”

  Rictus looked at Enoch, then looked over at Sera. Finally he looked across the two of them at G’Nor.

  “Can you give me a lift out of here? I’m going to be sick.”

  Chapter 24

  “Don’t say that it’s two against one,

  The sky will shiver and the rivers will
run,

  Lucky for us, we’re not alone

  Lucky for me, I’m not the only one.”

  —Dogfish Knights, chorus for “Roam”

  Sera flew again. She flew.

  She spun and whirled through the sky, opening her mouth to taste the clouds as she splashed through their thick bellies. She couldn’t remember feeling so strong before this, feeling so much in control of the wind that she caught beneath her pinions.

  I can’t wait to show Lamech. To show the rest of them. This is what we can be. Not a faded decoration, not some useless reminder of past decadence. Not a twisted spider like the Arkángel. But this. A being meant to fly, meant to master the sky and shape it beneath crafty wings.

  She could see the caravan below, familiar sounds muffled by the soft wind blowing down from the north.

  I am not something made. Not something unfinished.

  The sun warmed her wings, and she felt it. Her feathers spread wide under the heat, gathering energy that would sustain the new guests in her blood.

  Enoch had thought of everything.

  “You don’t need to keep the nanites going once they’ve triggered your nascent transformation,” he had said. “But I figure you might want to share some of them with your family when we’re done.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what “done” meant. Enoch spoke of traveling to Tenocht and looking for more of his kind. He meant to find his home, his real home.

  Oh yeah, and to destroy any of the Vestigarchy that he finds there.

  Against her better judgment, Sera was beginning to like this shepherd boy.

  * * * *

  The vehicle crested the rise, and from the driver’s seat, Enoch could see where the swamp finally rose into the dryer ground that signified the borders of Garron. Overhead, he saw the golden flash of Sera’s wings as she scouted out their path. The Alaphim had spent more time in the air than on the ground since Enoch had recovered, and he had decided that the risk of detection was worth her renewed sense of freedom.